A replica of Columbus's flagship Santa Maria set sail from Barcelona Saturday with an all-Japanese crew for a voyage to accomplish his original objective - to find a trade route to the East.
After white-robed Shinto priests carried out an hourlong blessing ceremony, the Santa Maria was towed out of port to begin a nine-month voyage that will take it across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and on to Japan.The project - brainchild of filmmaker, publishing magnate and Shinto priest Haruki Kadokawa - is a Japanese contribution to next year's celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of America in 1492.
"Colombus did his crossing to find new trade routes," said Kadokawa. "I am not looking for new trade routes but for harmony for the whole world . . . without which mankind will not live very happily in the next 500 years."
He led two other Shinto priests in the ceremony on the dockside before a Shinto altar brought from Japan, offering rice cakes, sake and fruit to the gods and wielding a sword to ward off evil spirits.
Officials from Barcelona and the Japanese city of Kobe, novelist James Clavell and International Olympic Committee vice president Richard Pound also laid offerings on the altar.
They offered the 21 Japanese crewmen and skipper Huruo Yamamoto two Japanese lion masks for good luck and two bonsai olive trees to be delivered to Colombia, then sent the ship off to a thunderous fanfare of fireworks.
The engineless wooden replica of the Santa Maria, built in Barcelona according to antique plans and carpentry techniques, has only a generator and water desalination unit to distinguish it from the original, which sank off Haiti.
The voyage is due to end in Kobe April 28, 1992.
The Santa Maria's first stop will be the Spanish port of Huelva and it is expected to reach San Salvador Island in the Bahamas on Oct. 12 - 499 years after Columbus made his historic first landfall in the Americas in the same spot.