Never heard the name Ranald MacDonald? (Not easily forgotten, for sure.) This is about to change, thanks to the book "Native American in the Land of the Shogun: Ranald MacDonald and the Opening of Japan" by American author Frederik Schodt.
Fred has told the true story of a half-Chinook and half-Scottish adventurer who intentionally marooned himself in feudal Japan in 1848. After being rescued by Ainu and then forced to step on an image of the Virgin Mary in Nagasaki, he helped facilitate Japan's modernization.
The inscription on Ranald's tombstone (with rocks from Hokkaido's Rishiri Island) in Torada, Wash., encapsulates the intriguing nature of the man: