The Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, who was a conservative modernist autocrat, expressed keen interest in the Rising Sun of the East, which he saw as a vision of modernity from the Orient. On the Turkish side, Sultan Abdulhamid II accelerated contacts between the countries by sending the Ottoman imperial frigate, the Ertugrul, in 1889 on a good-will mission to the Meiji emperor. The goal of this mission was to repay the visit of Prince Komatsu back in 1886. However, the visit could also be said to represent the Turkish vision of Japan as a new model of modernism, which had recently grown in interest among the Ottoman intellectual and political circles. The Ertugrul voyage arrived in Japan in June of 1890, and it was quite successful with official visits to the Meiji palace, while government. Commander Osman Pasha and his Captain Ali Bey (the grand father of the famous national education reformer Hasan Ali Yucel of the Turkish Republic, and also the great grandfather of Can Yucel, a famous Turkish poet) were well-received by the Meiji public. Newspaper reports detail the visit in lively terms, but unfortunately, the Ertugrul crew began to have troubles with bouts of cholera, which was a common ailment at port cities at the time. Deciding to return back home as quickly as possible, Osman Pasha set sail in early September. Unfortunately, this first Turkish visit to Japan resulted in a disastrous tragedy off the shores of Wakayama near the Kushimoto promontory and Oshima Island. On her return voyage, the ship crashed onto the rocks of the promontory in a heavy typhoon late at night, and finally sank on September 16, 1890, losing most of its men. The local Japanese villagers of the Oshima village immediately rushed to the scene in the midst of the gushing winds and rain. In an extraordinary rescue effort to pull the survivors ashore, the villagers aided the desperate sailors in their grueling climb over the sharp rocks at the foot of the promontory. After reaching the shore, the Turkish sailors sat wounded and tired, many with blood trickling down their faces. A witness also recalled that amongst the blood and despair, they had moustaches which the Japanese thought was quite fascinating. Altogether, there were 587 dead, which unfortunately included the commanders of the ship: Osman Pasha and his aid Captain Ali. Doing what they could, the villagers promptly treated the 69 survivors in the Kobe hospital. As a young girl, when I visited Oshima village back in 1965 as part of the commemoration of the event, one elderly gentleman of the village, who was attending the ceremonies as well, recalled to me the disaster which he remembered as a child. This man explained that the Oshima villagers had placed the wounded Turkish sailors in the village temple and that survivors were muttering, in pain, the Turkish word “Su,” which means water. The Japanese villagers deciphered the meaning after some deliberation because it sounded similar to “Su” or “Mizu” in Japanese. According to the official narratives of the tragedy, the sympathetic and saddened Japanese government sent the few survivors back to Istanbul with the Japanese frigates the Hiei and the Kongo together with the condolences of the Meiji emperor and the Japanese government. The diaries of Colonel Tanaka Tsunatsune, commander of the Hiei, and Colonel Hidata Shonosuke of the Kongo, revealed the friendly and hospitable welcome that the Japanese naval staff received in Istanbul with the personal attention of the Sultan. The crew was allowed to stay in the grand surroundings of the Dolmabahce Palace, which was the first western-style palace of the Ottoman court. Photographs in Yildiz Palace today show us the scenes of an official dinner for all the Japanese officers and crew (including the Admiral Oyama Takanosuke) with their Turkish counterparts dining in the Gumussuyu Barracks in Istanbul.