Synopsis

Based on the story of John Manjiro, one of the first Japanese people to live and work in America, The Sea-God at Sunrise follows two castaway Japanese boys, Shima and Takao, from the wreck of their fishing boat in a typhoon to their rescue by an American whaling ship in 1841, the waning days of feudal rule in Japan. Their rescue proves a short-lived miracle. Barred from reentering Japan, the ship heads for the whaling grounds of the South Pacific. Shima becomes an unwilling passenger in a strange floating world filled with foreign faces, a new language, and a hostile chief mate. But when the reclusive captain suddenly falls ill, Shima and third mate Daniel Ellis stumble upon a secret from his past that brings together their previously isolated worlds.