In the spring of 1729, something unprecedented was moving through Japan. It had been walking since March 13, departing the port city of Nagasaki on foot because no ship, cart, or palanquin in the country could carry it. Town by town, checkpoint by checkpoint, the elephant made its way northeast along the great roads of the Edo period — the roads built for armies and commerce, not for creatures that weighed more than ten men combined.

Shogun 徳川吉宗 (Tokugawa Yoshimune) had arranged the import. The 8th Tokugawa shogun was a man of wide intellectual curiosity — the same ruler who had relaxed Japan's ban on Western books in 1720, opening the country to foreign scientific knowledge. He had heard of elephants from Dutch merchants at Nagasaki and wanted to see one. Through a Qing Chinese merchant, he made arrangements with traders in 広南 (Konan), the Quang Nam region of present-day Vietnam. Two animals were loaded onto a specially built Chinese junk for the 27-day crossing of the South China Sea: a male, approximately 7 years old, and a female of about 5.

They arrived at Nagasaki harbor in early June 1728. The female died within weeks — unable to adapt to the Japanese climate or diet. The male survived. He spent months in Nagasaki while officials arranged the logistics of moving him to Edo. Those logistics were considerable. 稲生正武 (Ino Masatake), the shogunate's chief finance officer, issued a cascade of extraordinary decrees along the intended route: no ringing of temple bells when the elephant approached, no horses or cattle on the streets, small stones swept from the road surface, and reinforced boats prepared at every river crossing. The normal rhythms of every village along the Tōkaidō (東海道) were suspended for the passage of an animal.

The elephant's escort included two Vietnamese mahouts who had sailed with him and two Chinese interpreters. A retinue of samurai officials traveled with the group to manage the logistics and translate the mahouts' instructions to Japanese laborers. The march of approximately 1,326 kilometers took over two months.

In Kyoto, the procession paused for a matter of some bureaucratic delicacy. Emperor 中御門天皇 (Nakamikado) wished to view the animal, but Edo-period court protocol was absolute: no living creature could appear before the emperor without holding an appropriate court rank. The elephant had none. Rather than make an exception — the system made no provision for exceptions — the solution was simple: give the elephant a rank. On April 28, 1729, the elephant was formally inscribed in court records as "従四位広南白象" (Jushii Konan Hakuzo — Junior Fourth Rank, White Elephant of the Southern Country). The rank placed it at the same tier as mid-level court nobles. The elephant was now, at least in the eyes of the imperial bureaucracy, a person of standing. Retired Emperor 霊元天皇 (Reigen) also received it in audience. The mahout and Chinese interpreters translated throughout.

The elephant departed Kyoto on April 29, 1729, and continued its slow march toward Edo. For the next month, it was the most discussed and anticipated presence in the country. Diarists along the route recorded the wonder of it. Crowds gathered in numbers normally seen only at the great shrine festivals, straining for a view from rooftops, shop fronts, and temple walls. No one along the route had seen anything like it. Most people had never heard of such an animal outside of religious paintings and Chinese texts.

On May 25, 1729, the elephant entered Edo — the city that was the largest in the world at the time, home to perhaps a million people. Every street along the route was lined with onlookers. The animal walked among wooden buildings and tile roofs, past merchants' shops and samurai residences, accompanied by its escort and preceded by runners clearing the road. It was, to the people watching, a visitation from elsewhere — from the tropics, from the world of scrolls and legend, suddenly made solid and real and inconveniently large.

The elephant was stabled at Yoshimune's falconry grounds on the edge of the bay — the grounds that are today the 浜離宮恩賜庭園 (Hama Rikyu Onshi Teien, Hama Rikyu Gardens), still open to visitors in central Tokyo. Two days later, on May 27, the animal would enter Edo Castle through the 桜田門 (Sakurada-mon) gate for a formal audience with the shogun himself. But on May 25, the city simply took in the fact of its arrival — enormous, gray, and utterly unlike anything Japan had seen before.