The sad story of the man who survived the Titanic tragedy: Condemned by the whole country, died in humiliation

To this day, the sinking of the Titanic remains the most intriguing event in the history of maritime disasters. But what continues to keep people talking even more are the colorful stories of the survivors, including sad ones like that of Masabumi Hosono .

Before the Titanic set sail, Mr. Hosono was working in Russia as a deputy councilor of the Railways Division of the Japanese Transport Ministry, the Japan Times reported.

Masabumi Hosono.

On his return journey, Hosono, then 42, chose to board the Titanic in Southampton, England, rather than make the trip across Russia. He was the only Japanese passenger on board and had a second-class ticket.

On the cold evening of April 14, 1912, the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic suffered a fatal accident when the ship struck an iceberg.

Hosono's disaster diary was made public by his family in 1997. According to his account, he was awakened by a knock on his cabin door. However, because Hosono was a foreigner, he was taken to a lower deck, away from the lifeboats.

While waiting for his fateful moment, a chance to survive appeared to him when an officer preparing the lifeboat said there were two empty seats. A man seized the opportunity and stepped forward. Hosono hesitated at first.

"I myself was plunged into despair at the thought of not being able to see my beloved wife and children again because I had no other choice but to share the same fate as the Titanic," Hosono wrote in a letter to his wife in the days after the disaster. "But the first man to jump in urged me to seize this last chance."

Titanic survivors after being rescued.

So he decided to take a chance, jumped into a lifeboat and saved himself. He was among 700 people who survived the disaster, while 1,500 others died.

Unlike Violet Jessop, a stewardess who survived the sinking, or the "unsinkable" Molly Brown, Hosono received a cold welcome in her own homeland.

He faced harsh criticism from the Japanese press at the time, which denounced the surviving men as cowards and praised the bravery of the dead. According to Metropolis Japan, he felt ashamed for not adhering to the principle of "women and children come first" and avoided an honorable death by going down with the ship. As a result, Hosono suffered what the Japanese call mura hachibu, or social ostracism.

He lost his job in 1914, according to the AP. Although he was hired as a part-time worker, the stigma followed him for the rest of his life. Hosono lived in quiet shame until his death of natural causes in 1939. Even after his death, mention of the Titanic disaster remained taboo in his family.

According to The Brantford Expositor, the wave of scorn surrounding Hosono's survival lasted into the 1990s, further fueled by negative publicity from the Japanese media following the release of James Cameron's Titanic.

In 1997, the AP reported that he may have been mistaken for an Asian man on another lifeboat. In fact, Hosono actually helped row the lifeboat away from the sinking ship, saving other passengers.

Matt Taylor, an American researcher and Titanic scholar who investigated Hosono's writings, told the AP that the discovery had "effectively restored his honor and reputation ." Indeed, the revelations have garnered much public sympathy for Hosono.

Written aboard the Titanic rescue ship, Hosono's account is considered to this day to be one of the most detailed accounts of what happened aboard the ill-fated ship amid the panic.