Dembei

Dembei (; ; Dembei, ; ) was a Japanese castaway who, through Vladimir Atlasov, provided Russia with some of its first knowledge of Japan.

==Biography== He was a merchant clerk accompanying a fleet of "thirty transports laden with goods for Edo," which had been caught in a storm; they found their way to Kamchatka and were found by Atlasov in 1701 or 1702. Despite pleading to be brought back to Japan, Dembei and another young Japanese person (who did not survive long) were instead brought to Saint Petersburg, where he told Peter the Great what he could about Japan. He taught some of the Japanese language to a few Russians, making him the father of Japanese language education in Russia. He was baptized as Gabriel and spent the rest of his life in Saint Petersburg.