Bibliograph

A daughter of the samurai, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Type

Label

A daughter of the samurai, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

A daughter of the samurai

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Summary

A Daughter of the Samurai offers an elegant account of a world that had all but vanished by the time Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto put pen to paper. In her beguiling memoir, Sugimoto chronicles her childhood in the frozen Nagaoka region of Japan, where she grows up in a high-ranking samurai family in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration that stripped the samurai class of many of its privileges. Although originally destined to be a Buddhist priestess, at the age of twelve she becomes engaged by family arrangement to a Japanese merchant in Cincinnati, Ohio. To prepare for her new life in the United States Etsu attends a Methodist school in Tokyo where she studies English. In 1898, she boards a ship and leaves the only land she has ever known. An emissary of her native culture even while she is fascinated by American customs, Sugimoto keenly observes the two worlds she inhabits. Sugimoto's profound, poignant, and sometimes wry perceptions continue to resonate with authenticity and insight to this day

Target audience

adult

Classification