A young Japanese woman leaves the only home she’s ever known for married life in nineteenth-century Ohio in this delightful, charming memoir, a tribute to the struggles of the first generation of Japanese immigrants—with an introduction by Karen Tei Yamashita and Yuki Obayashi\nThe youngest daughter of a high-ranking samurai in late-nineteenth-century Japan, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto is originally destined to be a Buddhist priestess. She grows up a curly haired tomboy in snowy Echigo, certain of her future role in her community. But as a young teenager, she is instead engaged to a Japanese merchant in Ohio—and Etsu realizes she will eventually have to leave the only world she has ever known for the United States.\nEtsu arrives in Cincinnati as a bright-eyed and observant twenty-four-year-old, puzzled by the differences between the two cultures and alive to the contradictions, ironies, and beauties of both. Her memoir, reprinted for the first time in decades, is an unforgettable story of a strong and determined woman.\nThe Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.

A Daughter of the Samurai: A Memoir (Modern Library Torchbearers)

Biographies & Memoirs

Sugimoto, Etsu Inagaki

Community & Culture

Random House Publishing Group

A Daughter of the Samurai

Historical

Tuttle+publishing

A Daughter of the Samurai (Mint Editions (Voices From API))

Mint Editions

A Daughter of the Samurai (1925) is an autobiography by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto. Born in Japan, she was sent to the United States to fulfill an arranged marriage with a Japanese merchant. Raised in a family whose prominence had fallen toward the end of the feudal era, Sugimoto gained a unique perspective on Japanese life that would shape her literary career and outlook as a professor at New York's Columbia University. "Japan is often called by foreign people a land of sunshine and cherry blossoms. [...] In the province of Echigo, where was my home, winter usually began with a heavy snow which came down fast and steady until only the thick, round ridge-poles of our thatched roofs could be seen." Born and raised in a northern province of Japan, Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto came from a family of high-ranking samurai officials. Originally prepared to live as a priestess, Etsu became the center of her father's attention when her brother eloped and left for America. No longer financially stable, Sugimoto's father depended on his children to secure their family's future. Soon, he arranged for his daughter to marry a successful merchant living in Ohio, sending her to Tokyo to study at a Methodist school. Then, she made the journey across the ocean to start a new life in America. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Setsuko Hirakawa's A Daughter of the Samurai is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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. 
Includes a biographical note on the author’s life and work. 
Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto (1874–1950) was a Japanese American autobiographer and novelist. She started writing about Japan in local Cincinnati newspapers and then in a series of articles for the magazine Asia, later published in book form as A Daughter of Samurai (1925). The book became an international bestseller. Sugimoto went on to publish several other books and eventually moved to New York and taught Japanese language and culture at Columbia University.

A Daughter of the Samurai (Warbler Classics)

Parenting & Relationships

Warbler Classics

"Her life was a bridge from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, from the time-hallowed beauty and rigidity of a samurai household to the disorienting, forward-looking freedoms of the West." --Janice P. Nimura, from the foreword. This is the story of one woman's remarkable life successfully navigating two very different cultures--the first memoir of an Asian-American woman. Beautifully told, this immigrant's account of an unforgettable journey is the story of a headstrong and empowered woman--a loyal wife, a widowed mother and a bilingual breadwinner--finding her way and finding her voice in a strange new world. Follow in her footsteps and trace the remarkable trajectory of her life as she: <ul> <li>Witnesses her father prepare and perform the ritual seppuku and her mother burn down the family home</li> <li>Bids an emotional farewell and sails across the ocean to marry a wealthy merchant in a new land</li> <li>Returns to Tokyo with her two daughters and mother-in-law, only to find her homeland just as alien as America, forcing her to reinvent herself again in order to provide for her family</li> <li>Returns to America with her children following the death of her mother-in-law</li> </ul> An international bestseller when it was first published a century ago, A Daughter of the Samurai emerges as a rare testament to a singular woman's resolve, strength and endurance. This edition features a new foreword by 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist Janice P. Nimura.

A Daughter of the Samurai: Memoir of a Remarkable Asian-American Woman

Come un fiore di ciliegio nel vento (Varia Biografie) (Italian Edition)

GIUNTI

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