A Daughter of the Samurai

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. This edition of Setsuko Hirakawa’s A Daughter of the Samurai is a classic of Japanese American literature reimagined for modern readers.

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