A Crystal Seal

Namiko Golden was born in Japan in 1940, just as Japan was plunging into World War II. She grew up in northern Japan, where she experienced firsthand the difficult period of recovery from the war.

For one year while she was in high school and two in graduate school, she studied in the United States, which provided her with an immersion experience in the English language and North American culture. She immigrated to Canada when she married at the age of 25 and lived there for 34 years. She has two children, who both reside in Canada. Her second marriage brought her to the United States, where she now lives in Ohio.

Namiko Golden joined a seniors' writing group in Canal Fulton, Ohio, in 2002. 

In the six years since 2002, Golden has accumulated close to 150 articles, and she decided to share them with others. As the writing format required, each article stands on its own, but various episodes are arranged in chronological order so the reader can have some sense of the environment the author grew up and lived in. The book also includes many essays and some short stories the author has written. Those are placed in the order as they were written.


A Crystal Seal:

Japanese people use seals in place of signatures when filling out any kind of formal document. Each family, therefore, has a seal bearing the family name, and some seals are even registered to prove their authenticity. When the author was born, her parents had a seal made of crystal to celebrate her birth. The seal bore her first name, Namiko. A seal bearing a person's first name is never used for official purposes in Japan, and in that sense, this seal was unique. As the author states in her article, a crystal seal bearing her personal name was an extravagant, very impractical, and wholly wonderful gesture her parents made for her coming into the world. It was a gift that left a lasting memory.