A Daughter of the Samurai

A young Japanese woman leaves the only home she’s ever known for married life in nineteenth-century Ohio inthis 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

The 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.

Etsu 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, isanunforgettable story of a strong and determined woman.

The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.