A Daughter of the Samurai

Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

A Daughter of the Samurai tells the true story of a samurai's daughter, brought up in the strict traditions of feudal Japan, who was sent to America to meet her future husband. An engrossing, haunting tale that gives us insight into an almost forgotten age.Madam Sugimoto was born in Japan, not in the sunny southern part of the country which has given it the name of "The Land of Flowers," but in the northern province of Echigo which is bleak and cold and so cut off from the rest of the country by mountains that in times past it had been considered fit only for political prisoners or exiles.Her father was a Samurai, with high ideals of what was expected of a Samurai's family. His hopes were concentrated in his son until the son refused to marry the girl for whom he was destined and ran off to America. After that all that was meant for him fell to the lot of the little wavy-haired Etsu who writes here so delightfully of the things that happened in their childhood days in far-away Japan.

Table of contents

• Titlepage
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgment to Nancy Virginia Austen
• Introduction
• I: Winters in Echigo
• II: Curly Hair
• III: Days of Kan
• IV: The Old and the New
• V: Falling Leaves
• VI: A Sunny New Year
• VII: The Wedding That Never Was
• VIII: Two Ventures
• IX: The Story of a Marionette
• X: The Day of the Bird
• XI: My First Journey
• XII: Travel Education
• XIII: Foreigners
• XIV: Lessons
• XV: How I Became a Christian
• XVI: Sailing Unknown Seas
• XVII: First Impressions
• XVIII: Strange Customs
• XIX: Thinking
• XX: Neighbours
• XXI: New Experiences
• XXII: Flower in a Strange Land
• XXIII: Chiyo
• XXIV: In Japan Again
• XXV: Our Tokyo Home
• XXVI: Tragic Trifles
• XXVII: Honourable Grandmother
• XXVIII: Sister’s Visit
• XXIX: A Lady of Old Japan
• XXX: The White Cow
• XXXI: Worthless Treasures
• XXXII: The Black Ships