“Nimura paints history in cinematic strokes and brings a forgotten story to vivid, unforgettable life.” —Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a GeishaIn 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan.Raised in traditional samurai households during the … traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors—Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda—grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits and intellectual brilliance.
The passionate relationships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan—a land grown foreign to them—determined to revolutionize women’s education.
Based on in-depth archival research in Japan and in the United States, including decades of letters from between the three women and their American host families, Daughters of the Samurai is beautifully, cinematically written, a fascinating lens through which to view an extraordinary historical moment.
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The story of five Japanese girls sent to the United States for 10 years to be educated both in schools and in western ways. It is a well-researched non-fiction book that will hold your attention while you follow these girls/young ladies through their time in the US and through the challenges of returning to Japan.
This book is important for Japanese history and women’s history. These were courageous women, to travel to a land they, and the rest of their country knew nothing about in an absolute sense. Their was not TV, no internet, no magazines and no newspapers on America for them. They didn’t even know the language. Their voyage also puts Japan in perspective especially regarding the rest of the 20th century.
A wonderful window into the world of Japan at the turn of the 20th century.
I loved the fact that this was a true story.
I t was hard to get past the terrible racism that our visitors experienced
Well written and very inspirational.
Interesting history
This book is great! It explains how the modern educational system for girls was established in Japan. The fact that the United States educational system played a significant role was certainly a surprise to me. I believe all educators will enjoy this character driven book. It is well researched and well written.
Having spent a number of years in Japan, and married to an American born Japanese, I found this book to be a valuable addition to my knowledge of the country.
History is so fascinating! What a crazy way to be thrust into the world, and then have to revert into their old environment. I don’t think i could have survived so brilliantly!
This book opened up a new place and time about which I had never read. Very interesting and informative.
This is a unique story of young Japanese girls sent to the USA to study at a time when Japanese girls were not usually educated at all. It is also a good glimpse of the struggle of American women for the rights we take for granted today. For those reasons it was worth reading. But I do wish it had been edited better as I felt it would have benefitted from cutting some of the details that frequently cluttered up the narrative.
I thought it was fascinating. I can’t imagine making the journey of these three young girls.
Janice Nimura’s Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back is the non-fiction account of three girls who were chosen by the Japanese government to travel to the United States in 1871 to study for 10 years. They were then to return to Japan, bringing their new cultural knowledge back to a rapidly-westernizing Japan.The girls, Ume, Shige, and Sutematsu, ranged in age from 6-11 when they were plucked from tte bosom of their (recently defeated) samurai families, placed aboard a ship, and sent to America for 10 (and in the cases of Ume and Sutematsu, extended to 11) years.
The women’s families, generally suffering the privations of having been on the losing side of the conflict between the shogun and the emperor, were only too glad of a tangible way to demonstrate their support for the new, governmnet, and also to have one less mouth to feed. So it is that the girls (originally five in number but reduced to three by the premature, health-related return of two girls after less than a year) travel across the sea and then, perhaps even more remarkably to them, by train across the U.S., passing through the still-wild West, en route to the East Coast.
Shige and Sutematsu are placed in host families in Connecticut, while Ume becomes the beloved only daughter of an older, welathy Georgetown couple. There they stay, Ume for 11 years until she graduate from high school, and Shige and Sutematsu until they enroll at Vassar and become the first Japanese women to earn a college degree, ever. And then they return to a home they hardly remember and where, until recently, it was a literal crime to leave – for whatever reason, including storm-induced shipwreck – and attempt to return.
In their absence, the feudal land of their youth had disappeared, replaced by a rapidly modernizing society still uncertain of how it felt about the changes – and the west. Into this environment, the three women must re-assimilate; none of them can read or write Japanese any longer, and Ume can no longer speak it. The oldest of them, Sutematsu, is twenty-two. Choosing wildly differing paths, the young women set out to do their duty and fulfill their debt to the government, slowly, quietly changing the Japanese view of education, and perhaps even women’s place in society, definitively.
Nimura’s work spans the Meiji era, from its bloody dawn, depicted in the early chapters (where life appears exactly as depicted in the hundreds-of-years-earlier Shogun), to its end on the eve of World War I. Briefly, Nimura reaches into the 1920s and the end of the women’s lives. In covering the birth of modern Japan, Nimura focuses on many of the events that set the stage for World War II (I could not help but feel a bit of relief that all died before the build up to the war) – events which are central to the opening of James Bradley’s Flyboys, which follows naturally for anyone interested in Japan’s progression from pro-West to ambivalent-about-the-West to anti-West. It’s certainly no stretch to see Ume, Shige, and Sutematsu as the forbears to Harry Fukuhara and his family.
So enjoyed learning how women of Japan in the mid 1800’s were as dynamic as their counterparts all over the world. Found it amazing that Japan would risk sending 5 girls to the US ,unaccompanied, for a 10 year period in order to educate women of Japan in Western ways when they had served their time. Their bewilderment at what we call daily life ( using eating utensils, sleeping in a bed raised off the floor) was eye opening. Their progression into womanhood was remarkable, considering that they had to relearn their native language upon their return home. A delightful insight into a whole new realm.
An interesting peek into history from womens’ perspective.
History and strong females, a good combination.
Incredibly (overly so) detailed. I felt so bad for the girls/women.
sometimes hard to read/follow
A glimpse into how good intentions so often turn sour and dissolve with a change in the times. Also, I have a weakness for anything Japanese, especially during the post-Shogunate period 1868-1941. You can really see how the mindset developed that led to Pearl Harbor, and a lot of it sounds alarmingly contemporary.
Very interesting read. Very well researched, but the narrative kept moving and did not get bogged down in details.
If you ever wondered about the lives of Japanese women as Western Society forced its way into their world, this book is excellent – the research, writing and detail are so satisfying and fascinating.
Having lived in Japan twice and visited our friends there afterwards, we have a somewhat better understanding of Japanese culture, history, and education than most. So this book was a delight to read — I thought the story of the 3 young women who stayed in the U.S. in the 1870’s for 10 years for education was fascinating — I had never known about this Meiji Restoration government “experiment.” I could feel their frustration when going back to Japan — a very closed society trying to open up to Western ideas yet with very conventional, conservative, and strict rules and etiquette where “the raised nail gets pounded down” (per our friends — and this is 2017!). What they accomplished in their own ways considering their “hybridness” of an American education and going back to Japan and trying to fit in when they had been gone for so long during their formative years — just amazing. The author reinforced certain history I already knew, but I loved learning so many new historical facts in the context of these women’s worlds. If you have any interest in Japanese history and women’s education, this is definitely a great book to read. It is well written and not boring — I finished it a week.