A Daughter of the Samurai
Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, 1925
A samurai's daughter is raised for one world — brushwork, bowing, an arranged marriage — then sent to Cincinnati. A memoir of translating yourself, line by line.
Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
1873–1950
She crossed the Pacific in 1898 as the arranged bride of a Cincinnati merchant, and wrote this memoir in English nearly thirty years later.
Feels like memory and wonder.
A mother unpicks generations of needlework so her daughter can pass unnoticed.
All that winter the household was busy getting me ready for school. The pathos of these preparations I did not realize; nor, I think, did any of us. Mother spent evening after evening bending her stately head over wonderful embroidered garments, ripping out, stitch by stitch, the exquisite work of hands folded in rest generations ago. Then Ishi would dye the silk and make it into plain garments suitable for my school life. Books by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
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