Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back
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American education of, 117–18, 135, 138, 147, 227, 228–29, 234
American identity of, 153, 154, 208
on American missionaries in Tokyo, 189–90
American scholarship program and, 230, 234, 235, 247
Anna Hartshorne and, 228, 234, 246–47, 250, 269, 275–76
appeal of West to, 119–20
appearance of, 121, 147, 166–67
appointed to Board of Examiners for English Teaching Certificates, 263
Archer Institute attended by, 138, 147
articles on women’s education written by, 234–35, 247–49
biology studied by, 228
Bryn Mawr attended by, 227, 228–29, 234, 246, 250, 258
at Centennial Exhibition, 123, 124, 179
Charles Lanman and, 91, 117, 118–19, 120–21, 166, 192, 193, 197, 210, 252
on Chinese people, 149–50, 152
Christianity of, 120–21, 153
death of, 276
diabetes of, 273
at emperor’s birthday celebration, 191–92
during empress’s visit to school, 221, 222
in England, 250–52
in first return to Japan, 147, 151, 153, 156, 157, 161, 162, 167, 168, 169–71
at General Federation of Women’s Clubs convention, 249–50, 255
in Georgetown, 104–5, 115–19, 120–21, 147, 148, 166, 188, 189, 191, 194, 197, 205
at Georgetown Collegiate Institute, 117–18
as historical figure, 277
household established by, 266
on Imperial Palace, 218
as indebted to Japan, 167, 187–88, 194, 207, 234
isolation and loneliness of, 189, 240
Ito family and, 192–94, 197
in Ito residence, 196–97, 198, 203
at Iwakura Mission reunion, 264
Iwakura travel preparations of, 57
Japan as viewed by, 153
Japanese communication skills lacked by, 153, 166, 191
Japanese customs/etiquette and, 165, 167, 187, 194, 205
Japanese Girls and Women of, 228–29, 230, 231–32
Japanese identity of, 116, 118, 153, 208, 225, 234
Japanese lessons for, 118, 193, 194
in journey back to western U.S., 147–48, 149
letters written to Lanmans by, 153, 156, 161, 164–65, 167, 170–71, 173–74, 180–82, 187–88, 190–93, 198, 200, 204–5, 207, 208–10, 213, 225–27, 241, 244, 249, 253, 255–57, 262–65, 268, 269
marriage and, 171, 183, 189, 191, 225, 227, 235
Martha Miller and, 117
on Mori assassination, 220
in move closer to Peeresses’ School, 209–10
new millennium and, 257
notes written to Adeline Lanman by, in U.S., 104, 116, 119, 135–36, 149, 151
at nursing charity sale, 200, 201
in ocean voyage home, 151, 152–53, 156–57
as official representative of Japan, 150–51
at Oyamas’ ball, 195–96
at Peeresses’ School, 204–5, 206, 209–12, 220, 221, 222, 225, 226, 227, 234, 240, 241, 247, 249, 256, 260
photographs of, 13, 52–53, 67, 78, 121, 159, 265, 266
poor health of, 273, 275
rank of, 204, 207, 209, 256, 258
recognition for, 191, 255, 256
reeducation of, in being Japanese, 162, 164
resignation of, 258, 259
salary of, 204, 211, 212, 256, 258, 260
samurai status of, 266
school founded by, see Tsuda College
in shared house with Alice, 212–13
Shige and, 115–16, 134, 164, 182, 183, 203–4, 210, 235, 256, 267–68, 273
Shige’s wedding and, 167–68
Shimoda and, 240
smoking and, 232
in stay with Lanmans, 91, 94, 101, 104–5, 116–19, 123, 124, 126, 134–35, 153, 166, 226
strokes of, 275
subsequent American sojourns of, 225, 226, 227–34, 245, 249–50, 253, 272
Sutematsu and, 108, 115–16, 117, 133, 134–35, 138, 179, 182, 183, 189, 193, 198, 203–4, 210, 215, 235, 253, 273, 275
Sutematsu’s wedding and, 182–83
as teacher, 190–91, 193, 194, 196–98, 204, 208, 210, 211–12, 234, 249, 254, 259, 273
Vassar visited by, 135–36
Western-style clothing of, 165, 196
at Women’s Higher Normal School, 249, 256
women’s place as viewed by, 231, 260, 272–73
see also Iwakura Mission, girls of
Tsuda College, 259–61, 265–66, 269, 272, 275, 276–77
enrollment at, 260, 269, 277
first house of, 258–59, 260
funds raised for, 256, 257, 258, 269
goal of, 259
monthly literary gatherings at, 262
progressive pedagogy of, 260
role as counterweight to conservatism of, 269–70
second house of, 261–62, 263
teaching methods at, 261, 262–63
third house of, 269
Ume’s planning of, 247, 257, 258
Tsuda family, 56–57, 117, 119, 120, 165, 170–71
Tsuda rope, 188
Tsugaru Straits, 47
Tsuji, Matsu, 275
Tsukiji, 190
Tsuruga Castle, 19, 35–37
siege of, 36–38, 49, 177, 238
Twain, Mark, 92
Ueda, Tei, 13, 49–50, 52–53, 63, 89, 91, 164, 273–74
return to Japan of, 101, 104, 273
Ueno, 60, 273
Ueno Park, 184
Union Pacific Railroad, 83
United States, 27, 31
centennial of, 121–24
Chinese labor in, 74, 75, 102, 150
Chinese study abroad in, 100, 103, 111, 123
Edo-era visits to, 45–46
Hawaii and, 236
higher education for women in, 128
Japanese females’ travels to, 56–57
Japanese study abroad in, 43, 80, 87–88, 94, 99, 102, 114–15, 118
Japanese trade with, 28, 30, 73
Meiji-era visits to, 43–44, 46–47, 80
music in, 73–74
racial issues in, 92, 102, 150
Sino-Japanese War and, 238, 239
success of men in, 44
women from, 43–44
see also Iwakura Mission
Uriu, Chiyo, 182, 192
Uriu, Sakae, 244
Uriu, Shige, 12, 49, 50, 59–61, 62, 63, 71, 89, 125–26, 157, 181, 202, 206–7, 219, 224, 277
Abbott family and, 114
Alice and, 216
American scholarship program and, 235
appearance of, 121, 136
at Centennial Exhibition, 123, 179
character of, 132
children of, 182, 192, 196, 208, 235, 244, 245, 253, 266, 270–71
Christianity and, 114
in Connecticut, 101, 105, 107, 112–15, 176
death of, 276
English fluency lost by, 166, 271
Gaiyukai club and, 269
gatherings hosted by, 171–72
at Iwakura Mission reunion, 264
Japanese practiced by, 131–32, 163
Lanmans and, 126, 134, 139, 204
marriage of, 164, 168, 196, 225, 244, 266
maternal qualities of, 189
as mother, 182, 192, 196, 203, 266
music studied by, 95, 132
at nursing charity sale, 201
photographs of, 13, 52–53, 67, 78, 121, 159, 265
Pitman girls and, 114
rank of, 204
in return to Japan, 135, 136–37, 138, 139, 168–69
in return to U.S., 271
Russo-Japanese War and, 270
salary of, 169, 175, 248
smoking and, 232
Sotokichi and, 115, 116, 135, 137, 139, 164, 168, 173, 174, 196, 244, 271
Sutematsu and, 107, 108, 112, 116, 131–3
2, 133, 138, 139, 141, 161, 164, 179, 183, 253, 267–68, 271, 273
Takeo and Takashi’s deaths and, 271
as teacher, 168–69, 203, 204, 208, 235, 244, 245, 253, 266
Tsuda College and, 267, 269
Ume and, 115, 164, 182, 183, 203–4, 210, 235, 256, 267–68, 273
Vassar attended by, 129, 131–32, 133, 134, 135–36, 225, 226, 262
in Washington, D.C., 91, 96, 105
wedding of, 167–68
at Women’s Higher Normal School, 253, 254, 266
Uriu, Sotokichi, 171–72, 173, 174, 189, 192, 271
death of, 276
in Japanese navy, 235, 236, 244, 264, 270
poor health of, 203, 276
in return to Japan, 135, 137
Shige’s marriage to, 164, 168, 196
in United States, 114–15, 116, 135
Uriu, Takeo, 203, 244, 270–71
Ushigome, 162
Utah Territory, 82
Van Ingen, Henry, 130
Van Name, Addison, 101, 103
Vassar, Matthew, 128, 133–34
Vassar College, 128–34, 135–36, 139–40, 141–42, 146, 163, 173, 175, 225, 226, 239, 262, 271, 293n
Vassar Miscellany, 132, 134, 140, 155
Victoria, Queen of England, 209
Vienna Exposition (1873), 188
Wakamatsu, 19, 23, 49
remote Aizu domain in, 23, 27, 31, 50
siege at, 36–38, 48, 49, 105, 238
Tsuruga Castle of, 19, 35–37, 49
Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony, 57
Wakayama, Norikazu, 137
Wakayama, Shiori Louisa, 137–38
Warner, Charles Dudley, 92
warrior honor, 36
Washington, D.C., 46, 82, 88–91, 97, 100, 104, 105, 115–16, 118, 151, 185, 189, 210, 253, 263
blacks in, 92–93, 150
Washington, George, 73
Watanabe, Mitsu, 224, 255, 257–58, 259, 261, 274
Watanabe, Mrs., 212, 213
Weber, Carl Maria von, 276
Wellesley College, 128, 226
Western clothing, 17, 42, 57, 75, 77, 87, 89, 93–94, 97, 104, 123, 165, 168, 185, 196, 197, 213–14, 215–16, 220, 286n
Western military technology, 28, 29, 33, 34, 185
Western Union, 79
whaling, 27
Wheeler, Jessie, 146, 149, 172
Whitman, Walt, 46
Whitney, Clara, 185, 226
Whitney, Marian, 111, 114
Whitney, William Dwight, 111
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 122
women and girls:
attitudes toward, 12, 24, 127, 187, 206, 240, 260, 272–73
college degrees for, 128
Confucianism and, 23, 25, 240, 260
education for, 17, 25, 44, 55–56, 57, 81, 113, 128, 145, 163, 170, 178, 187, 188, 190, 193, 199, 210–11, 231, 234–35, 247–50, 257, 259, 260, 269–70, 271, 272–73
enlightenment of Japan and, 56, 102, 198
marriage and, 167, 171, 172, 179, 248
Meiji-era dress and appearance of, 15–16, 50–51, 70
obedience and, 25, 37, 43, 48
personal grooming for, 17
qualities required of, 25–26
salaries of, 169
as samurai wives, 43
Sino-Japanese War and, 239
smoking by, 232
on stage, 174
studies abroad for, 17, 44, 48, 51, 99, 227, 228–34
as subordinate, 23, 187
suffrage for, 81
weapons used by, 25, 34–35
work and, 248
see also Iwakura Mission, girls of
women and girls, American, 43–44, 78, 145, 175–76, 249–50
corsets worn by, 286n
higher education for, 128
suffrage for, 81
Women’s Higher Normal School, 163, 175, 178, 225, 235, 247, 249, 253, 254, 256, 257, 310n
Woodward, R. B., 76
Wordsworth, William, 147, 251
World War I, 275
Wyoming Territory, 86
Yale University, 99, 100, 101–2, 105, 111, 112, 129, 145, 171, 253, 274
Yamada, Akiyoshi, 219
Yamakawa, Futaba, 163, 175
Yamakawa, Hiroshi, 36–37, 41, 47, 48–49, 163, 170, 177
as Aizu domain leader in Tonami, 38–39, 48
Yamakawa, Kenjiro, 36, 40, 41, 43, 120, 133, 140, 154, 162, 170, 253, 274
American study abroad of, 43, 44, 48, 99–100
Sutematsu looked after in U.S. by, 99–100, 101, 103–4, 105, 107, 110, 112, 116, 163
Yamakawa, Makoto, 274
Yamakawa, Misao, 133, 163, 200
Yamakawa, Shigekata, 19
Yamakawa, Toi, 35, 37, 48–49, 146, 162, 163
Yamakawa, Tose, 37
Yamakawa compound, 19–20, 35, 155
servants of, 20, 155
Yamakawa family, 48, 155, 162–63, 170, 177, 178
dolls collected by, 26, 34
ferried on American ships, 38
malnutrition of, 39, 40
security and prestige of, 41
Yamakawa, Sutematsu, see Oyama, Sutematsu Yamakawa
Yancy, 38
Yokohama, 50, 56, 59, 70, 156, 161–62, 197, 212, 257, 267, 288n
Yoshida, Kiyonari, 118, 123–24, 179–80
Yoshida, Mrs., 180
Yoshihito, Taisho Emperor of Japan, 218n, 272, 274, 276
Yoshimasu, Ryo, 13, 49–50, 52–53, 59, 63–64, 65, 89, 95, 164, 285n
death of, 208
eye troubles of, 85, 96, 100–101, 164
return to Japan of, 101, 104, 117, 273
Young, Brigham, 84
Yung Wing, 100, 101
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THIS IS THE STORY of three girls who were born in one world and sent, by forces beyond their comprehension, to grow up in an entirely different one. There, like all children, they absorbed the lessons of their surroundings. Though they were, each of them, purebred daughters of the samurai, they became hybrid by nurture. Ten years later, they returned to a homeland grown alien in their absence.
I live in the city where I was born, like my parents and grandparents before me. But my story converges with the one I’m telling. On the first day of college, I met a boy who was born in Japan. His family had left Tokyo for Seattle when he was very small, and announced their decision to return “home” when he was sixteen. For him, home was America. They left, and he stayed.
Two years after our graduation and two months after our wedding, we moved to Tokyo ourselves. In many ways, my sojourn there was easier than my husband’s. As my Japanese improved, I was praised for my accent, my manners, my taste for sea urchin and pickled plums. My face excused me from my failures—I was a foreigner, after all. My husband enjoyed no such immunity. He looked Japanese, he sounded Japanese—why didn’t he act Japanese?
Upon our return to New York three years later, I went to graduate school in East Asian studies and fell into a fascination with Meiji-era Japan, the moment when the Land of the Gods wrenched its gaze from the past and turned toward the shiny idols of Western industrial progress. One day, in the basement stacks of a venerable library, I found a slim green volume titled A Japanese Interior, by Alice Mabel Bacon, a Connecticut schoolteacher. It was a memoir of a year she had spent in Tokyo in the late 1880s, living with “Japanese friends, known long and intimately in America.” This was strange. Nineteenth-century American women didn’t generally have Japanese friends, certainly not ones they had met in America.
Alice came from New Haven, where I had spent my college years; she moved to Tokyo and lived not among foreigners, but in a Japanese household, as I had; she taught at one of Japan’s first schools for girls, founded within a year of the one I attended in New York a century later. She wrote with a candid wit that reminded me of my own teachers, unfussy bluestockings with no patience for pretension. Following where Alice led, I discovered the entwined lives of Sutematsu Yama
kawa Oyama, Alice’s foster sister and the first Japanese woman to earn a bachelor’s degree; Ume Tsuda, whose pioneering women’s English school Sutematsu and Alice helped to launch; and Shige Nagai Uriu, who juggled seven children and a teaching career generations before the phrase “working mother” was coined.
I recognized these women. I knew what it felt like to arrive in Japan with little or no language, to want desperately to fit into a Japanese home, and at the same time to chafe against Japanese attitudes toward women. I had a husband who did not see the world through a Japanese lens, though his parents had never meant to raise an American child. A hundred years before “globalization” and “multiculturalism” became the goals of every corporation and curriculum, three Japanese girls spanned the globe and became fluent in two worlds at once—other to everyone except each other. Their story would not let me go.
Copyright © 2015 by Janice P. Nimura
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