A daughter of the Samurai

Japan is often called by foreign people a land of sunshine and cherry blossoms. This is because tourists generally visit only the eastern and southern parts of the country, wher...

One day the servants returned from temple service talking excitedly about a fire at Kyoto which had destroyed the great Hongwanji. As this was the prince temple of Shin, the sec...

We did not have kindergartens when I was a child, but long before the time when I could have been admitted to the new "after-the-sixth-birthday" school, I had acquired a goodly...

I was about eight years old when I had my first taste of meat. For twelve centuries, following the introduction of the Buddhist religion, which forbids the killing of animals, t...

The day before Nagaoka's last "Castle Sinking Celebration," Kin took me to walk along the edge of the old castle moat. Years before, part of it had been levelled up, and was now...

Ours was a lonely house the winter after Father's death. The first forty-nine days when "the soul hovers near the eaves" was not sad to me, for the constantly burning candles an...

The pleasant days of New Year barely lasted through the holidays. We usually left the _mochi_ cakes on the _tokonoma_ until the fifteenth, but it was everywhere the custom to re...

My brother's coming introduced an entirely new and exciting element into our home. This was the letters which he occasionally received from friends in America. The letters were...

On the first day of Ura Bon, when I was twelve years old, Ishi brought a new ornament for my hair and placed it just in front of my big, stand-up bow-knot. It was a silver shiel...

Brother had been at home a year when the letters from his friend in America began coming more frequently. After each one Grandmother, Brother, and Mother would have long talks,...

That was one of the long Nagaoka winters. For five months we saw only snow. In the early spring our relatives in Tokyo had written that arrangements had been made for my school....

The large, well-cared-for house in which we had taken refuge that stormy night was crowded full of busy workers. With the exception of the living rooms of our host, his wife, an...

My Tokyo relatives had arranged for me to live with them and attend a celebrated school for girls, where English was taught by a man who had studied in England. This I did for s...

Our time in school was supposed to be equally divided between Japanese and English, but since I had been already carefully drilled in Japanese studies, I was able to put my best...

In my Nagaoka home, notwithstanding the love and care that surrounded me, my mind was always filled with unanswered questions. My education as a priestess had developed my mind,...

Another happy year I spent in school. Then I returned to Nagaoka, realizing, myself, how little I knew, but in the eyes of my friends, an educated woman. This was an unenviable...

My first year in America was a puzzling, hurried push from one partially comprehended thought to another. Nevertheless it was a happy year. No Japanese bride is ever homesick. S...

We had a large stone church in our suburb which was not quite paid for, and a society of church-women called "The Ladies' Aid" occasionally gave a fair or concert and sometimes...

At the broad corner where our front and side porches joined was where my hammock swung. It was shaded by a big apple tree, and I used to put in a big cushion and sit Japanese fa...

When I came to America I expected to learn many things, but I had no thought that I was going to learn anything about Japan. Yet our neighbours, by their questions and remarks,...

As the weeks and the months had drifted by, unconsciously in my mind the present had been linking itself more and more closely with the past; for I had been learning more clearl...

For months after the baby came my entire life centred around that one small bit of humanity. Wherever I went, and no matter who came to see me, the conversation was sure to drif...

After Hanano had learned that the moon was a friend she could depend upon wherever she might travel, she became intensely interested in moon stories. I postponed telling her the...

When the weary sight of tumbling and tossing waves was past and I was once again in Japan, I found myself in the midst of surroundings almost as strange as those I had met when...

A few weeks later the children and I, with capable little Sudzu in the kitchen, were settled in a pretty home in Tokyo. The arrangement with Matsuo's family was that some one of...

My finding a suitable school for Chiyo almost at once was a piece of good fortune. Not far from our house there lived a gifted educator who was interested in modern methods of t...

happily sang Chiyo as her little foot mittens came pattering over the white mats, following me as I went through the rooms giving touches here and there to complete arrangements...

That summer Mother was far from well. Lately her occasional attacks of asthma had become more frequent and trying. Thinking that a visit from my elder sister, who had always liv...

One afternoon Sister and I were sewing in my room when Hanano came in. It was warm weather and the paper doors had been lifted off so that the entire fronts of the rooms facing...

When Hanano was fifteen, the family council brought up the subject I had been most dreading. According to Japanese custom, when there are only daughters in a family, a son is ad...

We spent a happy week with Sister in the little silkworm village, and our visit was almost ended when one day she took us into her big godown, where the things brought from Naga...

The night before we sailed my Tokyo uncle called, bringing with him a package of "friendship ribbons" for the children--those frail, dainty, quivery strips that bind the hands o...