"So I drifted on from week to week, occasionally having to remind myself that, even in America, the 'eyelids of a samurai know not moisture'..."

First published in 1925, A Daughter of the Samurai is a delicate memoir of the author's childhood growing up in feudal Japan, and later life in America. Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's clear and elegant prose paints a picture of two very different worlds, and a woman's role in each.

Following the collapse of the samurai in the late 1800s, young Etsu and her family are faced with financial difficulties. After her brother runs away to America to escape an arranged marriage, the burden of family expectation falls to Etsu. From her early years in the snowy and forbidding mountains of her childhood home, to immigration to America, Sugimoto explores the differences and similarities of both cultures through stories told to her two daughters.

Kobo Editions offers this fully-accessible version of the original text for your enjoyment.