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Sugimoto Etsuko (1873-1950)
Nov. 1st, 2024 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiSugimoto Etsuko was born in 1873 as the sixth daughter of a samurai family in present-day Niigata; her birth name was Inagaki Etsu, with a particularly unusual character for her first name, meaning an axe or scythe used for felling trees. As a child, raised in a strict, old-fashioned household and originally destined to be a Buddhist nun, she read Confucius and studied calligraphy, writing her characters in the snow with tree branches. At thirteen, she was betrothed via an older brother to Sugimoto Matsunosuke (also called Matsuo), a merchant living in the United States whom she had never met. In order to acquire some English, she was sent to Kaigan Girls’ School in Tokyo, where, like her future husband, she became a Christian.
In 1898 Etsuko went to America to marry. At that time her new husband Matsunosuke was running a Japanese antiques business in Cincinnati, where a well-to-do family called the Wilsons, among his customers, made the Sugimotos welcome and taught Etsuko the practical business of keeping house in America, as well as hosting their actual wedding (their Puritan ways appealed to Etsuko’s strict upbringing, and their niece Florence became a lifelong friend and amanuensis to Etsuko).
The Sugimotos lived happily for some time in Ohio, where their daughters Hanano and Chiyono were born. In 1910, however, Matsunosuke’s business failed and Etsuko took her daughters back to Japan; Matsunosuke died of appendicitis before he could join them. To support the family, she worked as an assistant to Yajima Kajiko at the Japanese Christian Women’s Organization and taught English at the Friends School.
Upon her mother’s death in 1917, Etsuko took her daughters back to America, settling in New York and making her living as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines. She also lectured at Columbia University on Japanese and Japanese culture for some seven years; her students were charmed by her personality, including her steadfast resistance ever to wearing Western clothes. In 1925, writing as Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, she published the autobiographical A Daughter of the Samurai, which became a best-seller translated into nine languages. In 1927 she returned to Japan, although she continued to write novels in English which were published in the States. She died in 1950 at the age of seventy-seven.
It seems appropriate to close with a line from her book: “’Miss Helen,’ I said earnestly, ‘although our women are pictured as gentle and meek, and although Japanese men will not contradict it, nevertheless it is true that, beneath all the gentle meekness, Japanese women are like—like—volcanoes.’”
Sources
Nakae
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/etsu-inagaki-sugimoto/a-daughter-of-the-samurai/text/single-page A Daughter of the Samurai online; very very readable. I was especially fascinated by her young daughters’ experiences as Japanese girls in America and as Americanized Japanese girls in Japan.
https://lithub.com/a-daughter-of-the-samurai-on-the-strength-tradition-and-rebellion-of-etsu-inagaki-sugimoto/ Discussion of Etsuko and her book(s) by Karen Tei Yamashita and Yuki Obayashi
In 1898 Etsuko went to America to marry. At that time her new husband Matsunosuke was running a Japanese antiques business in Cincinnati, where a well-to-do family called the Wilsons, among his customers, made the Sugimotos welcome and taught Etsuko the practical business of keeping house in America, as well as hosting their actual wedding (their Puritan ways appealed to Etsuko’s strict upbringing, and their niece Florence became a lifelong friend and amanuensis to Etsuko).
The Sugimotos lived happily for some time in Ohio, where their daughters Hanano and Chiyono were born. In 1910, however, Matsunosuke’s business failed and Etsuko took her daughters back to Japan; Matsunosuke died of appendicitis before he could join them. To support the family, she worked as an assistant to Yajima Kajiko at the Japanese Christian Women’s Organization and taught English at the Friends School.
Upon her mother’s death in 1917, Etsuko took her daughters back to America, settling in New York and making her living as a freelance writer for newspapers and magazines. She also lectured at Columbia University on Japanese and Japanese culture for some seven years; her students were charmed by her personality, including her steadfast resistance ever to wearing Western clothes. In 1925, writing as Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, she published the autobiographical A Daughter of the Samurai, which became a best-seller translated into nine languages. In 1927 she returned to Japan, although she continued to write novels in English which were published in the States. She died in 1950 at the age of seventy-seven.
It seems appropriate to close with a line from her book: “’Miss Helen,’ I said earnestly, ‘although our women are pictured as gentle and meek, and although Japanese men will not contradict it, nevertheless it is true that, beneath all the gentle meekness, Japanese women are like—like—volcanoes.’”
Sources
Nakae
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/etsu-inagaki-sugimoto/a-daughter-of-the-samurai/text/single-page A Daughter of the Samurai online; very very readable. I was especially fascinated by her young daughters’ experiences as Japanese girls in America and as Americanized Japanese girls in Japan.
https://lithub.com/a-daughter-of-the-samurai-on-the-strength-tradition-and-rebellion-of-etsu-inagaki-sugimoto/ Discussion of Etsuko and her book(s) by Karen Tei Yamashita and Yuki Obayashi
