A Daughter of the Samurai · Chapter
XIII: Foreigners explained
Etsu-bo moves to Tokyo to attend a mission school for girls, living first with relatives and then with Major Sato and his kind wife.
What happens
Etsu-bo moves to Tokyo to attend a mission school for girls, living first with relatives and then with Major Sato and his kind wife. She walks five miles to school daily, admires her foreign teachers, and struggles with cultural adjustments, including her provincial dress and the absence of a family shrine. Mrs. Sato helps her find solace in a nearby nun's hut, where she can honor her father's death-day.
Themes in this chapter
Cultural Transition and Identity
Etsu-bo navigates between traditional Japanese values and Western influences at school.
Tradition vs. Modernity
The conflict between old customs (family shrine, formal etiquette) and new ways (mission school, foreign teachers).
Education and Enlightenment
Etsu-bo's practical education at the mission school broadens her worldview.
Loss and Memory
Etsu-bo's grief over missing her father's memorial service and her solution to honor him.
Characters to notice
- Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto
Attends mission school in Tokyo, struggles with cultural transition and homesickness.
- Brother
Arranges for Etsu-bo's practical education and criticizes her countrified dress.
- Major Sato
Father's old friend who suggests the mission school and becomes Etsu-bo's guardian.
- Mrs. Sato
Kind, gentle lady who treats Etsu-bo as her own daughter and helps her with cultural and spiritual troubles.
- Father
His death-name is kept by Etsu-bo; monthly memorial services are held in his honor.
- Honourable Grandmother
Remembered fondly for family shrine services at home.
- Ishi
Recalled dressing young Etsu-bo in foreign clothes brought by Father.
- Toshi
Made a sash for Etsu-bo from imported cloth, which later proved unfashionable.
Key passages
“Brother said that I was receiving the same useless training that had been given him, and, since I was to live in America, I must have a more practical education.”
Brother argued that my education was as impractical as his had been, and insisted I needed a more useful one for America.
Brother's pragmatic view on education for Etsu-bo's future in America.
“It was a five-mile walk to school from the Sato house. In very bad weather I was sent in Mrs. Sato's jinrikisha, but, true to my dear priest-teacher's training, I felt that it was almost a disgrace to consider bodily comfort when on the road to learning, so I usually walked.”
The school was five miles away; though offered a rickshaw in bad weather, Etsu-bo usually walked, believing comfort was shameful on the path to learning.
Etsu-bo's dedication to learning, influenced by her priest-teacher's teachings.
“I had already grown suspicious of the glances which my schoolmates had been casting at the sash that Toshi had so painstakingly made me of a piece of newly imported cloth called a-ra-pac-ca, so I was glad to accept the garments which Brother brought the next day.”
Noticing her classmates' looks at her homemade sash of imported alpaca cloth, Etsu-bo welcomed the new clothes Brother provided.
Etsu-bo's awareness of fashion and social pressure at school.
“But in spite of my steadily increasing contentment there was one thing that was a constant ache to me. Neither at school nor near the Sato home was there a shrine.”
Despite growing happiness, Etsu-bo deeply missed having a family shrine for ancestor veneration.
Etsu-bo's spiritual homesickness in the new environment.
“I bowed my head, and in the darkness homesick tears came to my eyes.”
Overcome with emotion, Etsu-bo wept quietly in the dark.
Etsu-bo's emotional response to finding a Buddhist nun's hut.
