Daughters of the Samurai A Journey from East to West and Back [Paperback]

Beautifully written&In Nimuras deftly interwoven account, the three girls emerge as contrasting types, like Chekhovs 'Three Sisters.'Youd be hard-pressed to find a novelist who is as deft at portraying relationships and inner thoughts&[Nimura] skillfully bridges Japanese and American cultures, using the seemingly small story of three young people to tell a much larger tale of another time.Janice P. Nimura achieves the elusive dream of the historian, producing a work that will engage and satisfy academic and non-specialist audiences alike. The author offers both sets of readers a magnificently and meticulously detailed account of three women whose lives epitomize key features of the changing landscape of late 19th and early 20th century Japan.This remarkable and beautifully written storyoften as riveting as a page-turning novelis both scholarly and accessible to non-specialists.As immersive as any work of fiction, heartwrenching in its depiction of these cultural orphans turned pioneers.Reads like a novel about the meeting of East and West and how it transformed the lives of three extraordinary young women.You wont welcome intrusions while reading this unprecedented, true story . . . memorably illuminating.This is feminism for Japanese women in its infancy, and Janice P. Nimura enhances the reality of the entire experience with this superb historical nonfiction account.At a reform-minded moment, Japan dispatched five young girls to be educated in America. Patiently, vividly, Janice P. Nimura reconstructs their Alice in Wonderland adventure. A beautifully crafted narrative, subtle, polished, and poised.A riveting story of three remarkable girls, caught in the maelstrom of one of the strangest culture clashes in modern history,Nimura brings the girls and their late nineteenth-century exploits to life in a narrative that feels like an international variation on Louisa May Alcotts Nimura paints history in cinematic strokes and brings a forgottelƒC