Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2015
336 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan.
Raised in traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors - Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda - grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits and intellectual brilliance.
The passionate relationships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan - a land grown foreign to them - determined to revolutionize women's education.
Based on in-depth archival research in Japan and in the United States, including decades of letters from between the three women and their American host families, Daughters of the Samurai is beautifully, cinematically written, a fascinating lens through which to view an extraordinary historical moment.
"Starred Review. Nimura produces a story of real-life heroines in this masterful biography." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Nimura brings the girls and their late nineteenth-century exploits to life in a narrative that feels like an international variation on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, so very appealing and delightful." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Exquisite… a captivating read for biography lovers." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. [A] fascinating tapestry of history and biography… [A]n extraordinary, elegantly told story." - Kirkus
"Daughters of the Samurai reads like a novel that happens to be true: three girls uprooted by fate, bridging the gulf between the elegant rhythms of Old Japan and the exhilarating opportunities of America." - Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
"Surprising and richly satisfying…In Nimura's skillful telling, Sutematsu, Shige, and Ume become ambassadors once again, bringing to life an era from which we can learn important lessons about intercultural understanding, conflict, and compromise, still vital to our survival in the global twenty-first century." - Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters and Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Biography
"A beautifully crafted narrative, subtle, polished, and poised." - Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cleopatra
"A riveting story of three remarkable girls, caught in the maelstrom of one of the strangest culture clashes in modern history, Daughters of the Samurai is history writing at its finest and required reading for anyone interested in Japan." - Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
This information about Daughters of the Samurai was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Janice P. Nimura is a book critic, independent scholar, and the American daughter-in-law of a Japanese family. She lives in New York City.
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