Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back by Janice P. Nimura Read Free Book Online Page A

challenges of a foreign classroom at least as honorably as she had faced the struggles of the previous three years. At the very least, her departure would mean one less sister to support. And who knew? If she managed to return someday, accustomed to American ways and speaking fluent English, perhaps she could contribute somehow to Japan’s modernization—and to the rehabilitation of her family’s good name.
    In October of 1871 Hiroshi traveled to Hakodate to inform his sister that she would be leaving immediately for Tokyo. There she would board a ship for America, where she would study at government expense for a decade. Sutematsu had no way to comprehend his words. He might as well have told her she was moving to the moon. But her Aizu training left no room for disobedience. She packed to leave without question.
    On her way south to Tokyo, she stopped in Tonami to bid her mother farewell. Toi was horrified by the decision to send her daughter away, butHiroshi was the head of their household, and his decision was final. When they parted, Toi bestowed a new name on her youngest child—a common practice among the literate classes to mark a new life phase. From now on, the erstwhile Sakiko would be called Sutematsu, an odd name to the Japanese ear, written with the characters for “discard” and “pine tree” :The second character contained an echo of the Matsudaira family, lords of Aizu, and of Wakamatsu, seat of the domain, to signify her origins; the first could be read as bitter acknowledgment that such a proud lineage had come to an end. It was time to let go of the past. But matsu (“pine” ) is also a homonym for the verb “to wait.” A girl cast to the winds, then—sacrificed to circumstance, yet noble and enduring like the pine. Her mother would await her return.
    A GIRL OF eleven, under normal circumstances, is betwixt and between: too big for dolls and playing house, eager to be entrusted with “real” responsibilities, yet not quite wise enough to make out the road ahead. But Sutematsu had already seen more horror than most adults: the heaps of bodies left unburied during the siege of Tsuruga Castle, the dying agony of her sister-in-law, the slower deaths from hunger and cold in Tonami, the separation from her family in Hakodate. The festival dolls arranged on their red-draped tiers each spring in Aizu were but a hazy memory of a life that now seemed to have belonged to someone else. Her home no longer existed, her mother had bid her a final farewell, and now she would leave Japan itself behind, along with the only language she could speak. Hiroshi hurried her to Tokyo, where officials from the Hokkaido Colonization Board and the Ministry of Education were waiting—along with four other girls, looking every bit as bewildered as Sutematsu felt.
    Two of them were already young women: Ryo Yoshimasu and Tei Ueda, both fourteen years old. The other two, Sutematsu was relieved to note, were younger, even smaller than she was. Shige Nagai, stocky and round-faced with laughing eyes, was ten. Ume Tsuda, exquisitely pretty, was only six. Ryo and Tei instinctively took Sutematsu under theirwing—she had come from so far away, and had no one to help her in Tokyo—while Sutematsu, always the littlest sister, suddenly acquired two littler ones in Shige and Ume.
    After so much loss, here was a new family of sorts. All five were samurai daughters, all five from families on the losing side of the recent upheaval. These were the chosen girls, if chosen they were, as there exists no record of any others having applied. Life accelerated quickly. The girls’ recruitment having been a hasty afterthought, their departure with the Iwakura Mission was already upon them.
    W HETHER IN REMOTE Aizu or bustling Tokyo, a samurai girl’s life had always been lived largely within her family compound’s walls. Now every day seemed to consist of dashing from place to place. Hitherto, people moved about on foot, or else rode in a