The American Diary of a Japanese Girl by Yone Noguchi

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl by Yone Noguchi

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is the first English-language novel published in the United States by a Japanese writer. Acquired for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly Magazine by editor Ellery Sedgwick in 1901, it appeared in two excerpted installments in November and December of that year with illustrations by Genjiro Yeto. In 1902, it was published in book form by the New York firm of Frederick A. Stokes. Marketed as the authentic diary of an 18-year-old female visitor to the United States named Miss Morning Glory (Asagao), it was in actuality the work of Yone Noguchi, who wrote it with the editorial assistance of Blanche Partington and L onie Gilmour.

The book describes Morning Glory's preparations, activities and observations as she undertakes her transcontinental American journey with her uncle, a wealthy mining executive. Arriving in San Francisco by steamship, they stay briefly at the Palace Hotel before moving to a high-toned boarding house in Nob Hill. Through the American wife of the Japanese consul, Morning Glory befriends Ada, a denizen of Van Ness Avenue with a taste for coon songs, who introduces her to Golden Gate Park and vaudeville and is in turn initiated by Morning Glory in the ways of kimono. Morning Glory briefly takes over proprietorship of a cigar store on the edge of San Francisco Chinatown before moving to the rustic Oakland home of an eccentric local poet named Heine (a character based on Joaquin Miller). After some days there spent developing her literary skills and a romantic interest with local artist Oscar Ellis, and a brief excursion to Los Angeles, she departs with her uncle for Chicago and New York, continuing, along the way, her satirical observations on various aspects of American life and culture. The novel closes with Morning Glory's declared intention to continue her investigations into American life by taking a job as a domestic servant, thus preparing the way for a sequel. (wikipedia.org)

Yone Noguchi (1875-1947), a Japanese poet, novelist, and critic who worked in both English and Japanese, was a poet, novelist, and critic. He was born in Tsushima and studied Thomas Carlyle and Herbert Spencer's writings at Tokyo's Keio University, where he also practiced Zen and composed haiku. He moved to San Francisco in 1893 and started working at a newspaper founded by Japanese exiles. Noguchi blossomed as a poet under the guidance of Joaquin Miller, an Oakland-based writer and outdoorsman. Before arriving to New York via Chicago in 1897, he produced two collections.

His debut novel, The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, was released in 1901. Noguchi, however, grew tired of America and sailed to London, where he released a third collection of poems and met writers such as William Butler Yeats and Thomas Hardy. He returned to New York in 1903, re-energized and ready to continue his career, but left for Japan the following year after his marriage to journalist and schoolteacher Léonie Gilmour, with whom he had a son, ended. As the Russo-Japanese War thrust his country into the international stage, Noguchi rose to prominence as a literary critic for the Japan Times, recommending Western playwrights such as Yeats to study Noh drama.

He was a well-known international lecturer in the second decade of the twentieth century, mostly in Europe and the United Kingdom. Before shifting his attention to Japanese-language verse, Noguchi released Japanese Hokkus, a collection of short poems, in 1920. As Japan approached conflict with the West, Noguchi shifted from leftist politics to the nationalism promoted by his country's authorities, straining his friendship with Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and alienating himself from former colleagues around the world. In the horrific American firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, his home was destroyed; he died only two years later, having reconnected with his son Isamu.