The American Diary of a Japanese Girl: An Annotated Edition

225 Pages·2007·1.31 MB·English

by  Yone Noguchi

A D
The MERICAN IARY
J G
of a APANESE IRL
With Original Illustrations by
Genjiro Yeto
Yone Noguchi
A D
MERICAN IARY
The
J G
APANESE IRL
of a
AN ANNOTATED EDITION
Edited by
EDWARD MARX AND
LAURA E. FRANEY
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS PHILADELPHIA
TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1601 North Broad Street
Philadelphia PA 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2007 by Temple University Press
All rights reserved
Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of
the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Noguchi, Yone, 1875-1947.
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl / written by Yone Noguchi; edited by Edward Marx and
Laura E. Franey. -- Annotated ed. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59213-554-7 ISBN 10: 1-59213-554-4 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59213-555-4 ISBN 10: 1-59213-555-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
I. Marx, Edward. II. Franey, Laura E., 1971- III. Title.
PR6027.O3A835 2006
895.6'442--dc22
2006020366
Quotations from the letters of Yone Noguchi are published with permission
from the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley
The illustrations are the work of Genjiro Yeto. All except two were published in
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1902.
“One stupid wrinkle would be enough to stun me” and “A tea party in my honor” appeared
in the November 1901 excerpt printed in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly.
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
Introduction by Laura E. Franey vii
Notes to this Edition xxi
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl 1
by Yone Noguchi
Before I Sailed 3
On the Ocean 13
In Amerikey 18
Afterword by Edward Marx 131
Notes to the Introduction 153
Notes to the Text 156
Notes to the Afterword 192
Works Cited 196

Introduction
THE AMERICAN DIARY OF A JAPANESE GIRL is both an en-
tertaining book and one that deserves a special place in the his-
tory of American literature. The fi rst long work of prose fi ction
by a person of Japanese descent in the United States, it counters
the romanticized images of Japan and the infantilization of the Japanese,
promulgated in some of the contemporaneous Orientalist fi ction, and offsets
the even more pernicious depiction of the Japanese as a “yellow peril” in some
of the political discourse and media coverage at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury. To be sure, the book’s peculiar syntax, the sometimes jarring shifts be-
tween episodes, and oddities such as a squirrel’s fi rst-person narrative about
his dead wife might confuse the fi rst-time reader at times, but the complex
and wide-ranging Diary holds rich rewards for the reader willing to delve
deeper into its content and history.1
When selections from The American Diary of a Japanese Girl fi rst appeared
in Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly in late 1901, and when the entire narrative
was published in book form in 1902, the name “Miss Morning Glory” accom-
panied the title. This linking of title and name encouraged readers to assume
that the fi rst-person diarist, Miss Morning Glory, was the author of the text.
Furthermore, most readers inferred that the book’s daily entries concerning a
young Japanese woman’s visit to the United States with her uncle, an 1884
graduate of Yale and present “chief secretary of the Nippon Mining Company”
(9), represented an authentic record. (In the book version, a prefatory letter to
the empress of Japan purportedly written by Miss Morning Glory on her re-
turn to her native land is a device intended further to authenticate the Diary.)
viii Introduction
Some early readers questioned the genuineness of the journal, while others
claimed that the narrative must be authentic because, as a Chicago Journal
reviewer declared, the “words [were] chosen as only a Japanese girl could
choose them.”2
The author behind the “Morning Glory” persona was not a Japanese girl
but a young Japanese man, Yone Noguchi, who had been living in the United
States since the mid-1890s. Born Yonejirō Noguchi in 1875 near Nagoya,
Japan, he had been educated in schools in Nagoya and at Keiō University.
Signifi cantly for Noguchi’s future, this Tokyo institution of higher education,
established in 1858, was a private Western-oriented school whose founder,
Yukichi Fukuzawa, was a keen proponent of Japanese modernization.3
After hearing positive accounts from young Japanese men who had visited
the United States, Noguchi decided to emigrate to this country and arrived in
San Francisco in December 1893 aboard the Belgic (the name he gave to
Morning Glory’s steamship in the American Diary). The young emigrant en-
countered many diffi culties during his fi rst few years in Northern California,
working fi rst for struggling Japanese-language newspapers in San Francisco
and then as a house servant (or “schoolboy,” as young Japanese men who
worked in private domestic service were often called at that time). But after a
brief stint in Palo Alto and a more permanent move in 1895 to a cottage on
the Oakland Hills homestead of legendary California writer Joaquin Miller,
Noguchi began to make a name for himself as a poet.4 His years on Miller’s
seventy-one-acre spread greatly increased both his self-confi dence as a writer
and his familiarity with English and American literature. Though Miller did
not keep books (other than his own writings) on the shelves of his cottages, he
introduced Noguchi not only to the rich poems of Edward FitzGerald’s
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám but also to his circle of writer friends. Noguchi did
some menial work at the Miller household in exchange for his room and
board, but he never seems to have felt exploited, as he did in his “schoolboy”
jobs. Miller always called him “Mr. Noguchi,” a small but signifi cant gesture
of respect and a welcome change from the demeaning “Charley,” “Frank,” or
“John.” These were generic names many white Americans used for the Japa-
nese they employed as servants. They were also names that some of Noguchi’s
own employers had used when addressing him. The stay on the Hights (as
Miller spelled the name of his homestead) also afforded Noguchi an opportu-
nity to participate in the natural world in ways not available to him in the city.
The latter half of the American Diary consists largely of Noguchi’s imaginative
retelling of his experiences with the eccentric Miller and Miller’s mother,
Margaret. Miller appears in the novel as the writer Heine, who provides lodg-
ing, literary advice, and friendship for the young Japanese heroine, Miss
Morning Glory.5
Introduction ix
Writing and Collaboration:
The Creation of The American Diary of a Japanese Girl
In July 1896, a small but infl uential San Francisco magazine, The Lark, pub-
lished a few of Noguchi’s poems; the next year, with the support of his friends
Gelett Burgess and Porter Garnett, Noguchi published two small volumes of
poetry, Seen and Unseen: Or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail andThe Voice of the
Valley. The verse was mostly serious, concerned with nature, beauty, and philo-
sophical refl ection, but in late 1898, Noguchi began a writing project of a
more playful, more immediate, and more satirical nature. Letters between
Noguchi and Blanche Partington, a writer for the San Francisco Call and an
enthusiast of Eastern religions, reveal that from December 1898 to May 1900
Noguchi worked on a series of vignettes and cultural critiques. Temporarily
titled “O’cho San’s diary,” or Miss Butterfl y’s diary, his new project was no
doubt partly inspired by Philadelphia writer John Luther Long’s success in
early 1898 with his story Madame Butterfl y.
Worried that his knowledge of English was insuffi cient for the task he had
set himself, Noguchi gave the entries to Partington for editing as he fi nished
them. Yet Partington’s infl uence extended well beyond changes to Noguchi’s
spelling and idiom. By mid-July 1899, Noguchi was complaining vehemently
in his letters that she was introducing too much romance and too much nov-
elistic plotting into his work.6 He thus seems to have originally envisioned a
series of social observations and believable daily occurrences in the life of a
Japanese newcomer to America, and he wanted the diary entries to remain
close to events he had witnessed. When Partington urged him to write on
topics unfamiliar to him through personal experience, he told her: “You sug-
gested to me to write on three more things, but now I have nothing to say
about [them]. Yes, I have something to say about servants. By and by I will do
it. I never saw any American wedding ceremony, therefore the diffi culty is in
my ignorance.”7 Besides clashing on these matters, Noguchi and Partington
disagreed about the best venue for the Diary’s publication. Whereas Noguchi
envisioned the series of diary entries by his protagonist—whom he was then
calling “Miss Cherryfl ower”—serialized in a daily newspaper, Partington
thought the manuscript should be published in a literary magazine. “‘Miss
Cherryfl ower,’” he wrote to Partington, “is the stuff more suitable to newspa-
per than magazine and it [the newspaper] pays more.”8
When Noguchi left California in late May 1900, hoping to fi nd success as
a poet in the Eastern states, the Diary had not been published, though he was
eager to see it in print. Taking about half the manuscript with him (Partington
either could not fi nd the remainder of the entries or did not wish to return