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The Rare Japanese Edition of The American Diary of a Japanese Girl

[NOGUCHI, YONE].

Höbun Nihon Shöjo no Beikoku Nikki [The American Diary of a Japanese Girl].

Place and Imprint: [Tokyo, 1905].
Edition: First edition translated into Japanese.
Condition: Edges and boards a little worn and soiled; minor toning to text, small abrasion in gutter of front hinge; a good copy.
Book ID: 29048

Physical Description

8vo (22 x 15 cm), original green quarter cloth, decorated tan pebbled cloth boards, red lettering in Japanese script on the upper board. Color frontispiece of a Japanese woman in a kimono. [8],271,6,[10]pp. Text entirely in Japanese.

Comments

An unusual novel by Yone Noguchi, the prolific cross-cultural Japanese author who was the first native Japanese to write and publish poetry and fiction in English. Noguchi (1875-1947) moved to San Francisco as a precocious teenager, where he first worked for a newspaper and as a domestic servant. He was a quick leaner, and his literary talents impressed and attracted him to many in the fin de siècle San Francisco literary scene. Within a few years he was writing and publishing poetry in English for local periodicals, including The Lark, and his first book of poetry was published in 1897 by Gelett Burgess and Porter Garnett. Noguchi traveled widely in California, Chicago, and he eventually settled for a few years in New York. In 1901 the novel The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, written under the pseudonym Miss Morning Glory, was serialized in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, with illustrations by Genjiro Yeto. The first book edition was published the following year by Frederick A. Stokes. Noguchi returned to Japan in 1904 and arranged for the publication of this first edition in Japanese. ¶ The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is about a precocious Japanese teenager who accompanies her uncle to San Francisco, and as she travels around the States she fills her diary with satirical and comic observations about American life and culture. She befriends poets in the Bay Area – one of the characters is obviously based on Joaquin Miller – and thinks about becoming a novelist or poet herself. She writes about the influence of money on American tastes and habits, and specifically comments on Longfellow (the “large fatherly poet”), Whitman, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, et al. The story is obviously autobiographical, and Noguchi hid his authorship behind the veil of the young girl Miss Morning Glory so as not to offend the many Americans who had befriended him and who he was now making fun of. Noguchi wrote a sequel, The American Letters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid, but Stokes declined it, and it was only published in Japan (in both English and Japanese). The Stokes American edition of this title is fairly common, but this Japanese edition is rare. Small round Japanese ownership stamp on each free endpaper.

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