A Japanese Boy by Shigemi Shiukichi

Description

Shigemi Shiukichi was a youth when he wrote this book, and he wrote it in another man’s language, for readers in another world. What results is a rare double portrait: a boy’s memory of old Japan and a young Japanese man’s chosen way of introducing that world to the outside. He recalls the reverence due an eldest son, the samurai house in the country, the noisy intimacies of school life, and the first wobbling steps of a country that had only just begun to remake itself.

The charm of the book is its honesty. Shiukichi neither romanticizes the old Japan he describes nor apologizes for it; he simply brings it close — the festivals and punishments, the family jokes and the formal duties, the quiet domestic life of a household that measured its days by ritual. Told in clear, unpretentious prose, it is as good an introduction to nineteenth-century Japan as any novel.

Why readers still come back to it

• The first Japanese autobiography written in English for Western readers.
• A boy’s-eye view of samurai family life in Meiji-era Japan.
• Short chapters that read like a collection of vivid family scenes.

About this DodaBooks edition

This edition gives you the complete text with clean, professional typesetting, a working table of contents, and careful chapter navigation — designed for comfortable reading on phones, tablets, and e-readers. Instant download after purchase.