Summary of Janice P. Nimura's Daughters of the Samurai

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The girls were taken to meet the Empress of Japan, who was seated behind a bamboo screen. They knelt and placed their hands on the tatami floor, bowing until their foreheads touched their fingertips.

#2 The girls were told that when schools for girls were established, they would be examples to their countrywomen. They had no idea what they were getting into, but they knew they had to obey the empress’s commands.

#3 Sutematsu Yamakawa, the middle child, was born in 1860. She was the last member of her family to live in a samurai family compound. The garden surrounding the compound was the only decorative element missing from the interiors.

#4 The samurai were a hereditary warrior class, and they contributed nothing to the Japanese economy. They administered public life and cultivated the arts of war and of peace. They were loyal to a high code of loyalty and honor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822524194

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Insights on Janice P. Nimura's Daughters of the Samurai

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The girls were taken to meet the Empress of Japan, who was seated behind a bamboo screen. They knelt and placed their hands on the tatami floor, bowing until their foreheads touched their fingertips.

#2

The girls were told that when schools for girls were established, they would be examples to their countrywomen. They had no idea what they were getting into, but they knew they had to obey the empress’s commands.

#3

Sutematsu Yamakawa, the middle child, was born in 1860. She was the last member of her family to live in a samurai family compound. The garden surrounding the compound was the only decorative element missing from the interiors.

#4

The samurai were a hereditary warrior class, and they contributed nothing to the Japanese economy. They administered public life and cultivated the arts of war and of peace. They were loyal to a high code of loyalty and honor.

#5

The system of alternate attendance was a hostage system with an extra twist. It was expensive for daimyo to attend Edo, but it was much harder for them to cause trouble for the shogun when they had no revenue left to spend on making war.

#6

Aizu was a domain in northern Japan, and it was here that Sutematsu was raised. A land of martial prowess, the Aizu code was strict about military conduct and loyalty to the Tokugawa family.

#7

The Nisshinkan schoolboys were members of neighborhood ten-men groups, officially sanctioned gangs who pledged loyalty to each other and hostility to other groups. The boys responded in unison: Those things that are forbidden, we must not do.

#8

The first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, declared Christianity illegal in 1606. The Tokugawa dynasty, which ruled from 1603 to 1867, was preoccupied with preserving the status quo. They expelled the Portuguese and Spanish missionaries who had proselytized in Japan since the 1550s, and drastically curtailed trade with Europe.

#9

The Pax Tokugawa, which had existed in Japan for nearly two hundred