Yonejiro Noguchi (1875-1947) adopted the pen name of Yone when he left Japan at the age of 19 to make his fortune in the United States. After he had done so, he returned, a published poet and essayist, later to become a respected professor of English at Keio University. While in America, however, he had also cultivated a persona quite different from that of a man of letters.
He became a winsome but madcap daughter of old Japan. One who, like him, had gone abroad to what she in her impudent manner called "Amerikey." Here she kept a diary, in English, one which had a degree of popularity when serialized and later (1902) modestly sold. It is this that Temple University Press has now reissued.
Like Sei Shonagon before her, Miss Morning Glory (Noguchi's name for the heroine he was impersonating) creates a journal that is largely a collection of one-line quips and criticisms. "It is wrong to believe that the beauty of woman is in her face . . . the beauty of Meriken women is in her shape." "No Oriental man is qualified for civilisation, I declare." "It is quite a fashion of modern gents, it appears, to spit on the pavements." "It would be too much of a risk of one's life to stay in Chicago." These pronouncements cover page after page. There is no other indication of character, no plot at all.