Samurai and silk : a Japanese and American heritage /

Reischauer comes from such an extraordinarily distinguished and many talented family that when she recounts the achievements of its three most recent generations, she is in fact presenting a history of modern Japan. Her illustrious grandfathers both played decisive roles in helping Japan to achieve its astonishingly swift and successful leap from the feudal Tokugawa era (1603-1868) to the modern Meiji period (1868-1912), one as a samurai turned statesman and the other as a peasant turned entrepreneur. One served the Meiji emperor as both finance minister and premier; the other almost singlehandedly developed Japan's silk trade with the US. Reischauer is especially qualified to interpret Japan to American readers because she has lived in both worlds. Before the war, she attended college in Illinois; after the war she married Harvard Japanologist and Kennedy appointee as ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer. Samurai and Silk is important in content and elegant in style, and is a masterpiece of the bookmaker's art from endpapers to the many photographs taken from the author's personal collection. A treasure that should be widely available in both college and public libraries.-J.H. Boyle, California State University, Chico

Reischauer, wife of a noted Japanese historian and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, tells the story of her two grandfathers: the famous Meiji statesman Matsukata Masayoshi, whose stringent financial policies are credited with steering Japan safely through its first economic crisis, and Arai Rioichiro, who helped develop Japan's silk exports to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their lives, inextricably interwoven with modern Japanese history, are vividly presented, along with fascinating glimpses of the family life of Japan's upper class in this period. The book should be popular with general readers as well as specialists. Evelyn S. Rawski, History Dept., Univ. of Pittsburgh (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A dual biography of her remarkable grandfathers, by the Japanese-born wife of America's former Ambassador to Japan. Both men were born into a feudal, insular society; and both were instrumental in its transformation into a modern industrial nation with far-flung trading ties. Reischauer's paternal grandfather, Prince Matsukata Masayoshi, was born in 1835 into a goshi (rural samurai) family. Although his origins were relatively humble, he so distinguished himself as a member of the feudal warrior class that he was selected to marry into one of the most illustrious of the local samurai families. Some years after Admiral Perry forced Japan to trade with the west, Matsukata became the then-new central government's finance minister. His reforms in the monetary and banking system smoothed the transition from feudalism to a centralized economy. His policies also turned Japan from a debtor nation to one with an increasingly favorable balance of trade. He was twice prime minister but, like other leaders of the time, fell afoul of the Diet, Japan's young and headstrong parliament. Reischauer's father, Shokuma, was the son of one of Matsukata's three concubines. (In his 89 years, the Prince sired 18 children. His wife reared the eight who were born to the concubines as lovingly as though they were her own.) Reischauer's mother, Miyo, was the American-born daughter of one of Japan's foremost international merchant traders, Arai Riochira. He came to New York in 1876, at age 20, as a sales representative for a group of Japanese silk mills. He eventually was one of four founders of Morimuro Arai Company, which became the largest US-based importer of Japanese raw silk. As a prominent member of the Japanese-American community, he entertained many visitors from his homeland, among them Matsukata Shokuma, then attending Yale. In 1912, this led to the arranged marriage of daughter Miyo into the Matsukata family. Her husband and in-laws were tolerant of her non-Japanese ways, even when she enrolled her daughters in Tokyo's American School and later sent them to US colleges. Unfortunately, the author has bitten off more than she--or the reader--can chew. Samurai plots and counterplots cram the book's early pages; later ones are a thicket of detail on the economic, political and social ramifications of Japan's transformation into a politically centralized, industrial nation. A century of Japanese notables parade through the pages, most trailing their life stories and genealogies and as two dimensional as shadow-play figures. This, unfortunately, is also true for Reischauer's depiction of her two grandfathers--who never quite come to life on her pages. In sum: often fascinating, frequently illuminating, but the details, in the end, prove overwhelming. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.