The American Diary of a Japanese Girl: An Annotated Edition

Notes to this Edition

Notes to This Edition O ur text of The American Diary of a Japanese Girl follows the first edition published by Frederick A. Stokes in 1902 with a few relatively minor corrections: We have capitalized the name “Kikugoro” (77), substituted the date “7th” for “17th” (100), replaced “enshin” with “Enshiu” (135), and added missing quotation marks in several instances. Otherwise, we follow the text of the first edition as closely as possible, including the now slightly archaic English spelling of Japanese words and the somewhat unusual practice of not italicizing them. In our commentary and notes, however, we do make concessions to the practice of italicization and render Japanese words in a more contemporary form, using accented characters for long vowels (i.e., “toō” rather than “toow”), excepting words in common English usage (i.e., “Tokyo” rather than “Tōkyō”). For the sake of uniformity, however, we have retained Noguchi’s preference of reversing Japanese name order according to English usage throughout. Our most significant departure from the original text is the addition of an extensive set of annotations, incorporating glosses of Japanese words and explications of cultural references that may be unfamiliar to many readers.These include not only Noguchi’s references to relatively unfamiliar aspects of Japanese culture but also his allusions to a wide range of literary works and nowforgotten elements of American popular or material culture. These annotations are fairly numerous, and since we have wished to retain the original condition of the text free of note numbers, we simply advise readers to consult the notes periodically or when in doubt. For the convenience of readers interested in the Japanese language, we also provide the Japanese equivalents of words employed by Noguchi and related terms where appropriate. The illustrations follow the format of the 1902 edition with a few changes. The illustration “The guest of honour,” which appeared as the frontispiece in the 1902 edition, is reproduced here as our cover illustration. And we have included two illustrations that originally appeared only in the November 1901 Leslie’s Monthly excerpt: “One stupid wrinkle on my face would be enough to stun me” and “A tea party in my honor.” The border design that appears in yellow throughout the first edition is reproduced on our title page. N o t e s t o T h i s E d i t i o n xxii ...