Holy Prayers in a Horse's Ear: A Japanese American Memoir

Explanatory Notes

explanatory notes Chapter One 1. Founded in 1869, the first residential college for women at Cambridge University. 2. A famous grain and soap manufacturer of the early twentieth century. 3. Painting c. 1512 by the Renaissance artist Raphael. 4. William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898),English Liberal leader and prime minister. 5. Born Mary Katherine Carr (1837?—1915), wife of Vere Henry, Lord Hobart, governor of Madras (1872–1875). 6. Although the Catholic Church celebrated a jubilee year in 1875, Leo XIII did not become pope until 1879, so presumably a reference to 1887, the fiftieth anniversary of Leo’s ordination. 7. Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924), Anglo-American author of sentimental children’s books such as Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden. 8. John Ruskin (1819–1900),Victorian art critic and social theorist. 9. Combination of amah (Chinese word adapted by British colonials for a female servant assigned to clean and take care of the master’s children) and san (suffix added to Japanese names to demonstrate respect). 10. Adelina Patti (1843–1919), celebrated nineteenth-century operatic prima donna. 11. Statue of Abraham Lincoln by August Saint-Gaudens, unveiled in Chicago’s Lincoln Park in 1887. 12. General Charles George Gordon (1843–1885), British army officer renowned for campaigns in China and the Sudan. 13. Nashotah House: Episcopal seminary founded in Wisconsin in 1842 as a mission to the American frontier. 14. The so-called redshirts, the international battalion of volunteers who fought in the military campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) to liberate Italy. 15. The assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln,April 14, 1865. Chapter Two 1. The Life and OpinionsofTristramShandy,GentlemanbyLaurenceSterne,eighteenthcentury novel renowned for its digressions and subversion of chronology. 2. That is, Nova Scotia to Florida, the entire one thousand miles or so of the Eastern Seaboard. 173 3. Leading silk importer and clothing firm of the early twentieth century. 4. Progressive children’s educational system designed by Maria Montessori (1870–1952). 5. Gloria Swanson (1899–1983),American silent film actress famous for her romantic parts and exotic wardrobe. 6. Pierre Loti (1850–1923), pen name of Louis Marie Julien Viaud, a French naval officer who served in West Asian and East Asian waters. Novelist and travel writer, whose writing was marked by orientalist fantasy. 7. Something that does not seem serious, but which gives the impression of something to laugh at. 8. The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, celebrating (slightly late) the five hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Set in more than six hundred acres, it attracted 21 million visitors. 9. John Dewey (1859–1952), American philosopher and educational reformer who championed progressive education and supported the founding of experimental schools. This school was presumably the Laboratory School, founded at the University of Chicago in 1896. Reflecting progressive educational philosophy, it featured child-centered education over rote memorization. 10. Japanese proverb denoting beginnings. 11. Nature of being oriental, not to be confused with the contemporary sense developed by Edward Said and others of Western fetishization and stigmatization of difference. Chapter Three 1. Bertha Lum (1869–1954), American artist who learned the art of block printing on a honeymoon voyage to Japan and helped develop printmaking in America. 2. Rickshaw: two-wheeled Chinese carriage pulled by a bearer; coolie: an old term, today generally considered derogatory, to describe a Chinese or other Asian laborer, especially contract laborer. 3. Anglo-Indian word denoting the street adjacent to the waterfront in Yokohama, named for its more famous counterpart in Shanghai. 4. Sampan: small flat-bottomed Chinese or other Asian boat; junk: classic Chinese sailing ship. 5. A thin silk fabric. 6. Pejorative word for foreigner, with connotations of “barbarian”or“devil.” 7. Decorated inlaid wood. 8. Paper walls. 9. Historic city and tourist center in central Japan. 174 • explanatory notes 10. Antislavery novel (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe in which the runaway slave Eliza guides herself North to freedom by using the North Star. 11. Enoshima is a small island, part of the city of Fujisawa, famous for its shrines. In 1880 the Meiji government sold much of the land to a British merchant, Samuel Cocking,and his Japanese wife,Miyata,who built botanical gardens.The statue of Buddha is in Kamakura. It is nearly forty feet tall, and dates from 1252. Chapter Four 1. That is, the village, now the city of Tamagawa, in Ehime prefecture, home of Tamagawa...