A Daughter of the Samurai

Etsuko Inagaki Sugimoto (1872-1950) was born in Nagaoka, Echigo Province, the daughter of a high-ranking advisor to a powerful territorial lord, a few years after the Meiji Restoration ended Japan’s feudal system. Her father died when she was twelve; soon afterward, following the advice of her elder brother, she became engaged to his friend Matsunosuke Sugimoto, a merchant living in the United States whom she had never met. Etsu arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1898. The Sugimotos lived in College Hill, where they became acquainted with Cincinnati’s high society. Later she lived in New York City, where she turned to literature and taught Japanese language, culture and history at Columbia University.