A Japanese BoyShigemi ShiukichiOmniClassics · Literature
A Japanese Boy
Shigemi ShiukichiA Japanese student recalls childhood for the American audience among whom he now lives.
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About the book
Shiukichi Shigemi describes growing up in Imabari through episodes of family life, schooling, play, food, theater, holidays, and religious observance. His attention moves easily from a schoolmaster's habits to kite making, household evenings, and the work around the harbor. Changes associated with Western influence appear alongside practices he remembers from earlier childhood. Writing in English while studying in America, he explains familiar things for readers to whom they may be new, without surrendering the humor of personal experience. The prefatory letter also identifies a practical purpose: publication would help support his education. The resulting book is both a childhood memoir and an act of cultural explanation by someone learning to address another society.
- Childhood and memory
- Cultural explanation
- Education and change
Why read it
Encounter everyday Japanese life through a personal account written directly for readers outside the author's home country.
English memoir by Shiukichi Shigemi, 1890 edition