The American Diary of a Japanese Girl

The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is a novel written by Yone Noguchi and first published in 1901. It's the first novel in English written by a Japanese writer.

Written as a personal diary, it reflects what life was like in America, and in particular California, through the vision of a young Japanese woman traveling from Tokyo.

Morning Glory is a young woman who embarks on a trip through the United States with her uncle, who is a rich executive of a mining company. To do this, she describes all the preparations and activities in her diary.

They arrive, on a steamboat, in San Francisco. There, Morning Glory befriends Ada through the American wife of the Japanese consul. Along with Ada, she will discover Golden Gate Park, the music scene and vaudeville. On the other hand, Morning Glory initiates Ada in the ways of the kimono.

After a series of activities and meeting a series of characters, she resumes the trip with her uncle to Chicago and New York, making numerous observations of American behavior and culture that caught her attention.

"Tokio Sept. 23rd
My new page of life is dawning. A trip beyond the seas—Meriken Kenbutsu—it’s not an ordinary event. It is verily the first event in our family history that I could trace back for six centuries."