Gift from the Mikado

Dateline: 2006-08-31

I've received an interesting update from Rick Park and decided to pull this review to the front page to share it. Thanks, Rick!

A hundred years before I lived in Japan, Clara Elizabeth Poate was born to missionary parents in Morioka, the first foreign baby born in that region. Although she was only four when her family returned to the United States in 1892, she retained fascination for the land of her birth. In 1958, when she was 70, she published a children's book, Gift from the Mikado, based on her family's stories of Japan.

The book is dated but in the best way. It's funny to think that the events in it happen less than twenty years after the events in Little House on the Praire books. The style of the books is very similar. Japanese customs are introduced to the American audience in the method typical of children's social studies books: the children act as the mouthpiece of the reader asking questions about the new and strange things they encounter, and the parents patiently and wisely explain all. However, the explanations are well-woven into the fabric of the story. It's clear that the stories came first and the explanations followed, that the vignettes are actual family stories rather than fiction wrapped around a lesson.

Some things have certainly changed. Others have not. Gone from Japan today are rickshas and house servants. There is now a train line to Morioka. But hina doll displays, Boy's Day carps, and visits to the onsen are exactly the same.

"Outside a large packing case had been delivered, and around it stood a crowd of curious Japanese. For this was in the 1890's, a long time ago, when foreigners were still a novelty in Japan, and it always seemed worth-while to see what strange, outlandish thing a foreigner might be up to." 〜 p. 7

In the first few pages of the book, I held my breath wondering if it was going to be terribly politically incorrect. Before everyone jumps on me for using that phrase let me explain: I was worried that the tone might be moralistic, culturally imperialistic, and paternalistic--in short, something I wouldn't want my children to read. However, the descriptions of the Japanese is classist, but not racist. (Hierarchical relationships based on the old class system still seem natural in Japan even though the class system is overtly gone.) For example, when the girls are invited to Baron Hidegawa's house for Hina Matsuri, they are amazed at the honor and on their best behavior, just as they would be if visiting European aristocracy. There are good and bad people in the book, smart and silly people, but they are individuals, not stereotypes of their culture.

Recommendation: 4 stars (out of 5)
Audience: Collectible, primarily for historical interest. Out of print, but available online.

About the Author

"Clara Elizabeth Fleming was born in Morioka, Japan in 1888; married John Lewis Fleming; had two children; and died in 1985" 〜Guide to the Poate Family Papers

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
August 31, 2006

Comments

The book was interesting and as a reletive it made it even more knowledgedable

Comment by: Sam Poate. Posted January 11, 2005 07:55 AM.

I've been owning "Gift from the Mikado" for nearly 40 years and I finally get to write about it. I'm 48 years old and received the book from an older neighbor of mine who move away when I was 9. I read it constantly until I was 12 or 13 before "outgrowing" it; or so I thought.However, in my adult years I still refer to it and make sure to reread every summer.

Comment by: David Eason. Posted May 9, 2006 08:22 PM.

For fans of this book, you may be interested to know the epilogue of the Poate family. 'Mother' - Belle Marsh Poate - had another child, Edith for a total of 5 children and died 3 years after the family returned from Japan (1896). Fred and Ernest both graduated from Cornell University; Fred becoming a businessman and eventually succeeding his uncle as head of McKenzie and Co. in China where he and his wife were interned during WWII. He died in 1971. Ernest became a distinguished physician affiliated with Duke University as well as a crime mystery writer of some renown. Lucy Marsh 'Daisy' Poate Stebbins became a writer who struggled through the male-dominated writing establishment of the early 20th century and later co-authored several books with her son Richard Stebbins. She died in 1958. Elizabeth, besides authoring the 'Gift of the Mikado' was a teacher and writer of children's books. She passed away in 1985. Fred Poate left a collection of papers to Cornell University upon his death. A compendium of letters called The Japan Experience: the Missionary Letters of Belle Marsh Poate and Thomas Pratt Poate was published by their grandson, Richard Stebbins in 1992. * Wow, Rick. Thanks for the update. -- mss

Comment by: Rick Park. Posted August 29, 2006 08:08 PM.

You're welcome. This book deserves to be passed on to new generations much like the 'Little House' books. Another book from my school days which I have recently revisted is 'Japanese Inn' by Oliver Statler, a professor at the University of Hawaii who passed away in 2002. It cleverly entwines the goings on at the Minaguchi-ya Inn with the external politics and history of Japan from the time of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Allied Occupation. Highly recommended if you have not already read it.

Comment by: Rick Park. Posted October 27, 2006 10:51 PM.

I know the book you talk about, for I read it when I was 16 years old. I am 49 now, but I have that book, very seedy by now, between my favorites. It does not only speaks to me about other times, but also of the experience of a family from the US in what must have been a very exotic and also astonishingly changing environment: that of the Meiji era. In fact, I think there are not very many written testimonies of those times, at least by westerners, and that can be read even by young people. To me, living in Venezuela, being southamerican, catholic, and reading it in a language that is not my own, it was moving, though it was about an alien protestant family in a strange country. When I want to go back to the innocence of a world with hope, that is one of the lectures I return to. Bye

Comment by: Luis Vivanco. Posted February 21, 2007 08:46 AM.

We visit his web - blog and it is fantastic, congratulations There visits our blog, the irreverent mas and iconoclast of the world in Catalunya - Spain Http: // telamamaria.blogspot.com Thank you very much Maria

Comment by: Maria. Posted April 19, 2007 01:04 PM.

Share Your Thoughts

Name:


Email Address (not displayed):


URL: (optional)


Comment: