The Shogun's Daughter

Interesting historical adventure set in Japan in the mid-19th century, just at the time when Commodore Perry's warships were pressing the combative and xenophobically insular Japanese to open their ports to world trade. An adventurous young Nipponese nobleman takes ship for the West in defiance of ancient law forbidding citizens of Japan to leave the island, with death to any who go and return. He's befriended by a young American, a wealthy Southerner with all of the pre-Civil War arrogance of a plantation-born aristocrat. Although Japanese law also declares that any foreigners in Japan will be put to death, he pledges to return with his friend to his homeland in order to convince the Shogun that resting the might of the West will bring dire consequences. The plot is fairly predictable, but the wealth of detail about Japanese life of the period is fascinating. For example, here's an account of a dinner:“The meal was odder than any I had eaten even in China—soup, omelet, fishballs, and sponge cake; soup, boiled crawfish, lotus-root salad, and salted plums; thin soup, sweetmeats, pickled bamboo shoots, and stewed cuttlefish; thick soup, sliced duck, and stewed vegetables; sea slugs with soy sauce, loquats stewed with sugar, soup, more soup, and last of all plain boiled rice, without sugar—which is scarce in Japan—and without milk—which is unknown.”

This story is brimming with the romance and color of Japan as it was when Commodore Perry first visited that country. Into the hermit nation—as Japan then was—with its ironclad caste divisions and stern Samurai rule, comes an aristocrat of another sort—a blueblooded Southerner, himself as proud as any Samurai, but with a passionate warmth of blood quite alien to Japan. Of course he falls in love with a maiden of the country, and of course tragedy as well as romance gleams over the story of his wooing.