Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

(1874 - 1950)

Born to a high-ranking samurai family in Nagaoka, Etsu Inagaki saw her family’s fortunes decline throughout her childhood as the Meiji Restoration turned samurai and the feudal system into relics of the past. She eventually emigrated to Ohio as a picture bride and had two children with her husband, Matsuo Sugimoto. Later in life, after being widowed, Etsu turned her memories of living through and absorbing such massive changes, personal and historic, into newspaper articles and magazine essays, which were later collected in her 1925 memoir, A Daughter of the Samurai.