Summer is wrapping up and you want to give the kids a bit of
culture, maybe a trip to a museum. Hard to sell? A new exhibit at the
Birmingham Museum of Art (through September 21, 2014), is titled, Lethal
Beauty: Samurai Weapons and Armor. No need to mention museums…yet. Just leave a
novel or two about these warriors in traditional Japan lying around. Take it
from there.
HEART OF A SAMURAI by Margi Preus, Abrams, 2010
Every author has a story in her heart that just begs to be
told. Some carry that story for years before it bursts forth on the page. Author Margi Preus stumbled across this story of “a courageous boy who
nurtured friendship and understanding between two previously antagonistic
countries.” She traveled to the boy’s hometown, hardly a trek next door, and
her journey resulted in introducing the young reader, maybe even a reluctant
reader boy, to Manjiro.
While his four companions whine and complain and make the harrowing experiences of
their 1841shipwreck personal, Manjiro looks for a way to
survive. He tries to make the situation better for everyone, but when he
reveals during their long, lonely vigil, scanning the horizon for a rescue ship, that
his ambition is to be a samurai, they laugh, knowing full well that he was not
born to be one. They are finally rescued by an American whaler. Another
adventure begins as Manjiro learns a new language, new laws, and sometimes the confusing
customs of America, a foreign land inhabited, as his friends believe, by devils
that will gobble them up. Manjiro realizes upon his return to Japan that
everyone in his country believes that about Americans. Japan had
been isolated for 250 years. The Japanese people had no way of knowing anything about America.
Admiral Perry arrives and insists the Japanese open their
ports to him. Manjiro is able to translate. Although he does not speak directly
with the Americans, he does advise the shogun.
Manjiro is a fine role model for boys of any century. In his
longing, he brings the samurai code to life and makes it his. Spoiler alert: He
is made a samurai by the shogun. “Unprecedented for a person not born of a
samurai family and of such low rank to be elevated to such status.”
In the epilogue, we learn that Manjiro wrote the first
English book for Japanese people, A Shortcut to English Conversation, started
the whaling industry in Japan and joined the first Japanese Embassy to the
United States as an interpreter. Believed to be the first Japanese person to
set foot in America, he has been called “the boy who discovered America.”
The book is enriched by a number of illustrations, including
pencil drawings by Manjiro who became known as John Mung.
I plan to share a couple more samurai books. Circle a date
for that museum trip.
