When I Was a Boy in Japan

Japanese children in the 1870s and 1880s were offspring of a centuries-old traditional order who faced a world suddenly dominated by foreign science and commerce. As a child in Meiji Japan, Sakae grew up among survivors of the shogunate and observed their samurai culture displaced by Western morals and practices. Meanwhile the traditional values of Japanese life still exerted a strong influence over his family and education and played a large part in shaping his experience, as recounted with charm and tenderness in this simple and reflective reminiscence. Sakae Shioya (1873–1961) attended Tokyo’s First Imperial College and came to the United States in 1901. He earned an M.A. degree from the University of Chicago in 1903 and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1906, both in English. He translated works by contemporary Japanese writers, including Rohan Koda and Kenjiro Tokutomi. In addition to this childhood memoir published in 1906, his later works included Chushingura: An Exposition (1940).