also written, directed, and acted in several inde-
pendent films including Forgotten Valor (2001),
costarring Soon-Tek Oh, and Only the Brave
(2005), where he appeared opposite Tamlyn To-
mita and Jason Scott Lee.
Samuel ParkNoguchi, Yone (Yonejiro) (1875–1947)
Noguchi was born to a merchant family in Tsu-
shima on the outskirts of Nagoya, Japan. Early on,
Noguchi opted out of the traditional educational
system but succeeded in being admitted to Keio
University, one of Japan’s most prestigious univer-
sities of the period. With the blessing of Keio Uni-
versity’s founder Yukichi Fukuzawa, Noguchi left
for the United States in 1893. Traveling alone by
steamer ship to San Francisco at the age of 19, No-
guchi supported himself in America as a reporter
for a Japanese-American newspaper and by hiring
himself out as domestic help.
In 1895 poet Joaquin Miller invited the young
writer to his compound in the Oakland Hills, later
memorialized as Joaquin Miller Park, and Noguchi
resided there until 1900. Under the patronage and
tutelage of California poets such as Joaquin Miller
and Charles Warren Stoddard, Noguchi published
the first English-language poems by a Japanese issei
in the United States. His first volumes of poetry
were Seen and Unseen or, Monologues of a Homeless
Snail and The Voice of the Valley published by a San
Francisco press in 1897.
Three years later, Noguchi left California for
New York, where he met Leonie Gilmour, an
American writer and teacher. Gilmour had an-
swered Noguchi’s advertisement for an English
tutor, and their subsequent collaborations pro-
duced Noguchi’s most successful English-language
works including American Diary of a Japanese Girl
(1902), the first Japanese-American novel. In it,
Noguchi combines the diary format of traditional
Japanese literature, found in Sei Shonagon’s Pil-
low Book and The Diary of Lady Murasaki, with
the American travelogues of Washington Irving’s
The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon and Jean de
Crevecoeur’s Letters of an American Farmer. Draw-
ing heavily from his own experiences, Noguchi’s
novel follows the character Miss Morning Glory as
she travels eastbound across the Pacific and cata-
logues her adventures in American society from
San Francisco to New York.
After publishing American Diary of a Japanese
Girl, Noguchi left America for England to find a
sponsor for the novel’s sequel, The American Let-
ters of a Japanese Parlor-Maid (1905), and to pro-
mote his third book of poetry, From the Eastern
Sea (1903), which proved to be Noguchi’s most
influential volume. Originally self-published by
Noguchi, From the Eastern Sea found favor with
a British publishing house and the volume cir-
culated through literary circles in England where
Noguchi’s verse attracted the attention of literary
elites such as Ezra Pound, W. B Yeats and Thomas
Hardy. Because Noguchi was one of the first to in-
troduce Japanese literary forms and styles to the
coterie of literati residing in England, some have
credited Noguchi’s work as part of the body of
influential Asian source material that modernists
turned toward when they were reimagining the
possibilities for English literature.
After his successful debut in Great Britain, No-
guchi returned to New York in 1903 with a modi-
cum of fame. Soon after his arrival, Gilmour and
Noguchi married, and in the following year, Gilm-
our gave birth to their son Isamu Noguchi, who
would become one of the leading figures of 20th-
century American sculpture and design. Despite
his success in England, American publishers still
gave Noguchi scant attention. Noguchi returned to
Japan in August 1904 and accepted a professorship
in English at Keio University, the institution he
left to embark on his travels in America. Noguchi
had left the United States before Isamu’s birth, and
Gilmour and their son joined him in 1906. How-
ever, Noguchi in the meantime had remarried, and
while Gilmour and their son continued to reside in
Tokyo, they were estranged from Noguchi. In 1918
Isamu was sent to school in the United States, with
Gilmour following in 1920 with her daughter Ailes
Gilmour, who became an early member of Martha
Graham’s dance troupe.218 Noguchi, Yone