northern island of Hokkaido. The young Oyabe
soon became disenchanted with his father. After
spending several months in an Ainu (aboriginal)
village, where he adopted Ainu dress and speech,
Oyabe decided to devote himself to missionary
work among Ainu. Inspired by his meetings with
American missionaries, he embraced Christianity
and decided to travel abroad for education to up-
lift the Ainu.
In 1888 Oyabe sailed to the United States as
a cabin boy and settled in New York, where he
briefly worked as a hospital orderly. There he was
recruited to study at Hampton Institute, a school
for blacks and Native Americans, by its president,
Samuel Chapman Armstrong. After a few years
at Hampton, Oyabe enrolled at another African-
American institution, Howard University, to study
theology. As at Hampton, Oyabe became a favorite
student of Howard’s president, Jeremiah Rankin.
Oyabe completed his studies at Yale University,
where he obtained a doctorate in divinity in 1894.
He afterward spent two years as a Christian mis-
sionary in Hawaii.
After returning to Yale, Oyabe wrote his “spiri-
tual autobiography,” presumably to raise money
for further study. A Japanese Robinson Crusoe,
published in 1898, is arguably the earliest book
by a Japanese American. An account of Oyabe’s
curious formation as a Japanese “yankee” (as he
terms himself ), it can be seen as a tale of a for-
eigner taking on “whiteness” and absorbing the
superiority of Christian culture. After the book’s
release, Oyabe returned to Japan, where he lec-
tured on behalf of an Ainu aid society and served
as translator and guide to American anthro-
pologist Hiram Miller on Miller’s 1901 research
trip among the Ainu. Oyabe built a model Ainu
school in Abuta, which he operated for the next
decade. In later years, he became well known in
Japan as a nationalist scholar and historian. In
one work, he argued that Genghis Khan was actu-
ally Minamoto Yoshitsune, younger brother of the
first Minamoto shogun. Similarly, his 1929 book
Nihon Oyobi Nihon Kokumin No Kigen (Origin of
Japan and Japanese) explored the influence of the
ancient Hebrews on Japanese civilization. Despite
his “yankee” self-identification, Oyabe never re-
turned to the United States.
Greg RobinsonOzeki, Ruth (Ruth Ozeki Lounsbury)
(1956?– )
The daughter of a Japanese mother and a Cau-
casian American father, Ruth Ozeki has an edu-
cational background and professional career that
reflect her strong sense of her dual ethnic heri-
tage. Born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut,
Ozeki moved to Kyoto in 1976 to study Japanese
literature and culture in an intensive yearlong pro-
gram at Doshisha University. She returned to the
United States to attend Smith College, graduating
in 1980 with a double major in English and Asian
studies. She then relocated once more to Japan,
this time to pursue graduate research in classical
Japanese literature. She would remain in Japan for
the next five years, teaching English as a second
language, founding an innovative language school,
and teaching in the English department at Kyoto
Sangyo University.
In 1985 Ozeki moved back to the United States
and settled in New York City, where she began a
career as a director and producer, first for low-
budget horror films and then for television docu-
mentaries. She spent several years directing a series
of documentary films on American culture for a
Japanese television company, before deciding to
pursue her own work full time. Her first film, the
one-hour drama Body of Correspondence (1994),
was shown at the San Francisco Film Festival,
where it won the New Visions Award and was aired
on PBS. Ozeki’s second film, the autobiographical,
feature-length film Halving the Bones (1995), has
been screened at film festivals around the country
including the Sundance Film Festival, the Mon-
treal World Film Festival, and the San Francisco
Asian American Film Festival.
Although Ozeki has noted in interviews that
she always dreamed of being a novelist and wrote
short stories throughout school and college, MY
YEAR OF MEATS (1998) represents her first serious234 Ozeki, Ruth