Silk
Not much is known about the women of the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony, including Jou Schnell, the Japanese wife of the colony’s founder John Henry Schnell. Silk is a fictional account which imagines what life may have been for these women and men in 1869–1871.
Author’s Note: The nonfiction sources used for this fictional creation included Daniel A. Métraux’s The Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony Farm and the Creation of Japanese America, Discover Nikkei articles, and Gary Noy’s Sierra Stories: Tales of Dreamers, Schemers, Bigots, and Rogues.
Stories from this series
Chapter Six—Okei: Star Stories
April 4, 2020 • Naomi Hirahara
Okei Ito hated mosquitos. In the California inaka, they seemed to swarm everywhere, breeding in water collected in surrounding ditches. In these same ditches, old miners, still fueled by the twenty-year-old dream of striking it rich, spent hours panning for gold. She wasn’t used to all the mosquitos. She, like the other Wakamatsu colonists, were from northern Japan. Even in the middle of summer, it was cooler back home. Light rain would even fall at times. In contrast, the weather …
Chapter Five—Kuninosuke Masumizu: Lightning in a Bottle
March 4, 2020 • Naomi Hirahara
“Kuni, place your bet,” the miner said, first in English and then in his native Portuguese. Kuninosuke Masumizu, called Kuni in this nighttime gambling den behind a Chinese store, was known for his facility with languages. He spoke Japanese, of course, and had picked up English faster than the other Wakamatsu colonists. His visits to the gambling den came in handy in exposing him to new languages. Five of them were assembled around a table, a metal square tray in …
Chapter Four—Kintaro and the Magic Koi
Feb. 4, 2020 • Naomi Hirahara
Serve the shogun with single-minded devotion. —Aizu samurai code of conduct Kintaro Ikeda was alone in this world, but that was not always the case. In Aizu-Wakamatsu, he had brothers, his parents, grandparents, and many aunts and uncles. And then the Boshin War came. Practically all were dead now or rotting in the hinderlands of Aomori, the northern part of Honshu. John Henry Schnell, the Prussian who had provided the warriors of Aizu-Wakamatsu with rifles and guns, had …
Chapter Three—Neko-chan
Jan. 4, 2020 • Naomi Hirahara
Nozomi chased her black cat through the fields of Wakamatsu Colony in Gold Hill. She still was not allowed to bring the cat inside of their home. “Kitanai,” her mother said, pushing Neko-chan out with the ends of a straw broom. Even though Nozomi was only seven, she was given a list of chores to do on the colony. Wash and clean dishes from meals. Help her mother with the laundry. Change the linens on the beds regularly and keep …
Chapter Two—Wheelbarrow Wars
Dec. 4, 2019 • Naomi Hirahara
Shinshi-san went into her second bedroom, the one filled with mulberry leaves, and checked on the status of her silkworms. Hundreds of white skinny caterpillars, thinner than her pinkie finger, had devoured thick layers of leaves that she had laid out last night. It amazed her that these creatures could eat so much, literally many times more than their actual weight. Some of the leaves were totally bare, only their thin veins remaining. How could she keep her babies alive …
Chapter One—Jou Schnell: Keeping House
Nov. 4, 2019 • Naomi Hirahara
Jou Schnell looked out her window of her small four-room, wood-framed house on Gold Hill. Through the walnut trees, dappled light streamed onto the dew-covered grass, a common sight during the last days of summer in California. Her nursemaid, Okei, was late. She was just a child herself. Only about seventeen. Jou remembered when she herself was seventeen, seven years ago, when the Tokugawa shogunate still held power over her childhood home in Japan. The magnificent Tsuruga Castle in Wakamatsu …
