In October 2022, during a trip to Berkeley, California to do research at the Bancroft Library, I stopped in at Eastwind Books. Normally, when I go book shopping, I usually look for copies of older works that are either out of print or unavailable online. Sometimes, by good fortune, I find a book that I have always wanted to read but never was able to purchase online.
As I rummaged through the dollar cart at Eastwind, I pulled out a copy of Yoshiko Uchida’s 1959 book The Promised Year. I have long been intrigued by Uchida’s writing career, and I had previously published an artic…