Samurai and Silk is beautifully written, with a sense of intimacy that only firsthand experience and family traditions could confer. It is also a work of broad historical value, since both grandfathers played a major role in reshaping Japan and laying the foundations of its modern economic power.
John Gross
New York Times
[Haru Reischauer] is a sensitive and skilled biographer and storyteller. Full of charm and insight… Samurai and Silk is at once an autobiography, a double biography, and a family saga covering three generations. It is a treat to read… Samurai and Silk may be the Japan book of the year, and one does not have to be an old Japan hand to savor its pleasures.
David S. Williams
Los Angeles Times Book Review
What gives Samurai and Silk special value is that it approaches the story of modern Japan through that of Mrs. Reischauer’s own family. This has made possible the use of family records not only to give point and liveliness to much of what she writes, but also, because of the particular strands of lineage that came together in her parents’ generation, to demonstrate some of the central realities of Japanese modernization.
W. G. Beasley
Times Literary Supplement
The book offers a superb portrait, containing both the broad strokes and the fine details of a crucial era in Japan’s history.
Alan Moores
Asiaweek