One can hardly imagine the reaction of the young bride Shidzue Ishimoto
             (later Kato) when she first arrived at the small mining town in Western
             Japan soon after her marriage to Baron Ishimoto, an engineer with ideals of
             social reform. Descended from the Samurai origins, Shidzue was born into
             rank and privilege and raised in the mores of pre-modern Japan. The
             environment she encountered here was so much different.
             Sweet home' Isn't he teasing me' How could one live in a place
             like this among dust and the noise of engines'' At this my long
             dream was broken and I had to realize that it was indeed
             Kattachi where my husband and I were to live from now on. A poor
             and shabby village it was. (148)
             In her autobiography Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life, Shidzue
             Ishimoto covered in detail the terrible lives of the mining families in the
             mid- to late 1800s. Men, women and children all worked in dark, unhealthy
             and dangerous tunnels for least 12 hours a day. Because of the low heights,
             most of the workers could barely stand up during working periods. Women had
             to creep into these passages like wiggling worms to pull baskets of coal
             out to the place where the wagons stood.
             A huge contrast existed between this mining experience and Shidzue
             Ishimoto's first two decades as described in the beginning chapters of
             Facing Two Ways. Because of her family's prestigious background, she lived
             in a two-story house, was cared for by maidservants and spent weekends in a
             country farm. At school, however, she met many "illegitimate little girls
             (51)," and noticed their life a tragedy. This part of her autobiography
             foreshadowed her later concerns for unwanted children.
             At 17, Shidzue Ishimoto was betrothed to Baron Ishimoto from "a
             family of wealth and honor" (105). Her "mountainous" trousseau consisted of
             jewelry and furniture. Wit...