A DAUGHTER OF THE NOHFU—Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto—Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).
O Haru was a farmer's daughter. She said things like "Hai-hai!" and "O-i!" and "Ma-a!" So did everybody else in Takiya. They understood each other perfectly. They wanted no truck with newfangled gadgets like alarm clocks that went ji-ji-ji-ji. What they really liked was the noise of the silkworms feeding in the loft, the village bell calling to some occasion of innocent merriment—Don-don! Don-don!
Just the same, they could not stay away from the big city. O Haru's sister had gone there and was so lost to shame that she got a job as waitress at a café. O Haru's father went there, and returned with an alarm clock, a fountain pen, and a traveling bag for his wife. Noboru went there, to try to reclaim O Haru's sister, but she had got out of the way of saying "Ma-a!" and "O-i!" so they did not have much to talk about. Noboru went home, like a sensible fellow, and married O Haru. who said things he could understand. Eventually everything came out all right; they got electric light but kept the old customs.
An earlier book of Author Sugimoto's, A Daughter of the Samurai, has been a best seller (80,000 copies), gave Author Christopher Morley "a secret notion that it will go on for years & years, making friends for itself and for the brave woman who wrote it, and also—this would please her most—friends for Japan." A Daughter of the Nohfu gave some readers last week the secret notion that no matter how Japanesily you slice it, Little Rollo is still baloney.