Taishô 12, 6th month, 6th day (June 6, 1924)
Hanagawa Mari stepped from the taxicab and made her way towards the docks, her geta clicking on the cobblestones. Outwardly, she was the epitome of style and grace; her furisode kimono was flawlessly tasteful, worn properly, and her long, white hair had been carefully styled and dyed black with a family secret temporary formula. Inwardly, however, her mind was in turmoil. Times were not good in her beloved Nihon, and the clan had decided that, rather than wait for the military to restore a shogunate, the Hanagawa would go into hiding. Her cousins who had served in the Great War and returned to tell the tale had argued to the matrons that with the way wars were fought these days, it would be detrimental to the clan's continued existence, to borrow a European saying, to "put all their eggs in one basket."
Thus, she was to travel to the Republic of the United States of America and establish a family stronghold there. She would enter the country through the port of San Francisco, and then determine where to go from there. It was a heady responsibility to lay on the shoulders of a sixteen-year-old, but Hanagawa were nothing if not trained to fulfil such responsibility.
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Hanagawa Mari stepped from the taxicab and made her way towards the docks, her geta clicking on the cobblestones. Outwardly, she was the epitome of style and grace; her furisode kimono was flawlessly tasteful, worn properly, and her long, white hair had been carefully styled and dyed black with a family secret temporary formula. Inwardly, however, her mind was in turmoil. Times were not good in her beloved Nihon, and the clan had decided that, rather than wait for the military to restore a shogunate, the Hanagawa would go into hiding. Her cousins who had served in the Great War and returned to tell the tale had argued to the matrons that with the way wars were fought these days, it would be detrimental to the clan's continued existence, to borrow a European saying, to "put all their eggs in one basket."
Thus, she was to travel to the Republic of the United States of America and establish a family stronghold there. She would enter the country through the port of San Francisco, and then determine where to go from there. It was a heady responsibility to lay on the shoulders of a sixteen-year-old, but Hanagawa were nothing if not trained to fulfil such responsibility.
Quote:This is a sort of timeline/family tree project for Misty Hanover but other voices are welcome on the fiction front if they feel like it. I'm placing Great-of-indeterminate-number-grandma Hanagawa in California before a RL law was passed limiting the number of Japanese immigrants in 1924. Japan was in a proto-depression at this time due to various factors, not least that the Taishô Emperor was severely neurologically handicapped. This snippet is about 2 years before the ascension to the throne of Emperor Hirohito, or to be more polite, the Shôwa Emperor. And about 6 years before Japan seriously started its ramping up for what would become WWII.''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
Also, this isn't necessarily CoX canon-based, as I'm blatantly ignoring quite a bit of History as modified by the presence of Statesman and the Fifth Column, etc etc. Mainly because I'm thinking of using ths as some of the basis for original fiction.
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
