Paperback Edition
ISBN: 9781558614642
Publication Date: 04-15-2004

Afterword by Yi-Chun Tricia Lin and Greg Robinson

With this critically acclaimed 1940 memoir, pioneering Japanese writer and activist Ayako Ishigaki made history. Restless Wave is the first book written in English by a Japanese woman, introducing Western readers to a largely unknown world; a unique voice; and a writer of great talent, integrity and courage. In exquisite prose, Ishigaki recalls coming of age in a privileged family and rebelling against strict codes of women’s behavior. She also traces the political awakening that would force her to flee Japan for the United States and would eventually make her an internationally renowned activist for peace, social justice and women’s rights. As The Nation noted, “In lyrical, poetic terms, Restless Wave tells the story of a single individual who lived at a turning-point of history.”

"Matsui is that most solitary of human beings, a woman who cannot conform to the patterns her people have set for a woman, and the story in her book is the story of one who never found a real place for herself because she could not retire into the pattern." —Pearl S. Buck, author of The Good Earth

"What an extraordinary memoir this is. This story about the early life of the Issei, the Japanese immigrant who chose to come to the U.S. in the mid-1920s, as a single woman is one of the earliest of its kind. . . . A stunning afterword traces the later life of this unusual woman." —Mitsuye Yamada, author of Camp Notes and Other Writings