Daughters of Nijo a romance of Japan / by Onoto Watanna. With illustrations and decorations by Kiyokichi Sano

You may need to log in to continue. Access the full document and its details.

Author

Document Type

Date

1904

Biography

Onoto, whose real name was Winnifred Eaton, was a Canadian author and screenwriter, the first person of Asian descent to publish a novel in America. Born in 1875 in Montreal, the eighth of 14 children of English merchant Edward Eaton and his Chinese wife Grace, Winnifred grew up telling stories as a way of coping with poverty and racial difference. At the age of 20, she published her first short story and wrote several articles for popular American magazines. Her first novel, Miss Numé of Japan, was published in 1899, under the name Onoto Watanna, a name which Winnifred adopted for publicity purposes. She posed in kimonos for the press and pretended that she had been born in Japan. In 1901, she married American journalist Bertrand Babock and they had four children before Winnifred divorced him in 1917. Later that year she married businessman Francis Reeve and the couple moved to a ranch in Alberta, Canada. Finding herself unhappy on the ranch, however, Winnifred settled in Calgary and continued to write. During the 1920s, she also worked in the film industry in New York and Hollywood, becoming an active member of the artistic community in Calgary. Winnifred died of heart failure in 1954. During her lifetime, Winnifred published over a dozen novels, more short stories and articles and several film scripts and plays.

Copyright and Source Archive