Four years before Rabindranath Tagore went to Japan, a young woman sailed from Bengal over the feared kalapani seas to meet her Japanese husband's family. Hariprabha Mallick had married Oemon Takeda in the liberal milieu of the Brahmo Samaj in the early 1900s. Her sojourn among her Japanese in-laws gave her another family in a different language, one who could communicate with her only in the language of the heart.

She wrote about her experience of this interpersonal and cultural encounter, and travelled to Japan at least two more times. During the Second World War, she served as the Bengali voice of Radio Tokyo at the request of Rashbehari Bose.

Translated in this volume from the original Bengali, Hariprabha Takeda's writing provides an account of Japan a century ago, seen through the eyes of a naive, yet perceptive and altogether extraordinary young woman.

Three essays by Hariprabha Takeda have been translated for this volume, along with a wealth of other archival material about her life and times.