The Last Samurai

Book 3 opens with an epigraph from Donald Richie’s commentary on Sugata Sanshiro in The Films of Akira Kurosawa (165).

On his sixth birthday, Ludo receives Japanese books as gifts from Sibylla, including Sugata Sanshiro by Tomita Tsuneo. She informs him that he will need a kanji dictionary, a “Kodansha romanized dictionary” (167), and grammar resources to understand these texts. Sibylla mentions that Sugata Sanshiro is not available in English and reads a passage from Donald Richie’s book describing an exhilarating scene from the story in which the protagonist, Sugata, excels in judo but is confronted by his judo teacher about the essence of martial arts. Ludo eagerly anticipates reading the book despite the linguistic challenges. Sibylla, noticing Ludo’s hesitation, encourages him to enjoy his birthday and offers to answer any questions he may have. This leads Ludo to ask about his father, to which Sibylla responds that he was a travel writer whom she only met once. Ludo can’t help but wonder if his father might be someone famous.

Ludo continues writing journal entries, documenting his daily routine of learning Japanese characters with Sibylla. They aim to learn two characters a day out of a total of 1945.