Why I wrote
Tracy Barton and the Ninja Secret Formulas

In November of l999 two Japanese friends and I drove into the forest wilderness of mountainous Yamanashi Prefecture to take pictures of the autumn leaves. The road was a seldom-used dirt road. The magnificent colors soaring all around us up and over the mountains were overwhelming.

By that autumn of l999 I had already spent more than 35 years in Japan as an English teacher in Tokyo. Thirty-five years is a long time, time enough to learn something about Japanese culture as well as speak their language. Thirty-five years in Japan gave me ample time to marvel and wonder at the organization of these people, from the impeccable "on the minute" timing of their transportation system to the order of their family system...father into the bathtub first, eldest son second and so on down to obedient mother. Whether you like the conventions of a patriarchal society or not, it is the way things are in Japan.

In a mountain village where we stayed in an inn, I was again struck by the order of the family that ran the place. As I sat with my friends around the open fire and cooking area in the middle of the main living room, with the traditional metal pot hanging over the fire, simmering in the somewhat gloom of the thatched roofed inn, my eye caught a peculiar-looking, glistening gold medallion framed on the wall.