Broken Butterflies

"Broken Butterflies" by Henry W. Kinney is a story set in the early 1900s about a man named Hugh Kent who goes back to Japan after being away for a long time, which causes him to think hard about who he is, about marriage, and about what happens when Eastern and Western cultures meet. He's hoping to fix things with his wife, Isabel, even though they haven't been getting along. As he travels back, he thinks a lot about how things haven't gone as he expected and deals with things that happened in the past; the journey begins with Hugh on a ship called the "Tenyo Maru", where he wonders about what it will be like to be back in Japan, a place he left when he was just a kid. He thinks about how his marriage didn't work out and how different his dreams were from how things really turned out with Isabel, who decided to stay in America. When Kent gets closer to Japan, he meets other people on the ship, like Lüttich, a Russian man who understands him, and Miss Suzuki, who makes him wonder and feel sorry for her because she's not sure about going back to where she comes from. The author uses really descriptive pictures and looks closely at different cultures, making the story deep and thoughtful, and hinting that it's all about strong feelings and thinking about how society is changing.