Sadakichi Hartmann was born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki, to a Japanese mother, who died soon after childbirth, and a German father. He was raised in Germany and came to Philadelphia in 1882. Two years after arriving, at the age of seventeen, he paid his first visit to Walt Whitman, now sixty-five years old, who was living modestly just across the Delaware River, in Camden.

Fascinated by the poet’s life and work, Sadakichi would visit Whitman several times over the course of six years, to talk about literature and to question the poet about contemporary authors and books. Sadakichi went on to publish Whitman’s opinions first in the New York Herald, in 1880, arousing the indignation of many and making him unpopular with the admirers of the poet, and later, in 1885, in Conversations with Walt Whitman.