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Life, death, karma these interwoven themes form the heart of this
lyrical novel in letters, Kinshu: Autumn Brocade, the first work to
be published in the U.S. by Teru Miyamoto, one of Japan's most
popular literary writers. The word kinshu has many connotations in
Japanese brocade, poetic writing, the brilliance of autumn leaves
and resonates here as a vibrant metaphor for the complex, intimate
relationship between Aki and Yasuaki. Ten years after a dramatic
divorce, they meet by chance at a mountain resort. Aki initiates a
new correspondence, and letter by letter through the seasons, the
secrets of the past unfold as they reflect on their present
struggles. From a lover's suicide to a father's controlling
demands, to Mozart's Thirty-Ninth Symphony ("a veritable marvel of
sixteenth notes"), to the karmic consequences of their actions, the
story glides through their deeply introspective and stirring
exchanges. What begins as a series of accusations and apologies,
questions and excuses, turns into a source of mutual support and
healing. Chosen as an Outstanding Work of Japanese Literature by
the Japanese Literature Publishing Project."
Counting Dreams tells the story of Nomura Boto, a Buddhist nun,
writer, poet, and activist who joined the movement to oppose the
Tokugawa Shogunate and restore imperial rule. Banished for her
political activities, Boto was imprisoned on a remote island until
her comrades rescued her in a dramatic jailbreak, spiriting her
away under gunfire. Roger K. Thomas examines Boto's life, writing,
and legacy, and provides annotated translations of two of her
literary diaries, shedding light on life and society in Japan's
tumultuous bakumatsu period and challenging preconceptions about
women's roles in the era. Thomas interweaves analysis of Boto's
poetry and diaries with the history of her life and activism,
examining their interrelationship and revealing how she brought two
worlds-the poetic and the political-together. Counting Dreams
illustrates Boto's significant role in the loyalist movement,
depicting the adventurous life of a complex woman in Japan on the
cusp of the Meiji Restoration.
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Rivers (Paperback)
Teru Miyamoto; Translated by Ralph F. McCarthy, Roger K. Thomas
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R665
Discovery Miles 6 650
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Presenting a new collection of stories exploring the perennial
themes of Miyamoto Teru's fiction, narrative sketches of the
world-class world of the Osaka-Kobe region of his childhood
employing memory to reveal a story in layered frames of time with
consummate skill. His work examines the mutual proximity--or even
the identity--of life and death, often touching on such grim topics
with a touch of humor. Stories of personal triumph and hope are
often set in situations involving death, illness, or loss, but what
might be the stuff of tragedy in the hands of some writers turns
into stepping stones for his characters to climb upward and onward.
Miyamoto's considerable and devoted following in Japan has come
increasingly to be mirrored in other Asian countries and parts of
Europe as his fiction has been translated into various languages.
With renditions of only three of his works currently available in
English, however, Anglophone readers have for the most part been
unaware of the "Teru" literary phenomenon. The present collection
aims to fill part of this lack by offering a selection of some his
finest short stories along with one of his most admired
novellas--Phantom Lights--which was made into the internationally
acclaimed 1995 movie Maborosi by Koreeda Hirokazu. The will to
live, karma, and death are themes developed through the lives of
Miyamoto's fictional characters, who struggle to achieve closure
with their respective pasts and in their often difficult relations
with others. The comments of Washington Times writer Anna Chambers
in her review of Kinshu: Autumn Brocade aptly apply to the works
presented here as well: ..".existential crisis after existential
crisis force the characters to question whether one can shape one's
own karma--rather than construct one's own soul, as a Western
reader might have put it. And herein lies the Westerner's entree
into the book as more than an observer of Japanese culture." And
like Kinshu, the stories in the present collection provide "a
satisfying taste of what it means to grapple with fate at the
intersection of modernity and tradition." Miyamoto deftly weaves
his tales using scenes and settings from his native Kansai region,
and all are flavored with the language of western Japan. Like the
depressed areas described in much of his fiction, his characters
too are "left behind" by post-war Japan's rapid economic growth, by
unexpected changes in their lives, or by the deaths of loved ones.
His heroes are ordinary people who, as he puts it, "are trying to
lift themselves up, who are struggling to live," and who achieve
quiet triumphs.
A Tale of False Fortunes is a masterful translation of Enchi
Fumiko's (1905-1986) modern classic, Namamiko monogatari. Written
in 1965, this prize-winning work of historical fiction presents an
alternative account of an imperial love affair narrated in the
eleventh-century romance A Tale of Flowering Fortunes (Eiga
monogatari). Both stories are set in the Heian court of the emperor
Ichijo (980-1011) and tell of the ill-fated love between the
emperor and his first consort, Teishi, and of the political
rivalries that threaten to divide them. While the earlier work can
be viewed largely as a panegyric to the all-powerful regent
Fujiwara no Michinaga, Enchi's account emphasizes Teishi's nobility
and devotion to the emperor and celebrates her "moral victory"-
over the regent, who conspired to divert the emperor's attentions
toward his own daughter, Shoshi.
The narrative of A Tale of False Fortunes is built around a
fictitious historical document, which is so well crafted that it
was at first believed to be an actual document of the Heian period.
Throughout Enchi's innovation and skill are evident as she
alternates between modern and classical Japanese, interjecting her
own commentary and extracts from A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, to
impress upon the reader the authenticity of the tale presented
within the novel. Subplots abound involving servants,
ladies-in-waiting, and most importantly female mediums, whose
spiritual possession -- both feigned and real -- propels the
momentum of the story toward an unexpected resolution.
Though the haiku is the best known Japanese verse form in the west,
its appearance in the early modern period (1600 1868) was preceded
by at least a millennium of waka poetry, whose thirty-one syllable
version, tanka, had dominated Japanese letters among the
aristocracy from the beginning of the tenth century. By the dawn of
the seventeenth century, waka appeared to be more bound by
convention than ever before, and class privilege in its practice
and instruction seemed unassailable. This condition has prompted
some modern scholars to dismiss the waka of that period as an
anachronistic holdover. The Way of the Shikishima challenges this
notion as facile and demonstrates how, from the beginning of the
Tokugawa hegemony in the early seventeenth century, waka was in
fact closely tied to contemporary social, cultural, and
intellectual developments, and how those ties became closer over
time. The aristocratic monopoly of the art that prevailed at the
beginning of the early modern period gave way to popularizing
forces until, by the middle of the nineteenth century and nearly
all practitioners of note were commoners.
Life, death, karma-these interwoven themes form the heart of this
lyrical novel in letters, Kinshu: Autumn Brocade, the first work to
be published in the U.S. by Teru Miyamoto, one of Japan's most
popular literary writers. The word kinshu has many connotations in
Japanese-brocade, poetic writing, the brilliance of autumn
leaves-and resonates here as a vibrant metaphor for the complex,
intimate relationship between Aki and Yasuaki. Ten years after a
dramatic divorce, they meet by chance at a mountain resort. Aki
initiates a new correspondence, and letter by letter through the
seasons, the secrets of the past unfold as they reflect on their
present struggles. From a lover's suicide to a father's controlling
demands, to Mozart's Thirty-Ninth Symphony ("a veritable marvel of
sixteenth notes"), to the karmic consequences of their actions, the
story glides through their deeply introspective and stirring
exchanges. What begins as a series of accusations and apologies,
questions and excuses, turns into a source of mutual support and
healing. Chosen as an Outstanding Work of Japanese Literature by
the Japanese Literature Publishing Project.
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