Download or read book The Samurai s Wife written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2000-04-25 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling murder mystery set in seventeenth-century Japan, filled with finely drawn characters and suspenseful plot twists, Laura Joh Rowland's The Samurai's Wife is a novel as complex, vivid, and artful as the glorious, lost world it portrays. Far from the Shogun's court at Edo, Most Honorable Investigator Sano Ichiro begins the most challenging case of his career. Upon the insistence of his strong-willed and beautiful wife Reiko, Sano arrives with her at the emperor's palace to unmask the murderer--who possesses the secret of kiai, "the spirit city," a powerful scream that can kill instantly. A high Kyoto official is the victim. Treading carefully through a web of spies, political intrigue, forbidden passions, and intricate plots, Sano and Reiko must struggle to stay ahead of the palace storm--and outwit a cunning killer. But as they soon discover, solving the case means more than their survival. For if they fail, Japan could be consumed in the bloodiest war it has ever seen...
Download or read book The Samurai s Wife written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sano Ichiro, special investigator to the shogun, discovers that he needs the help of his new wife Reiko more than ever after he finds himself embroiled in a case involving a sinister murderer. By the author of The Concubine's Tattoo. 20,000 first printing.
Download or read book A Sano Ichiro Collection written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Joh Rowland's acclaimed Sano Ichiro novels, set in seventeenth-century Japan, are riveting, richly imagined, and suspenseful. As Sano navigates a treacherous political landscape he works to protect the people of Edo, his family, and his honor in these compelling thrillers. The Concubine's Tattoo Sano Ichiro, the Shogun's most honorable investigator, is summoned to the imperial palace to find the murderer of a young concubine poisoned while applying a lover's tattoo. Sano's new bride, Reiko, insists on helping him with the case. Reiko's samurai blood and warrior's skill alarm her new husband, who expected a docile wife. But Reiko is only the first of many surprises... The Samurai's Wife Sano Ichiro, the Shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, has his doubts about the partnership that he and his spirited new wife, Reiko, have forged: While he recognizes that her help on his cases can be invaluable, he sometimes longs for a more traditional wife. Still, when a botched case and the resulting loss of face sends Sano to the Imperial city to find a killer whose methods are as terrifying as they are elusive, Sano needs the talents of his wife more than ever to infiltrate the emperor's inner circle. Black Lotus When Sano Ichiro is called on to investigate the burning of a cottage belonging to the Black Lotus Temple, he makes a shocking discovery. The three victims of the blaze were murdered before the fire even began. Sano's search for a killer leads him to Haru, an orphan girl found at the scene of the crime. But Sano's wife, Reiko, investigating the case against Sano's wishes, is convinced of Haru's innocence. Behind the walls of the Black Lotus Temple she discovers a sect involved in extortion, prostitution, and hedonistic rituals. Could one of the sect's members be the killer? Now Reiko must risk her marriage to Sano in order to prove Haru's innocence...
Download or read book Daughters of the Samurai A Journey from East to West and Back written by Janice P. Nimura and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nimura paints history in cinematic strokes and brings a forgotten story to vivid, unforgettable life." —Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan. Raised in traditional samurai households during the turmoil of civil war, three of these unusual ambassadors—Sutematsu Yamakawa, Shige Nagai, and Ume Tsuda—grew up as typical American schoolgirls. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits and intellectual brilliance. The passionate relationships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan—a land grown foreign to them—determined to revolutionize women’s education. Based on in-depth archival research in Japan and in the United States, including decades of letters from between the three women and their American host families, Daughters of the Samurai is beautifully, cinematically written, a fascinating lens through which to view an extraordinary historical moment.
Download or read book Stranger in the Shogun s City written by Amy Stanley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo—the city that would become Tokyo—and a portrait of a city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West. The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces—and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval—she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan. During this pivotal moment in Japanese history, Tsuneno bounces from tenement to tenement, marries a masterless samurai, and eventually enters the service of a famous city magistrate. Tsuneno’s life provides a window into 19th-century Japanese culture—and a rare view of an extraordinary woman who sacrificed her family and her reputation to make a new life for herself, in defiance of social conventions. “A compelling story, traced with meticulous detail and told with exquisite sympathy” (The Wall Street Journal), Stranger in the Shogun’s City is “a vivid, polyphonic portrait of life in 19th-century Japan [that] evokes the Shogun era with panache and insight” (National Review of Books).
Download or read book The Samurai s Wife see ISBN 978 1 4299 6167 7 written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from the Shogun's court at Edo, Most Honorable Investigator Sano Ichiro begins the most challenging case of his career. Upon the insistence of his strong-willed and beautiful wife Reiko, Sano arrives with her at the emperor's palace to unmask the murderer--who possesses the secret of kiai, "the spirit city," a powerful scream that can kill instantly. A high Kyoto official is the victim. Treading carefully through a web of spies, political intrigue, forbidden passions, and intricate plots, Sano and Reiko must struggle to stay ahead of the palace storm--and outwit a cunning killer. But as they soon discover, solving the case means more than their survival. For if they fail, Japan could be consumed in the bloodiest war it has ever seen... A legendary land comes alive in this compelling murder mystery set in seventeenth-century Japan. Filled with finely drawn characters and suspenseful plot twists, The Samurai's Wife is a novel as complex, vivid, and artful as the glorious, lost world it portrays.
Download or read book The Last Samurai written by Helen DeWitt and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Called “remarkable” (The Wall Street Journal) and “an ambitious, colossal debut novel” (Publishers Weekly), Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is back in print at last Helen DeWitt’s 2000 debut, The Last Samurai, was “destined to become a cult classic” (Miramax). The enterprising publisher sold the rights in twenty countries, so “Why not just, ‘destined to become a classic?’” (Garth Risk Hallberg) And why must cultists tell the uninitiated it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise? Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well. J. S. Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when these succeed with the boy Ludo, he causes havoc at school and is home again in a month. (Is he a prodigy, a genius? Readers looking over Ludo’s shoulder find themselves easily reading Greek and more.) Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai. But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn’t know: his father’s name. At eleven, inspired by his own take on the classic film, he sets out on a secret quest for the father he never knew. He’ll be punched, sliced, and threatened with retribution. He may not live to see twelve. Or he may find a real samurai and save a mother who thinks boredom a fate worse than death.
Download or read book Bundori written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Villard. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sequel to the acclaimed novel Shinju again features detective Sano Ichiro as he trails a serial killer stalking feudal Japan. In 1689, an all-powerful shogun controls the state, surrounded by bitter machinations and political intrigues. When an ancient tradition suddenly and brutally reappears, Sano risks everything to bring the killer to justice. “Bundori is terrific. . . . So good you won’t want to put it down, even to get off a plane. . . . [Laura Joh] Rowland hits her stride as a writer who can deal equally well with the pacing of plot and the nuances of character development. . . . Rowland clearly knows how to build suspense and action, a talent that she demonstrates with great skill.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune “Bundori is one of those mysteries in which the itch to find out whodunit recedes before the pleasure of prowling through a different world.”—Washington Post Book World “Sano may carry a sword and wear a kimono, but you’ll immediately recognize him as an ancestor of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade.”—Denver Post “A colorful pictorial style that conveys . . . excitement and . . . danger.”—The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book To be a Sailor s Wife written by Hanna Hagmark-Cooper and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The duality of maritime family life, the relationship between reconstruction and discourse and the symbolic status of the seafarer’s wife are at the core of this book, which brings maritime women’s experiences to the fore, widening the perspective of maritime history. Based on the collected life stories of seafarers’ wives from the Åland Islands in Baltic Sea, Hanna Hagmark-Cooper draws attention to the cyclical nature of maritime family life and to the seafarers’ wives’ perception of leading two parallel lives: one when they are on their own and one with their husbands at home. The author considers how discourses change over time and colour narratives, and she investigates the women’s attitudes to the myths surrounding the image of the seafarer’s wife.
Download or read book Lady Gracia written by 三浦綾子 and published by IBC PUBLISHING. This book was released on 2004-07 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Samurai Widow written by Judith Jacklin Belushi and published by Carroll & Graf Pub. This book was released on 1990 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widow of John Belushi describes her life with and without the late actor and comedian, beginning with her reactions to Belushi's tragic death in 1982 and chronicling her struggle to come to terms with grief and make a new life
Download or read book The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai written by Barbara Lazar and published by Tinder Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I am Kozaisho: Fifth daughter, Woman-For-Play, teller of stories, lover, wife and Flower Samurai. In the rich, dazzling, brutal world of twelfth century Japan, one young girl begins her epic journey, from the warmth of family to the Village of Outcasts. Marked out by an auspicious omen, she is trained in the ancient warrior arts of the samurai. But it is through the power of storytelling that she learns to fight her fate, twisting her life onto a path even she could not have imagined...
Download or read book The Samurai s Garden written by Gail Tsukiyama and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2008-06-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for this extraordinary story. A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.
Download or read book Samurai Women 1184 1877 written by Stephen Turnbull and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-20 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From when the Empress Jingo-kogo led an invasion of Korea while pregnant with the future Emperor Ojin, tales of female Japanese warriors have emerged from Japan's rich history. Using material that has never been translated into English before, this book presents the story of Japan's female warriors for the first time, revealing the role of the women of the samurai class in all their many manifestations, investigating their weapons, equipment, roles, training and belief systems. Crucially, as well as describing the women who were warriors in their own right, like Hauri Tsuruhime and the women of Aizu, this book also looks at occasions when women became the power behind the throne, ruling and warring through the men around them.
Download or read book Shinju written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-14 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the culprit was forbidden love. Everyone but newly appointed yoriki Sano Ichiro. Despite the official verdict and warnings from his superiors, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People suspects the deaths weren't just a tragedy -- they were murder. Risking his family's good name and his own life, Sano will search for a killer across every level of society -- determined to find answers to a mystery no one wants solved. No one but Sano... As subtle and beautiful as the culture it evokes, Shinju vividly re-creates a world of ornate tearooms and guady pleasure-palaces, cloistered mountaintop convents and dealthy prisons. Part love story, part myster, Shinju is a tour that will dazzle and entertain all who enter its world. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Laura Joh Rowland's The Shogun's Daughter.
Download or read book Samurai William written by Giles Milton and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1611 an astonishing letter arrived at the East India Trading Company in London after a tortuous seven-year journey. Englishman William Adams was one of only twenty-four survivors of a fleet of ships bound for Asia, and he had washed up in the forbidden land of Japan. The traders were even more amazed to learn that, rather than be horrified by this strange country, Adams had fallen in love with the barbaric splendour of Japan - and decided to settle. He had forged a close friendship with the ruthless Shogun, taken a Japanese wife and sired a new, mixed-race family. Adams' letter fired up the London merchants to plan a new expedition to the Far East, with designs to trade with the Japanese and use Adams' contacts there to forge new commercial links. Samurai William brilliantly illuminates a world whose horizons were rapidly expanding eastwards.
Download or read book Red Chrysanthemum written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2007-10-02 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Joh Rowland draws on the tradition of the classic film Rashomon to bring us a masterful tale of intrigue and treachery, in Red Chrysanthemum. July 1698. Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to become the shogun's second-in-command, is investigating rumors of a plot to overthrow the ruling regime. When the investigation brings Sano's deputy Hirata to Lord Mori's estate, he is shocked to find Lord Mori murdered and grotesquely mutilated in his own bed, and Sano's pregnant wife, Reiko, lying beside him. The only solid clue is a chrysanthemum soaked in blood. Reiko's account of her actions is anything but solid. She insists that she went undercover to Lord Mori's estate in order to investigate claims that he molested and murdered young boys. But when Sano inspects the crime scene, he finds no trace of what Reiko described. And every other witness tells a different story: Lady Mori alleges that Reiko was Lord Mori's scorned mistress and murdered him for revenge. And Lord Mori himself, speaking through a medium, claims his murder was part of Sano's plot to overthrow the shogun! Unless Sano can prove his wife's unlikely claims, both he and Reiko—and their unborn child—face execution for treason. Sano fights desperately to save his family and his honor.
