Download or read book Kamusari Tales Told at Night written by Shion Miura and published by AmazonCrossing. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Shion Miura, award-winning author of The Easy Life in Kamusari, comes a spirit-lifting novel about tradition, first love, and ancient lore in a Japanese mountain village. It's been a year since Yuki Hirano left home--or more precisely, was booted from it--to study forestry in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. Being a woodsman is not the future he imagined, but his name means "courage," and Yuki hopes to live up to it. He's adapting to his job and learning constantly. In between, he records local legends--tales pulsing with life, passion, and wondrous gods. Kamusari has other charms as well. One of them is Nao. Yuki's crush on the only other young single person in the village isn't a secret. Yet how impressed can she be with someone at least five years younger who makes less money and doesn't even own a car? More daunting, she's in love with another man. Finally finding his place among the villagers, a feeling deepened by his crush, Yuki seems headed for a dream life of adventure and camaraderie--and Nao could be the missing piece of that dream.
Download or read book The Easy Life in Kamusari written by Shion Miura and published by AmazonCrossing. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Shion Miura, the award-winning author of The Great Passage, comes a rapturous novel where the contemporary and the traditional meet amid the splendor of Japan's mountain way of life. Yuki Hirano is just out of high school when his parents enroll him, against his will, in a forestry training program in the remote mountain village of Kamusari. No phone, no internet, no shopping. Just a small, inviting community where the most common expression is "take it easy." At first, Yuki is exhausted, fumbles with the tools, asks silly questions, and feels like an outcast. Kamusari is the last place a city boy from Yokohama wants to spend a year of his life. But as resistant as he might be, the scent of the cedars and the staggering beauty of the region have a pull. Yuki learns to fell trees and plant saplings. He begins to embrace local festivals, he's mesmerized by legends of the mountain, and he might be falling in love. In learning to respect the forest on Mt. Kamusari for its majestic qualities and its inexplicable secrets, Yuki starts to appreciate Kamusari's harmony with nature and its ancient traditions. In this warm and lively coming-of-age story, Miura transports us from the trappings of city life to the trials, mysteries, and delights of a mythical mountain forest.
Download or read book The Forest of Wool and Steel written by Natsu Miyashita and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD ''A mesmerising reading experience for all of us seeking a meaningful life' JAPAN TIMES What he experienced that day wasn’t life-changing . . . It was life-making. Tomura is startled by the hypnotic sound of a piano being tuned in his school. It seeps into his soul and transports him to the forests, dark and gleaming, that surround his beloved mountain village. From that moment, he is determined to discover more. Under the tutelage of three master piano-tuners – one humble, one jovial, one ill-tempered – Tomura embarks on his training, never straying too far from a single, unfathomable question: do I have what it takes? Set in small-town Japan, this warm and mystical story is for the lucky few who have found their calling – and for the rest of us who are still searching. It shows that the road to finding one’s purpose is a winding path, often filled with treacherous doubts and, for those who persevere, astonishing moments of revelation. Mega-bestselling winner of the Japan Booksellers Award, selected by bookshop staff as the book they most wanted to hand-sell: A tender and uplifting novel for fans of A WHOLE LIFE by Robert Seethaler. [Contains 5 exquisite hand-drawn illustrations]
Download or read book The Book of Tokyo written by Hideo Furukawa and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2015-06-12 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’
Download or read book Things Remembered and Things Forgotten written by Kyoko Nakajima and published by Sort of Books. This book was released on 2021-05-13 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'If we want to understand what has been lost to time, there is no way other than through the exercise of imagination ... imagination applied with delicate rather than broad strokes'. So wrote the award winning Japanese author Kyoko Nakajima of her story, Things Remembered and Things Forgotten, a piece that illuminates, as if by throwing a switch, the layers of wartime devastation that lie just below the surface of Tokyo's insistently modern culture. The ten acclaimed stories in this collection are pervaded by an air of Japanese ghostliness. In beautifully crafted and deceptively light prose, Nakajima portrays men and women beset by cultural amnesia and unaware of how haunted they are - by fragmented memories of war and occupation, by fading traditions, by buildings lost to firestorms and bulldozers, by the spirits of their recent past.
Download or read book Yuki Means Happiness written by Alison Jean Lester and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2018-01-11 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A mystery, a love story and a fascinating encounter with a different culture, Yuki Means Happiness is an outstanding novel' John Boyne Diana is young and uneasy in a new relationship when she leaves America and moves halfway around the world to Tokyo seeking adventure. In Japan she takes a job as a nanny to two-year-old Yuki Yoshimura and sets about adapting to a routine of English practice, ballet and swimming lessons, and Japanese cooking. But as Diana becomes increasingly attached to Yuki she also becomes aware that everything in the Yoshimura household isn't as it first seemed. Before long, she must ask herself if she is brave enough to put everything on the line for the child under her care, confronting her own demons at every step of the way. Yuki Means Happiness is a rich and powerfully illuminating portrait of the intense relationship between a young woman and her small charge, as well as one woman's journey to discover her true self.
Download or read book A True Novel written by Minae Mizumura and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 883 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remaking of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights set in postwar Japan A True Novel begins in New York in the 1960s, where we meet Taro, a relentlessly ambitious Japanese immigrant trying to make his fortune. Flashbacks and multilayered stories reveal his life: an impoverished upbringing as an orphan, his eventual rise to wealth and success—despite racial and class prejudice—and an obsession with a girl from an affluent family that has haunted him all his life. A True Novel then widens into an examination of Japan’s westernization and the emergence of a middle class. The winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Literature Prize, Mizumura has written a beautiful novel, with love at its core, that reveals, above all, the power of storytelling.
Download or read book Touring The Land of the Dead written by Maki Kashimada and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A delicate, layered exploration of family, trauma, and memory . . . An intriguing introduction to a significant voice in contemporary Japanese fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews Two tales about memory, loss and love, both told with stylistic inventiveness and breath-taking sensitivity. Taichi was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family’s fortune dried up years during her childhood, she lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother’s refusal to accept her family’s new station in life. When Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel where she spent time as a child, she decides to take her sick husband, despite the cost. But the overnight visit triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family. Modelled on a classic story by Junichiro Tanizaki, Ninety-Nine Kisses is the second story in this book and it portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighbourhood of contemporary Tokyo. “Magical.” —The Guardian, Most Anticipated Fiction of 2021 “An ethereal novel combining two tales exploring memory, love, and loss.” —Vogue (UK) “Kashimada’s writing is exceptional.” —The Spectator “While Kashimada’s stories, like Murakami’s, resist easy interpretation, the former revel in the beauty of experience, whether sorrowful or joyous, affirming life in all its strangeness, horror and mystery.” —The Times Literary Supplement (UK) “Only Kashimada can create this kind of world.” —Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
Download or read book Demon in the Teahouse written by Dorothy Hoobler and published by Perfection Learning. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a series of fires in Japan's capital points to foul-play, the famous samurai Judge Ooka puts 14-year-old Seikei on the case to discover who's behind them. Determined to prove his worth, Seikei poses as a teahouse attendant to gather information, and winds up entering the mysterious worlds of geishas and revenge.
Download or read book Masquerade written by Kit Williams and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On his way to deliver a splendid necklace to the Sun from the Moon, Jack Hare is diverted by a series of odd characters and when he finally reaches his destination he realizes that the necklace is missing. The reader is invited to answer several riddles and solve the mystery from clues given in the text.
Download or read book Taiko written by Eiji Yoshikawa and published by Vertical, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-08-03 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tempestuous closing decades of the sixteenth century, the Empire of Japan writhes in chaos as the shogunate crumbles and rival warlords battle for supremacy. Warrior monks in their armed citadels block the road to the capital; castles are destroyed, villages plundered, fields put to the torch. Amid this devastation, three men dream of uniting the nation. At one extreme is the charismatic but brutal Nobunaga, whose ruthless ambition crushes all before him. At the opposite pole is the cold, deliberate Ieyasu, wise in counsel, brave in battle, mature beyond his years. But the keystone of this triumvirate is the most memorable of all, Hideyoshi, who rises from the menial post of sandal bearer to become Taiko--absolute ruler of Japan in the Emperor's name. When Nobunaga emerges from obscurity by destroying an army ten times the size of his own, he allies himself with Ieyasu, whose province is weak, but whose canniness and loyalty make him invaluable. Yet it is the scrawny, monkey-faced Hideyoshi--brash, impulsive, and utterly fearless--who becomes the unlikely savior of this ravaged land. Born the son of a farmer, he takes on the world with nothing but his bare hands and his wits, turning doubters into loyal servants, rivals into faithful friends, and enemies into allies. In all this he uses a piercing insight into human nature that unlocks castle gates, opens men's minds, and captures women's hearts. For Hideyoshi's passions are not limited to war and intrigue-his faithful wife, Nene, holds his love dear, even when she must share it; the chaste Oyu, sister of Hideyoshi's chief strategist, falls prey to his desires; and the seductive Chacha, whom he rescues from the fiery destruction of her father's castle, tempts his weakness. As recounted by Eiji Yoshikawa, author of the international best-seller Musashi, Taiko tells many stories: of the fury of Nobunaga and the fatal arrogance of the black-toothed Yoshimoto; of the pathetic downfall of the House of Takeda; how the scorned Mitsuhide betrayed his master; how once impregnable ramparts fell as their defenders died gloriously. Most of all, though, Taiko is the story of how one man transformed a nation through the force of his will and the depth of his humanity. Filled with scenes of pageantry and violence, acts of treachery and self-sacrifice, tenderness and savagery, Taiko combines the panoramic spectacle of a Kurosawa epic with a vivid evocation of feudal Japan.
Download or read book Territory of Light written by Yuko Tsushima and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the most significant contemporary Japanese writers, a haunting, dazzling novel of loss and rebirth “Yuko Tsushima is one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation.” —Foumiko Kometani, The New York Times I was puzzled by how I had changed. But I could no longer go back . . . It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become. At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire, and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time. It won the inaugural Noma Literary Prize.
Download or read book Temple Alley Summer written by Sachiko Kashiwaba and published by Yonder. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award A July/August 2021 Kids' Indie Next Pick A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection From renowned Japanese children's author Sachiko Kashiwaba, Temple Alley Summer is a fantastical and mysterious adventure featuring the living dead, a magical pearl, and a suspiciously nosy black cat named Kiriko. Kazu knows something odd is going on when he sees a girl in a white kimono sneak out of his house in the middle of the night--was he dreaming? Did he see a ghost? Things get even stranger when he shows up to school the next day to see the very same figure sitting in his classroom. No one else thinks it's weird, and, even though Kazu doesn't remember ever seeing her before, they all seem convinced that the ghost-girl Akari has been their friend for years! When Kazu's summer project to learn about Kimyo Temple draws the meddling attention of his mysterious neighbor Ms. Minakami and his secretive new classmate Akari, Kazu soon learns that not everything is as it seems in his hometown. Kazu discovers that Kimyo Temple is linked to a long forgotten legend about bringing the dead to life, which could explain Akari's sudden appearance--is she a zombie or a ghost? Kazu and Akari join forces to find and protect the source of the temple's power. An unfinished story in a magazine from Akari's youth might just hold the key to keeping Akari in the world of the living, and it's up to them to find the story's ending and solve the mystery as the adults around them conspire to stop them from finding the truth.
Download or read book Pax Tokugawana written by 芳賀徹 and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Great Passage written by Shion Miura and published by Amazon Crossing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning story of love, friendship, and the power of human connection. Kohei Araki believes that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years of creating dictionaries, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement. He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime--a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics--whom he swipes from his company's sales department. Along with an energetic, if reluctant, new recruit and an elder linguistics scholar, Majime is tasked with a career-defining accomplishment: completing The Great Passage, a comprehensive 2,900-page tome of the Japanese language. On his journey, Majime discovers friendship, romance, and an incredible dedication to his work, inspired by the words that connect us all.
Download or read book Scattered All Over the Earth written by Yoko Tawada and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the 2022 National Book Award Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as “the land of sushi.” Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): “homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language.” As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they’re all next off to Stockholm. With its intrepid band of companions, Scattered All Over the Earth (the first novel of a trilogy) may bring to mind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or a surreal Wind in the Willows, but really is just another sui generis Yoko Tawada masterwork.
Download or read book The Beast Player written by Nahoko Uehashi and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elin's family has an important responsibility: caring for the fearsome water serpents that form the core of their kingdom's army. So when some of the creatures mysteriously die, Elin's mother is sentenced to death as punishment. With her last breath, she manages to send her daughter to safety. Alone and far from home, Elin soon discovers that she can communicate with both the terrifying water serpents and the majestic flying beasts that guard her queen. This skill gives her great power, but it also involves her in deadly plots that could cost her life. Can she save herself and prevent her beloved beasts from being used as tools of war? Or is there no escaping the terrible battles to come?
