Download or read book Sho gun written by James Clavell and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavell After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne's loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss, and he is torn between two worlds that will each be forever changed. Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shōgun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but also one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shōgun is, as the New York Times put it, "...not only something you read--you live it." Provocative, absorbing, and endlessly fascinating, there is only one: Shōgun.

Download or read book Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun written by Rhoda Blumberg and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1853, few Japanese people knew that a country called America even existed. For centuries, Japan had isolated itself from the outside world by refusing to trade with other countries and even refusing to help shipwrecked sailors, foreign or Japanese. The country's people still lived under a feudal system like that of Europe in the Middle Ages. But everything began to change when American Commodore Perry and his troops sailed to the Land of the Rising Sun, bringing with them new science and technology, and a new way of life.

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 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 Paladin Unbound written by Jeffrey Speight and published by Literary Wanderlust. This book was released on 2021-07 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last of a dying breed, a holy warrior must rise up against a growing darkness in Evelium. The most unlikely of heroes, a lowly itinerant mercenary, Umhra the Peacebreaker is shunned by society for his mongrel half-Orc blood. Desperate to find work for himself and his band of fighters, Umhra agrees to help solve a rash of mysterious disappearances, but uncovers a larger, more insidious plot to overthrow the natural order of Evelium in the process. As Umhra journeys into the depths of Telsidor's Keep to search for the missing people, he confronts an ancient evil and, after suffering a great loss, turns to the god he disavowed for help. Compelled to save the kingdom he loves, can he defeat the enemy while protecting his true identity, or must he risk everything?

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 The Shogun s Daughter written by Robert Ames Bennet and published by A. C. McCLURG & CO.. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Example in this ebook CHAPTER I—Eastern Seas My first cruise as a midshipman in the navy of the United States began a short month too late for me to share in the honors of the Mexican War. In other words, I came in at the foot of the service, with all the grades above me fresh-stocked with comparatively young and vigorous officers. As a consequence, the rate of promotion was so slow that the Summer of 1851 found me, at the age of twenty-four, still a middie, with my lieutenancy ever receding, like a will-o’-the-wisp, into the future. Had I chosen a naval career through necessity, I might have continued to endure. But to the equal though younger heir of one of the largest plantations in South Carolina, the pay of even a post captain would have been of small concern. It is, therefore, hardly necessary to add that I had been lured into the service by the hope of winning fame and glory. That my choice should have fallen upon the navy rather than the army may have been due to the impulse of heredity. According to family traditions and records, one of my ancestors was the famous English seaman Will Adams, who served Queen Elizabeth in the glorious fight against the Spanish Armada and afterwards piloted a Dutch ship through the dangerous Straits of Magellan and across the vast unchartered expanse of the Pacific to the mysterious island empire, then known as Cipango or Zipangu. History itself verifies that wonderful voyage and the still more wonderful fact of my ancestor’s life among the Japanese as one of the nobles and chief counsellors of the great Emperor Iyeyasu. So highly was the advice of the bold Englishman esteemed by the Emperor that he was never permitted to return home. For many years he dwelt honorably among that most peculiar of Oriental peoples, aiding freely the few English and Dutch who ventured into the remote Eastern seas. He had aided even the fanatical Portuguese and Spaniards, who, upon his arrival, had sought to have him and his handful of sick and starving shipmates executed as pirates. So it was he lived and died a Japanese noble, and was buried with all honor. With the blood of such a man in my veins, it is not strange that I turned to the sea. Yet it is no less strange that three years in the service should bring me to an utter weariness of the dull naval routine. Notable as were the achievements of our navy throughout the world in respect to exploration and other peaceful triumphs, it has ever surprised me that in the absence of war and promotion I should have lingered so long in my inferior position. In war the humiliation of servitude to seniority may be thrust from thought by the hope of winning superior rank through merit. Deprived of this opportunity, I could not but chafe under my galling subjection to the commands of men never more than my equals in social rank and far too often my inferiors. The climax came after a year on the China Station, to which I had obtained an assignment in the hope of renewed action against the arrogant Celestials. Disappointed in this, and depressed by a severe spell of fever contracted at Honkong, I resigned the service at Shanghai, and took passage for New York, by way of San Francisco and the Horn, on the American clipper Sea Flight. We cleared for the Sandwich Islands August the twenty-first, 1851. The second noon found us safe across the treacherous bars of the Yangtse-Kiang and headed out across the Eastern Sea, the southwest monsoon bowling us along at a round twelve knots. To be continue in this ebook

Download or read book Micro written by Michael Crichton and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company—only to find themselves cast out into the rain forest, with nothing but their scientific expertise and wits to protect them. In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting, feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up, Nanigen MicroTechnologies, which dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii. But once in the rainforest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Michael Crichton fashion. Completed by visionary science writer Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.

Download or read book Shogun s Painted Culture written by Timon Screech and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this penetrating analysis of a little-explored area of Japanese cultural history, Timon Screech reassesses the career of the chief minister Matsudaira Sadanobu, who played a key role in defining what we think of as Japanese culture today. Aware of how visual representations could support or undermine regimes, Sadanobu promoted painting to advance his own political aims and improve the shogunate's image. As an antidote to the hedonistic ukiyo-e, or floating world, tradition, which he opposed, Sadanobu supported attempts to construct a new approach to painting modern life. At the same time, he sought to revive historical and literary painting, favouring such artists as the flamboyant, innovative Maruyama Okyo. After the city of Kyoto was destroyed by fire in 1788, its reconstruction provided the stage for the renewal of Japan's iconography of power, the consummation of the 'shogun's painted culture'. “Screech’s ideas are fascinating, often brilliant, and well grounded. . . . [Shogun’s Painted Culture] presents a thorough analysis of aspects of the early modern Japanese world rarely observed in such detail and never before treated to such an eloquent handling in the English language.”—CAA Reviews “[A] stylishly written and provocative cultural history.”—Monumenta Nipponica “As in his admirable Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700-1820, Screech lavishes learning and scholarly precision, but remains colloquial in thought and eminently readable.”—Japan Times Timon Screech is Senior Lecturer in the history of Japanese art at SOAS, University of London, and Senior Research Associate at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He is the author of several books on Japanese history and culture, including Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700–1820 (Reaktion, 1999).

Download or read book The Shogun s Daughter written by Laura Joh Rowland and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Joh Rowland's thrilling series set in Feudal Japan is as gripping and entertaining as ever with The Shogun's Daughter. Japan, 1704. In an elegant mansion a young woman named Tsuruhime lies on her deathbed, attended by her nurse. Smallpox pustules cover her face. Incense burns, to banish the evil spirits of disease. After Tsuruhime takes her last breath, the old woman watching from the doorway says, "Who's going to tell the Shogun his daughter is dead?" The death of the Shogun's daughter has immediate consequences on his regime. There will be no grandchild to leave the kingdom. Faced with his own mortality and beset by troubles caused by the recent earthquake, he names as his heir Yoshisato, the seventeen-year-old son he only recently discovered was his. Until five months ago, Yoshisato was raised as the illegitimate son of Yanagisawa, the shogun's favorite advisor. Yanagisawa is also the longtime enemy of Sano Ichiro. Sano doubts that Yoshisato is really the Shogun's son, believing it's more likely a power-play by Yanagisawa. When Sano learns that Tsuruhime's death may have been a murder, he sets off on a dangerous investigation that leads to more death and destruction as he struggles to keep his pregnant wife, Reiko, and his son safe. Instead, he and his family become the accused. And this time, they may not survive the day.

Download or read book Shinsengumi written by Romulus Hillsborough and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps is the true story of the notorious samurai corps formed in 1863 to arrest or kill the enemies of the Tokugawa Shogun. The only book in English about the Shinsengumi, it focuses on the corps' two charismatic leaders, Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo, both impeccable swordsmen. It is a history-in-brief of the final years of the Bakufu, which collapsed in 1867 with the restoration of Imperial rule. In writing Shinsengumi, Hillsborough referred mostly to Japanese-language primary sources, including letters, memoirs, journals, interviews, and eyewitness accounts, as well as definitive biographies and histories of the era. The fall of the shogun's government (Tokugawa Bakufu, or simply Bakufu) in 1868, which had ruled Japan for over two and a half centuries, was the greatest event in modern Japanese history. The revolution, known as the Meiji Restoration, began with the violent reaction of samurai to the Bakufu's decision in 1854 to open the theretofore isolated country to "Western barbarians." Though opening the country was unavoidable, it was seen as a sign of weakness by the samurai who clamored to "expel the barbarians." Those samurai plotted to overthrow the shogun and restore the holy emperor to his ancient seat of power. Screaming "heaven's revenge," they wielded their swords with a vengeance upon those loyal to the shogun. They unleashed a wave of terror at the center of the revolution--the emperor's capital of Kyoto. Murder and assassination were rampant. By the end of 1862, hordes of renegade samurai, called ronin, had transformed the streets of the Imperial Capital into a "sea of blood." The shogun's administrators were desperate to stop the terror. A band of expert swordsmen was formed. It was given the name Shinsengumi ("Newly Selected Corps")--and commissioned to eliminate the ronin and other enemies of the Bakufu. With unrestrained brutality bolstered by an official sanction to kill, the Shinsengumi soon became the shogun's most dreaded security force. In this vivid historical narrative of the Shinsengumi, the only one in the English language, author Romulus Hillsborough paints a provocative and thrilling picture of this fascinating period in Japanese history.

Download or read book The Usurper written by Judith Gautier and published by . This book was released on 1884 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gai Jin written by James Clavell and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-05 with total page 1589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dynamic epic novel of political upheaval and societal change in late 1800s Japan, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavell This epic novel by master writer James Clavell, loosely based on the Namamugi Incident and Anglo-Satsuma War that took place in the late 1800s, is a richly researched, panoramic view of Japan’s budding relationship with the Western powers, its sweeping societal changes, and the political upheaval that followed. As Malcolm Struan, the son of Culum and Tess Struan, and a small band of Westerners travel down the Tōkaidō road, they are attacked by two Satsuma samurai, who mortally wound John Canterbury and seriously injure Malcolm, who then finds reprieve in the merchant village of Yokohama after a narrow escape facilitated by the unscathed Angelique. Angelique Richaud, Malcolm’s penniless but beautiful French companion, is thrown into a world of political intrigue, fierce devotion, unstable family dynamics, blackmail, and secrets as the trading houses battle for supremacy. With a cast of dynamic and fully recognized characters, Gai-Jin spins a tale of passionate love affairs, devastating loss, intense power struggles, and the fight to survive and thrive in a hostile new land that will leave readers longing for another foray into Clavell’s extraordinary Asian Saga.

Download or read book The Deshima Diaries written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 941 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English translation of the marginalia, or marginal notes, that were added to the text of the Deshima Diaries from the 1670's onwards in order to provide the Dutch chief of Deshima with a quick reference to the notes of his predecessors. This volume covers the marginalia from the 1740-4800 diaries. Providing the general public, and especially those who have neither a command of Dutch nor of Japanese access to a fascinating period of Japanese history in which the Dutch played such a singular role. At the same time, the serious scholar wil obtain an easy key to the extremely rich holdings of the archive of the Deshima trading factory, which covers a shelf length of more than forty meters in the National Archives in the Netherlands, but which has been only rarely utilized by historians, Japanologists or other scholars. In the 1740s, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was in many ways at the height of its power. The second half of the 18th century saw the decline of the Company from being the high and mighty - and only - trading company which covered from its base in Batavia (Jakarta) all of Asia with a network that stretched from Basra in Persia to Nagasaki in Japan, to becoming a mere shadow of its former self with only a tenous hold on a few possessions in the Indonesian archipelago. By the end of the century, it had lost its establishments in South Africa, India and Ceylon to the British, and its flleet was gone. However, as a trading company, it was dead, but as a proto-colonial producer it was actually doing quite well. The basis of the present text are the Deshima Dagregisters: their original tables of contents, Vol. VII (1740-1760), Vol. VIII (1760-1780), Vol. IX (1780-1790), Vol. X (1790-1800) published in the Intercontinenta Series Nos. 18 (1993), 19 (1995), 20 (1996), and 21 (1997) by the Institute for the History of European Expansion at Leiden University. Scientific Publications of the Japan-Netherlands Institute No. 21. Published by the Japan-Netherlands Institute, Tokyo 2004 (original ISBN 4930921066).

Download or read book The Shogun s Silver Telescope written by Timon Screech and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was the world's biggest trading organization until the twentieth century. It was originally a spice trading organization, and its existence was precarious in its early years. But its governors soon began to think bigger. A decade after itsfoundation, they started to plan voyages to more fabulous places, notably Japan. Japan had silver, was cold in winter, and had no sheep, so was a perfect market for England's main export, woollen cloth. The Company planned to add to its spice-runs, sailing back and forth to Japan, exchanging woolfor silver. This could be done quickly and easily, over the top of Russia - or so the maps of the day suggested (these same maps also showed Japan twenty times too large, about the size of India).Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had got there before them, the Company prepared a special present to impress and win over their Japanese hosts. They chose as their first gift a silver telescope. The expedition carrying the telescope departed in 1611, and the Shogun was finally presented with thetelescope in the name of King James I in 1613. It was the first telescope ever to leave Europe, and the first made as a presentation item. Before this voyage had even returned, the Company had dispatched another with an equally stunning cargo: nearly a hundred oil paintings.This is the story of these two extraordinary cargoes: what they meant for the fortunes of the Company, what the choice of them says about the seventeenth century England from which they came, and what effect they had on the quizzical Asian rulers to whom they were given.

Download or read book Stranger in the Shogun s City written by Amy Stanley and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Nominated for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award * Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography * A vivid, deeply researched 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 great 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. Immersive and fascinating, Stranger in the Shogun’s City is a revelatory work of history, layered with rich detail and delivered with beautiful prose, about the life of a woman, a city, and a culture.

Download or read book Hero Living written by Rudy Reyes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The star of HBO's Generation Kill and the real-life warrior from the New York Times bestseller presents his empowering philosophy. In his publishing debut, Rudy Reyes introduces his warrior philosophy of "Hero Living": part Homer, part Joseph Campbell, part Bruce Lee, and part Spider-Man. He outlines the various stages in the journey to bring forth the hero within: recognizing the hero's call, following the hero's path, and returning from the battlefield with the hero's hard- earned wisdom. Taking readers step-by-step through his program, Reyes draws from his own heroic story of how he triumphed over his harrowing childhood experiences of poverty and abandonment. Rather than giving up hope, he heeded the hero's call to live up to his full potential-first as a martial-arts champion, then as an elite warrior in the mountains of Afghanistan and sands of Iraq, and finally in his post-Marines life as a personal trainer, actor, and motivational speaker.