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Japan
Adult Fiction |
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 Across the Nightingale Floor: Tales of the Otroi
by Lian Hearn
Published 2003 by Riverhead Books
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This first book in a new epic trilogy has already become a bestselling sensation in England and Australia, earning comparisons to Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It begins with Legend of a Nightingale Floor in a black-walled fortress-a floor that sings in alarm at the step of an assassin. It will take all the skills of an ancient Tribe, and all the passion of true courage, for one orphaned youth named Takeo to discover the magical destiny that awaits him...across the nightingale floor.
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 After the Quake: Stories
by Haruki Murakami
Published 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf
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In 1995, the physical and social landscape of Japan was transformed by two events: the Kobe earthquake, in January, which destroyed thousands of lives, and the poison-gas attacks in the Tokyo subways in March, during the morning rush hour. Following these twin disasters, Haruki Murakami abandoned his life abroad and returned home to confront his country?s grief. The subway attack led to his recent Underground. And out of the quake come these six stories, set in the months between natural catastrophe and man-made terrorism. His characters find their resolutely normal everyday lives undone by events even more surreal (yet somehow believable) than we have come to expect in his fiction.
An electronics salesman, abruptly deserted by his wife, is entrusted to deliver a mysterious package but gets more than he bargained for at the receiving end; a Thai chauffeur takes his troubled charge to a seer, who penetrates her deepest sorrow; and, in the unforgettable title story, a boy acknowledges a shattering secret about his past that will change his life forever.
But the most compelling character of all is the earthquake itself ? slipping into and out of view almost imperceptibly, but nonetheless reaching deep into the lives of these forlorn citizens of the apocalypse. The terrible damage visible all around is, in fact, less extreme than the inconsolable howl of a nation indelibly scarred ? an experience in which Murakami discovers many truths about compassion, courage, and the nature of human suffering.
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 The Assassin's Touch
by Laura Joh Rowland
Published 2005 by St. Martin's Minotaur
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May 1695. During a horse race at Edo Castle the chief of the shogun’s intelligence service, Ejima Senzaemon, drops dead as his horse gallops across the finish line—the fourth in a recent series of sudden deaths of high-ranking officials. Sano Ichiro is ordered to investigate, despite his recent promotion to chamberlain and his new duties as the shogun’s second-in-command.
Meanwhile, Sano’s wife, Reiko, is invited to attend the trial of Yugao, a beautiful young woman accused of stabbing her parents and sister to death. The woman has confessed, but the magistrate believes there is more to this case than meets the eye. He delays his verdict and asks Reiko to prove Yugao’s guilt or innocence.
As their investigations continue, both Sano and Reiko come to realize that the man he is trying to hunt and the woman she is desperate to save are somehow connected. A single fingerprint on Ejima’s temple puts Sano on the trail of an underground movement to overthrow the regime, and in the path of an assassin with a deadly touch.
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 Black Arrow
by Ingrid J. Parker
Published 2006 by Penguin Books
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I. J. Parker's engrossing historical novels bring eleventh-century Japan to life in all its colorful, treacherous glory. As Black Arrow opens, Sugawara Akitada assumes his new post as provisional governor of Echigo, a frigid province in the far north notorious for its hostility to outsiders. But the snow that threatens to completely isolate the region is the least of his problemswhich include a local uprising, a series of brutal murders, and a mystery that's as old as the frozen hills and a lot more dangerous. Superbly written and rich in period detail, Black Arrow is another bravura performance from a master of the historical thriller.
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 The Book of Loss
by Julith Jedamus
Published 2006 by St. Martin's Press
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Set in the perfectly realized world of imperial tenth-century Japan, The Book of Loss is a gripping novel of sexual jealousy at court.
A renowned storyteller and lady-in-waiting to the Empress, the narrator is locked in a bitter rivalry with another woman for the love of a banished nobleman. Forced to observe the complex rules and social hierarchies of court life, she finds herself caught in a trap of her own making. Her machinations reach such a pitch that they threaten to undermine the rule of the Emperor himself. She records her plight, and her acidulous observations of courtly life, in her diary. Her voice is unforgettable—both foreign and utterly modern. Her sense of loss is unbearable, her love is all-consuming, and it will push her to the extremes of rivalry.
Offering the intimate seductions and betrayals of Dangerous Liaisons and The Memoirs of a Geisha, The Book of Loss takes the reader into the farthest reaches of desire, where passion rules and jealousy leads to unthinkable acts.
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 Cloud of Sparrows
by Takashi Matsuoka
Published 2002 by Delacorte Press
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It is the dawn of the New Year, 1861. After two centuries of isolation, Japan has been forced to open its doors to the West, igniting a clash of cultures and generations. And as foreign ships threaten to rain destruction on the Shogun’s castle in Edo, a small group of American missionaries has chosen this time to spread the word of their God. Among them, Emily Gibson, a woman seeking redemption from a tormented past, and Matthew Stark, a cold-eyed killer with one more death on his mind.
Neither realizes that their future in Japan has already been foreseen. For a young nobleman, Lord Genji, has dreamt that his life will be saved by an outsider in the New Year. Widely reviled as a dilettante, Lord Genji has one weapon with which to inspire awe. In his family, one in every generation is said to have the gift of prophecy. And what Lord Genji sees has struck fear in many around him. As the Shogun’s secret police chief plots Genji’s death--and the utter destruction of his entire clan--the young and untried lord must prove that he is more than the handsome womanizer of legend, famed lover of Edo’s most celebrated geisha, Lady Heiko, and that his prophetic powers are no mere fairy tale.
Forced to escape from Edo and flee to his ancestral stronghold, the spectacular Cloud of Sparrows Castle, Genji joins his fate with Emily and Stark, unaware of the dark forces that drive them. Together with Genji’s uncle, Lord Shigeru, a legendary swordsman knee-deep in the blood of his own kin, and the enigmatic Lady Heiko, the unlikely band embarks on a harrowing journey through a landscape bristling with danger--to prepare for a final battle.
Here, on a snowscape stained with blood, horror will mix with wonder, secrets will unravel, and love will duel with vengeance--as East and West, flesh and spirit, past and future, collide in ways no one--least of all Genji--could have imagined.
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 Diamond Solitaire
by Peter Lovesey
Published 2002 by Soho Crime
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Fired from the police for insubordination, Peter Diamond is reduced to working as a security guard at Harrods. There he finds a tiny Japanese girl after the store closes. He must identify her in order to save her life.
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 The Dragon King's Palace
by Laura Joh Rowland
Published 2003 by St. Martin's Minotaur
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On a whim of the shogun's mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko's friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper.
Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies-Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina. The delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters-forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures.
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 The Dragon Scroll
by Ingrid J. Parker
Published 2005 by Penguin Books
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In an adventure filled with highway bandits, unscrupulous politicians, and renegade monks, The Dragon Scroll introduces readers to the lively world of eleventh-century Japan and an irrepressible heroSugawara Akitada. On his first official assignment, Akitadaan impoverished nobleman and earnest young government clerk in the Ministry of Justiceis sent from the capital city on a nearly impossible mission to the distant province of Kazusa to discover why tax convoys are disappearing. In the politically murky world of the Japanese court, he has been set up to fail. Against the odds, the ever-resourceful Akitada, his elderly servant Seimei, and his impudent bodyguard Tora are determined to fulfill their mission and discover the truth in a town of dangerous secrets.
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 The Earthquake Bird
by Susanna Jones
Published 2001 by Mysterious Press
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 End of the World Blues
by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Published 2007 by Spectra Books
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From Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of the celebrated Arabesk series, comes a stunningly inventive novel of futuristic noir set in a world of shifting realities. Here a man is drawn into a gritty postmodern subculture and a secret kingdom of otherworldly beings to find what he lost long ago: a reason to live.
Kit Nouveau figured he’d already come to the end of the world. An Iraqi war veteran, expatriate, and part owner of Pirate Mary’s, the best Irish bar in Tokyo, Kit had settled down to await the inevitable with barely a whimper. It wasn’t exactly how Kit thought he’d end up, and he was right.
It’s going to end up a lot worse.
A teenage runaway with fifteen million dollars in stolen cash and a taste for cosplay is about to save Kit’s life in a lethal swirl of scarlet and bridal lace. Lady Neku, a.k.a. Countess of High Strange, has her own dangerous destiny to fulfill and it’s mysteriously connected to Kit’s ravaged past. Now Kit’s only hope for redemption is to save an ex-girlfriend he tragically failed once before. But everyone says it’s already too late. And she’s left behind only one ominous clue: her suicide note.
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 Fear and Trembling
by Amelie Nothomb
Published 2001 by St. Martin's Press
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According to ancient Japanese protocol, foreigners deigning to approach the emperor were to adopt a tone of fear and trembling. Terror and self-abasement conveyed respect. Amélie, our well-intentioned and eager young Western heroine in this new novel by Amélie Nothomb, goes to Japan to spend a year working at the Yumimoto Corporation. Returning to the land where she was born is the fulfillment of a dream for Amélie; working there turns into comic nightmare.
Poor Amélie can do nothing right. She starts at the bottom of the corporate ladder and immediately reveals a genius for working her way down. She delivers mail, serves tea, updates calendars, photocopies the same pages a thousand times; her job description, fluid at best, runs relentlessly downstream. But of Amélie's many failings and ill-advised breaches of protocol, the worst by far is becoming infatuated with her immediate superior, the beautiful, impeccable, and implacable Miss Mori.
Hailed by critics in France, where it won a number of prestigious awards and was a bestseller, Fear and Trembling is alternately disturbing and hilarious, unbelievable and shatteringly convincing. At its core lies a clash of wills and war of nerves that will keep readers clutching tight to the pages of this taut little novel, caught in the throes of fear, trembling, and, ultimately, delight.
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 Fudoki
by Kij Johnson
Published 2003 by Tor Books
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Enter the world of Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen--who may or may not be a figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing on the paths that lead her to death.
For she is a being who started her journey on the kami, the spirit road, as a humble tortoiseshell feline. Her family was destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city, and this loss renders her taleless, the only one left alive to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell, The Cat with a Litter of Ten, and The Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki--self and soul and home and shrine--she alone cannot keep the power of her clan together. And she cannot join another fudoki, because although she might be able to win a place within another clan, to do so would mean that she would cease to be herself.
So a small cat begins an extraordinary journey. Along the way she will attract the attention of old and ancient powers. Gods who are curious about this creature newly come to Japan's shores, and who choose to give the tortoiseshell a human shape.
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 The Ginger Tree
by Oswald Wynd
Published 2002 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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 Grass for His Pillow
by Lian Hearn
Published 2004 by Riverhead Books
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Book II of the internationally bestselling phenomenon Tales of the Otori trilogy, Grass for His Pillow returns us to a mythical, medieval Japan, in a story of clashing powers, divided loyalties, and passionate love played out on a dazzling landscape.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of Book magazine's best novels of the year, and one of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books for High School Readers (2002), Across the Nightingale Floor was an international bestseller and critical success, named "the most compelling novel to have been published this year" by the Times (London). In this second tale, we return to the land of harsh beauty and deceptive appearances where we first met Takeo — the young orphan taken up by the Otori Lord and now a closely held member of the Tribe — and his beloved Shirakawa Kaede, heir to the Maruyama and alone in the world, who must find a way to unify the domain she has inherited.
In a complex social hierarchy, amid dissembling clans and fractured allegiances, there is no place for passionate young love. Yet Takeo and Kaede, drawing on their unusual talents and hidden strengths, must make their way in this tale of longing, ambition, and intrigue. Grass for His Pillow is a tantalizing next installment in a brilliantly imaginative and critically acclaimed series.
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 The Great Fire
by Jim Murphy
Published 2006 by Scholastic Paperbacks
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More than twenty years after the classic The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard returns to fiction with a novel that in the words of Ann Patchett "is brilliant and dazzling..."
The Great Fire is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of the great conflagration of the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.
In the looming shadow of world enmities resumed, and of Asia’s coming centrality in world affairs, a man and a woman seek to recover self-reliance, balance, and tenderness, struggling to reclaim their humanity. The Great Fire is a story of love in the aftermath of war by "purely and simply, one of the greatest writers working in English today." (Michael Cunningham)
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 Hard Rain
by Barry Eisler
Published 2003 by G. P. Putnam's Sons
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In his critically acclaimed Rain Fall, Barry Eisler introduced half-Japanese, half-American freelance hitman John Rain, a dashing and dangerous hero...as likable as he is lethal. Now Eisler's back. So is Rain, the master of death by natural causes whose new target threatens the fragile political balance of an entire country.
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 The Harsh Cry of the Heron
by Lian Hearn
Published 2006 by Riverhead Books
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The epic conclusion to the bestselling Tales of the Otori-"one of the most thrilling new series of our time."* The Harsh Cry of the Heron is the rich and stirring finale to a series whose imaginative vision has enthralled millions of readers worldwide, and an extraordinary novel that stands as a thrilling achievement in its own right. A dazzling epic of warfare and sacrifice, passionate revenge, treacherous betrayal, and unconquerable love, The Harsh Cry of the Heron takes the storytelling achievement of Hearn's fantastic medieval Japanese world to startling new heights of drama and action. Fifteen years of peace and prosperity under the rule of Lord Otori Takeo and his wife Kaede is threatened by a rogue network of assassins, the resurgence of old rivalries, the arrival of foreigners bearing new weapons and religion, and an unfulfilled prophecy that Lord Takeo will die at the hand of a member of his own family. The Harsh Cry of the Heron is the ultimate conclusion to the Tales of the Otori series that both completes the characters' lives and brilliantly illuminates unexpected aspects of the entire Otori saga.
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 Honorable Enemies
by Joe Weber
Published 1994 by Putnam Adult
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 Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
Published 2005 by Vintage Contemporaries
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Memoirs of A Geisha is an epic drama about the remote and shimmeringly exotic world of Sayuri, one of Japan’s most celebrated geishas. The novel has been a beloved bestseller all over the world and is now set to become the major movie event of the year. The film stars Asia’s most celebrated movie stars including Zhang Ziyi (House of Flying Daggers; Hero), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), Gong Li (Raise The Red Lantern), and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
In this literary tour de force, novelist Arthur Golden enters a remote and shimmeringly exotic world. For the protagonist of this peerlessly observant first novel is Sayuri, one of Japan's most celebrated geisha, a woman who is both performer and courtesan, slave and goddess.
We follow Sayuri from her childhood in an impoverished fishing village, where in 1929, she is sold to a representative of a geisha house, who is drawn by the child's unusual blue-grey eyes. From there she is taken to Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto. She is nine years old. In the years that follow, as she works to pay back the price of her purchase, Sayuri will be schooled in music and dance, learn to apply the geisha's elaborate makeup, wear elaborate kimono, and care for a coiffure so fragile that it requires a special pillow. She will also acquire a magnanimous tutor and a venomous rival. Surviving the intrigues of her trade and the upheavals of war, the resourceful Sayuri is a romantic heroine on the order of Jane Eyre and Scarlett O'Hara. And Memoirs of a Geisha is a triumphant work - suspenseful, and utterly persuasive.
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