This Naoki Prize–winning work is a personal yet precise account of the lives of working women in the Edo period (1600–1868).In the latter half of the Edo period, the warrior caste was finding itself p
When the body of Saga Atsushi, Japan’s preeminent connoisseur of ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), is pulled from the ocean off the coast of Tohoku, having apparently committed suicide, the shocked Japanese
"That year, quite a shocking incident occurred...." So reminisces old Hanshichi in a story from one of Japan's most beloved works of popular literature, Hanshichi torimonocho. Told through the eyes of
