Empfehlungen basierend auf "The last Samurai"

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.From the Trade Paperback edition.

In April 1926, the Japanese poet Taneda Santoka (1882–1940) set off on the first of many walking trips, journeys in which he tramped thousands of miles through the Japanese countryside. These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment.Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem or group of poems. In For All My Walking, master translator Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own. Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the emotional force at the core of the poems.This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical context to Taneda Santoka's work.

A collectible hardcover edition of the best stories by the father of the Japanese short story—including the two that inspired Kurosawa's classic samurai film about the subjectivity of truth—featuring an introduction by Haruki MurakamiA Penguin Vitae EditionRyūnosuke Akutagawa is one of Japan's foremost stylists—a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty, and wild humor. "Rashōmon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" inspired Akira Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as "The Nose," "O-Gin" and "Loyalty" paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as "Death Register," "The Life of a Stupid Man," and "Spinning Gears," Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.Penguin Vitae—loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life”—is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Hospitalized with the dreaded atom bomb disease, leukemia, a child in Hiroshima races against time to fold one-thousand paper cranes.

In I.J. Parker's newest mystery set in eleventh-century Japan, Akitada disguises himself as a prisoner to solve the, murder of a prince As her audience grows with each evocative historical thriller featuring Sugawara Akitada, I. J. Parker returns with a gripping tale of political intrigue and cold-blooded murder in ancient Japan. When the exiled Prince Okisada, the most illustrious prisoner of the penal colony on Sado Island, is poisoned, Akitada is called upon by the emperor's envoys to investigate incognito. Posing as a prisoner, he discovers a deadly conspiracy, only to fall into the hands of brutal guards and disappear. It falls to Tora, Akitada's devoted assistant, to begin his own dangerous search of the island for his lost friend and the truth.

For Seikei, the adopted son of the famous samurai Judge Ooka with a knack for solving mysteries, a trip home to see his real family isn’t cause to celebrate. His brother has become mixed up with local criminals who use the family’s tea shop as a front for a smuggling operation. His sister, meanwhile, has fallen in love with an apprentice to a puppet master who stands accused of murder. Somehow, Seikei senses the two are connected. His loyalties divided between his new family and his old, Seikei must find the real killer before it is too late. Set against the eerie backdrop of the old Japanese puppet theaters, where life-sized marionettes were controlled by black-cloaked men, Edgar Award-winners Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler render their most satisfying mystery to date.

"A classic of Japanese literature" (Chicago Sun-Times) and the first novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, set in 1912 Tokyo, featuring an aspiring lawyer who believes he has met the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend.  It is 1912 in Tokyo, and the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders—rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Shigekuni Honda, an aspiring lawyer and his childhood friend, Kiyoaki Matsugae, are the sons of two such families. As they come of age amidst the growing tensions between old and new, Kiyoaki is plagued by his simultaneous love for and loathing of the spirited young woman Ayakura Satoko. But Kiyoaki’s true feelings only become apparent when her sudden engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion—and leads to a love affair both doomed and inevitable.

Acclaimed creator Kaoru Mori's tale of life on the nineteenth-century Silk Road turns westward, following Englishman Mr. Smith on his long journey to Ankara. Passing through a fishing village along the Aral Sea, Smith and his guide encounter a pair of spirited young girls named Laila and Leily-identical twins who are fishing not for sturgeon, but for husbands! Despite their efforts to find two wealthy, healthy, and handsome brothers to wed, Laila and Leily's plans generally only land them in loads of trouble!

Looks at modern Japanese fiction from the opening of Japan to the West in 1868 to the present and discusses major authors and foreign influences

A bestseller in Japan--a beautiful story about shared self-discovery and friendship involving an unlikely group of students who decide to defy the odds and pursue a seemingly impossible goal together. After shoplifting some bread one chilly March night, just before the start of a new academic year at Kansei University in western Tokyo, former high school track and field star Kakeru Kurahara runs through the city streets. Though he has grown disillusioned with the sport, he feels as if he could keep running forever . . . but to where, and for what His revery is broken by a mysterious boy on a bike who has been following him, a fellow student at Kansei University named Haiji Kiyose, who also happens to be a runner. Impressed by Kakeru's agility, Haiji Kiyose persuades Kakeru to move into Chikusei-so, a run-down dormitory where he lives with eight other boys, including identical twins Jota and Joji, honor student Shindo, detail-oriented Yuki, trivia junkie King, Tanzanian international student Musa, nicotine-loving Nico, and manga otaku Prince. None of the students know that Chikusei-so is the historic home of the Kansei University Track and Field team. At Kakeru's welcoming party, Kiyose reveals his grand plan: assembling a 10-man team of runners to compete in the Hakone Ekiden, a legendary college marathon relay race. Except for Kakeru and Kiyose, the Chikusei-so gang aren't athletic--or interested in competing. But Kiyose's enthusiasm wins them over and they agree to this crazy plan. Over the course of ten months, this ragtag team will put aside their differences to pursue an elusive dream . . . and gain so much more than they ever expected. Heartfelt and inspiring, Run with the Wind is a thrilling celebration of what it means to run--for yourself, for others, and with the wind. Translated from the Japanese by Yui Kajita