The Shade of Blossoms (Volume 22) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies) - Softcover
Book by Ooka Shohei
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Language Notes:
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese
From Publishers Weekly:
Original Language: Japanese
In its first English translation, Shohei's 1961 novel depicts the atmosphere and social mores of Tokyo's decadent Ginza District of the 1950s through the haunting story of an aging nightclub courtesan. At 38, Yoko Adachi abruptly ends a three-year romantic relationship with a married man without insisting on the maintenance or "lump sum" customarily bestowed upon discarded mistresses and returns to her former job as bar hostess, though she knows that time is "unceremoniously laying waste to her." The Ginza is portrayed as a hard world, where men and women use each other, the bar hostesses trying to turn casual sexual partners into patrons who will set them up in business or support them indefinitely. Calculating enough to begin cultivating such profitable relationships, Yoko has never become as shrewd or ruthless as the younger madams Junko and Ayako, who run the bars in which she works. Compared to them, Yoko seems naive; she self-destructively angers all her lovers and sends them packing, distrusting both love relationships and those based on desire and money. The only man she trusts, seeing him as a father figure, is impoverished Professor Takashima, who actually cares little for Yoko and eventually destroys her last hope for financial security. Despite the dry irony of Shohei's prose, there is great pathos in this story of the little bar hostess whose circumstances overwhelm her. This edition includes an informative introduction by the translator and an enlightening 1972 postscript by the author.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherU of M Center For Japanese Studies
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0939512882
- ISBN 13 9780939512881
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages138
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The Shade of Blossoms (Volume 22) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)
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THE SHADE OF BLOSSOMS (VOLUME 22
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(1998)
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The Shade of Blossoms (Paperback)
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Ooka Shohei (1909-88) was a distinguished member of the Japanese literary establishment for more than four decades following the end of the Pacific War. While the war was the defining experience for Ooka, his work exhibits enormous range and depth. The Shade of Blossoms, for which he was honored in 1961 with both the Mainichi and the Shincho literary prizes, marks an especially important stage in his development as an artist. In his postscript Ooka describes this story as a novel of manners, and certainly the setting of the novel, the demimonde of the Ginza bar scene in the 1950s, and its subject, the aging bar hostess Yoko, seem far removed from the universe of battle. Nonetheless, The Shade of Blossoms not only shares key elements of style but also extends in important ways the moral concerns of his earlier works.The Shade of Blossoms provides a disturbing view of lives at the margins of Japanese society. Ooka's is a powerfully ethical literature that describes the inner search for meaning and identity in a world where received values have been disrupted by war or by social upheavals. His moral imagination is uncompromising and disturbing, and his emotional intelligence is matched by few postwar writers. The first English translation of a powerful Japanese novel set in the Ginza bar scene of the 1950s Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780939512881
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