Japan, 1868: the last shogun has been defeated, the age of the emperors is about to begin and in Japan's frozen north a diehard band of loyalists plans a desperate last stand.
Drawing on both historical and literary sources, examines life in the pleasure houses of Japan during the Edo period from the early 1600s to 1868. Among the topics are the origins, illegal competitors, the cost of a visit, the treatment of the courtesans, traditions and protocols, Yoshiwara arts, th
1868. In Japan's exotic pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love ... Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure-quarters.There she is forced to become a courtesan. Yozo, brave, loyal and a brilliant swordsman, is pledged to the embattled shogun. He sails to the frozen north to join his rebel comrades for a desperate last stand. Defeated, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law - the Yoshiwara. There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives ...
Japan, and the year is 1853. Growing up among the samurai of the Satsuma Clan, in Japan's deep south, the fiery, beautiful and headstrong Okatsu has like all the clan's women been encouraged to be bold, taught to wield the halberd, and to ride a horse. But when she is just seventeen, four black ships appear. Bristling with cannon and manned by strangers who to the Japanese eyes are barbarians, their appearance threatens Japan's very existence. And turns Okatsu's world upside down. Chosen by her feudal lord, she has been given a very special role to play. Given a new name Princess Atsu and a new destiny, she is the only one who can save the realm. Her journey takes her to Edo Castle, a place so secret that it cannot be marked on any map. There, sequestered in the Women's Palace home to three thousand women, and where only one man may enter: the shogun she seems doomed to live out her days.
Growing up deep in the mountains of rural Japan in 1861, Sachi has always felt different. Her life is turned upside down at 11 when she is taken to the women’s palace in the great city of Edo. There she is chosen to be the young shogun’s concubine. Set in one of the most tumultuous eras in Japanese history, The Last Concubine is an epic evocation of a country in revolution, and of a young woman’s quest to find out who she really is.
“At last, a study that goes far beyond the urban-centered discourse with which we are already familiar to place the trafficking of women in a solid historical and comparative context. Through a carefully reasoned and balanced analysis of diverse sources, Stanley shows how prostitution practices varied. This book will set the standard for studies of prostitution in early modern Japan for decades to come.” -Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine “Selling Women is a remarkable achievement. With her gaze fixed firmly on the young women whose labor sustained prostitution as an industry, Amy Stanley traces shifts in the moral economy of the sex trade over the course of the Tokugawa era, and unveils the ironic consequences of economic growth and social change. This meticulously researched, wonderfully written book is a major contribution to the literature on gender and society in Japan.” -David L. Howell, Harvard University
A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction—at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful—and completely unforgettable.
After several years in the U.S. a Japanese woman returns to Japan, taking along a niece raised in the U.S. The novel describes their adjustment to Japanese culture, different for each generation.
Minamoto Yoshitsune should not have been a samurai. But his story is legend in this real-life saga. This epic warrior tale reads like a novel, but this is the true story of the greatest samurai in Japanese history. When Yoshitsune was just a baby, his father went to war with a rival samurai family—and lost. His father was killed, his mother captured, and his surviving half-brother banished. Yoshitsune was sent away to live in a monastery. Skinny, small, and unskilled in the warrior arts, he nevertheless escaped and learned the ways of the samurai. When the time came for the Minamoto clan to rise up against their enemies, Yoshitsune answered the call. His daring feats and impossible bravery earned him immortality.