The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks. But as...
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It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks. But as the ripples of war spread to their quiet neighborhood, the brothers must put their dreams on hold—and forge their own paths in a new Japan. Meanwhile, the two young daughters of a renowned sumo master find their lives increasingly intertwined with the fortunes of their father’s star pupil, Hiroshi.The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780312384777 (0312384777)
ASIN: B002BWQ52C
Publish date: August 5th 2008
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages no: 448
Edition language: English
Category:
History,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Adult Fiction,
Historical Fiction,
War,
Family,
Asian Literature,
Asia,
World War II,
Japan,
Japanese Literature
At first I wasn't sure I'd like this because of the sumo wrestling stuff. Grunting, glaring fat men sporting diapers and topknots just don't send me anywhere I care to go. Fortunately, there's much more to the book than just sumo, and I ended up liking it quite a bit. I learned a lot about Japane...
Story about a Japanese family in WWII and for two decades afterwards, this one drags out all of the things I hate in a novel -- stale stereotypes, a lot of misinterpetations and little to keep me interested. Now that I've read three books by this author, I'm not going here again. For the longer revi...