Unforgettable characters. This book is beautiful (one reviewer on the back cover called it "a banquet for the senses," and he's right). Human beings in a cultural context, depicting universal humanity, living in Japanese society between World War II and its extreme devastation, and rapidly advancing Westernization. I would compare the writing to that of Amy Tan or Diane Ackerman. Gorgeous. Indelible from your memory once you've visited the lives of these characters.
This book is filled with fictional personal essays relating to how various Japanese citizens coped during the decades after World War II. The book documents how a very traditional generation of Japanese adjusted to societal changes that all but wiped out traditional culture and life as it had been. In a different setting the Japanese whose voices we hear could be speaking for almost any modern postware generation anywhhere. Sad, nostalgic, courageous.
Beautiful book, (isn't the coer image beautiful?) I think women will mostly be able to identify with the females in these stories.
