Background
Akira Yoshimura was born on May 1, 1927, in Tokyo's Nippori district. He was the fifth child in a family of 10. His parents ran a weaving workshop.
(Recounts the technical and other difficulties overcome by...)
Recounts the technical and other difficulties overcome by the Japanese to build the world's largest battleship and how it was sunk.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770015798/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack ...)
Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, said that the three great follies of the world were the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, and the battleship Musashi. Yamamoto understood that sheer size and firepower would not be decisive factors in the battle for naval supremacy in the Pacific. The Musashi was massive-upright it would have approached the size of the Chrysler Building. Outfitted with eighteen-inch armor plating and nine eighteen-inch guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship, the Musashi was considered by its creators to be invincible and unsinkable. Yet during its two years of active duty with the Combined Fleet, it never fired a single shot against another ship. It was sunk, as Yamamoto had predicted, by torpedoes and bombs. Akira Yoshimura's dramatic reconstruction of the birth of the Musashi portrays a nation preparing for total war. Under these extreme conditions, courage, genius, and integrity coexisted with brutality, folly, and paranoia. During the more than four years it took to build and outfit it, shipyard engineers and their Navy mentors were faced with seemingly insurmountable technical problems and plagued by natural calamities and the constant fear of espionage. The solutions they found to each successive crisis were sometimes brilliant, sometimes absurd. Battleship Musashi is a tribute to the men who achieved this engineering marvel and a testament to the excesses of bureaucratic militarism.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4770024002/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperat...)
Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperately poor fishing village on the coast of Japan. His people catch barely enough fish to live on, and so must distill salt to sell to neighboring villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: the fires of the salt cauldrons lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, the villagers slaughter the crew and loot the cargo for rice, wine, and rich delicacies. One day a ship founders on the rocks. But Isaku learns that its cargo is far deadlier than could ever be imagined. Shipwrecks, the first novel by the great Japanese writer Yoshimura to be translated into English, is a stunningly powerful, Gothic tale of fate and retribution. Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperately poor fishing village on the coast of Japan. His people catch barely enough fish to live on, and so must distill salt to sell to neighboring villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: the fires of the salt cauldrons lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, the villagers slaughter the crew and loot the cargo for rice, wine, and rich delicacies. One day a ship founders on the rocks. But Isaku learns that its cargo is far deadlier than could ever be imagined. Shipwrecks, the first novel by the great Japanese writer Yoshimura to be translated into English, is a stunningly powerful, Gothic tale of fate and retribution.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156008351/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(After spending sixteen years in prison for a crime of the...)
After spending sixteen years in prison for a crime of the heart, Shiro Kikutani is released into a world he no longer recognizes. He must readjust to the bright and vigorous stimulus of Tokyo while fending off his own dark memories. In a spare yet powerful style, Akira Yoshimura paints the psychology of a quiet man navigating his way through the unsuspected traumas of freedom-finding a job, finding a home, even something as simple as buying an alarm clock. Kikutani takes comfort in the numbing repetition of his new daily life, only to be drawn inexorably back to the scene of his crime. A subtly powerful story, On Parole explores the fragile life of a murderer and the conditions of freedom in an unforgiving society. Yoshimura's startling novel raises provocative questions of guilt and redemption. After spending sixteen years in prison for a crime of the heart, Shiro Kikutani is released into a world he no longer recognizes. He must readjust to the bright and vigorous stimulus of Tokyo while fending off his own dark memories. In a spare yet powerful style, Akira Yoshimura paints the psychology of a quiet man navigating his way through the unsuspected traumas of freedom-finding a job, finding a home, even something as simple as buying an alarm clock. Kikutani takes comfort in the numbing repetition of his new daily life, only to be drawn inexorably back to the scene of his crime. A subtly powerful story, On Parole explores the fragile life of a murderer and the conditions of freedom in an unforgiving society. Yoshimura's startling novel raises provocative questions of guilt and redemption.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156011476/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(Japan just after World War II is the setting for this sea...)
Japan just after World War II is the setting for this searching and provocative novel. Takuya, an officer in the former Imperial Army, is only mildly surprised when he receives a postcard asking him to report to the U.S. Regional Command Headquarters in Tokyo. He assumes that the occupying authorities have learned of his involvement in the execution of American prisoners-of-war. Now he is a fugitive in his own country. As he travels on crowded trains through a land of defeat, humiliation, and hunger, he is haunted by dark memories of the war. With newspapers denouncing the Imperial Army and widespread talk of prosecution for war crimes, he fears that his past will be revealed. And yet Takuya doesn't feel like a criminal. Why should an honest and dutiful man like him be prosecuted by the very people who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering thousands? As he soon learns, truth and justice have no place in a world where the victors determine the rules of the game. One Man's Justice is an unnerving story of timeless relevance from a master of the psychological novel. Japan just after World War II is the setting for this searching and provocative novel. Takuya, an officer in the former Imperial Army, is only mildly surprised when he receives a postcard asking him to report to the U.S. Regional Command Headquarters in Tokyo. He assumes that the occupying authorities have learned of his involvement in the execution of American prisoners-of-war. Now he is a fugitive in his own country. As he travels on crowded trains through a land of defeat, humiliation, and hunger, he is haunted by dark memories of the war. With newspapers denouncing the Imperial Army and widespread talk of prosecution for war crimes, he fears that his past will be revealed. And yet Takuya doesn't feel like a criminal. Why should an honest and dutiful man like him be prosecuted by the very people who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering thousands? As he soon learns, truth and justice have no place in a world where the victors determine the rules of the game. One Man's Justice is an unnerving story of timeless relevance from a master of the psychological novel.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151006393/?tag=2022091-20
2001
(Based on real characters and events, Storm Rider is a viv...)
Based on real characters and events, Storm Rider is a vivid historical portrait of Japan and America in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as an exciting high-seas adventure and a moving story of a man lost between two cultures. At the age of thirteen, Hikotaro is orphaned and left to a life at sea. When the merchant vessel he sails on is caught in a violent storm on the Pacific, an American ship comes to the rescue and takes the young boy to San Francisco. With trepidation and hope, the boy-now dubbed Hikozo-accepts his new country. Still, he dreams of returning to Japan, but shogunate policy forbids reentry to Japanese who have been abroad. He tries anyway, only to be refused and returned to America, where a wealthy American adopts Hikozo and introduces him to a world of influence and power. Some ten years later, Hikozo returns to a Japan stirred into violence by the opening of the country. At the same time, America is in the midst of its bloody Civil War, and Hikozo finds that there is no place he can call home. Based on real characters and events, Storm Rider is a vivid historical portrait of Japan and America in the mid-nineteenth century, as well as an exciting high-seas adventure and a moving story of a man lost between two cultures. At the age of thirteen, Hikotaro is orphaned and left to a life at sea. When the merchant vessel he sails on is caught in a violent storm on the Pacific, an American ship comes to the rescue and takes the young boy to San Francisco. With trepidation and hope, the boy-now dubbed Hikozo-accepts his new country. Still, he dreams of returning to Japan, but shogunate policy forbids reentry to Japanese who have been abroad. He tries anyway, only to be refused and returned to America, where a wealthy American adopts Hikozo and introduces him to a world of influence and power. Some ten years later, Hikozo returns to a Japan stirred into violence by the opening of the country. At the same time, America is in the midst of its bloody Civil War, and Hikozo finds that there is no place he can call home.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0156031787/?tag=2022091-20
2005
吉村 昭
Akira Yoshimura was born on May 1, 1927, in Tokyo's Nippori district. He was the fifth child in a family of 10. His parents ran a weaving workshop.
In 1940, Yoshimura enrolled at the Kaisei Academy, a private school for boys where he discovered the joys of classical literature through his tutor.
Akira Yoshimura dedicated all his career to writing, although he was unable to find any publisher.
(Based on real characters and events, Storm Rider is a viv...)
2005(Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack ...)
1999(Recounts the technical and other difficulties overcome by...)
1991(After spending sixteen years in prison for a crime of the...)
2000(Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperat...)
2000(Japan just after World War II is the setting for this sea...)
2001Akira Yoshimura was the president of Japan’s writer’s union and a member of International PEN.
Physical Characteristics:
Being an adult, he suffered from pleurisy and attempted an experimental surgery which, fortunately, was successful.
In February 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He refused the therapeutic eagerness and demanded euthanasia. He died at his home on July 31, 2006, at 2:00 am.
Yoshimura was married to the Japanese writer Tsumura Setsuko.