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(★)(Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter／ Titulo original : 最後の将軍 [Saigo no shoogun, 1967]／ When Commodore Matthew Perry brought his squadron of ´black ships´ into Tokyo Bay, the world imagined that at last Japan had been ´opened up.´ After two and a half centuries of determined self-isolation from the rest of the world, it seemed the process of modernization was inevitable. In Ryotaro Shiba´s account of the life of Japan´s last shogun, however, Perry´s arrival was merely the spark that ignited the cataclysm in store for the Japanese people and their governments. It came to its real climax with the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868, the event that forms the centerpiece of this book. The Meiji Restoration --as history calls it-- toppled the shogunate, and brought a seventeen-year-old boy emperor back from the secluded Imperial Palace in Kyoto to preside over what amounted to a political and cultural revolution. With this, Japan´s extraordinary modernization began in earnest. The facts Ryotaro Shiba provides us with in this account of Tokugawa Yoshinobu are unquestionably true. Yet ´The Last Shogun´, when published in Japan, was, like the rest of his work, published as a novel because Shiba uses a number of fictional narrative devices. In its accuracy, however, it is a faithful depiction of events in that now far-off time, and can safely be called history.／ ◆Ryotaro Shiba is one of Japan´s best-loved writers of all time. Working as a newspaper reporter, he began to write historical novels, and in 1959 received the Naoki Prize for his novel ´The Owl Castle´. His many works, which often present new interpretations of turbulent times such as the Meiji Restoration, have had enduring success with Japanese readers. He was named a member of the Japan Art Academy in 1981, cited as a person of cultural merit in 1991, and was conferred with the Order of Culture in 1993. Shiba died in 1996.／ U.S.-born translator, writer, and teacher Juliet Winters Carpenter has won two awards for her work. Her translations include essays, poetry, and fiction by modern authors such as Abe Kobo, Enchi Fumiko, Machi Tawara, and Shugoro Yamamoto, as well as numerous books on Japanese life, art, and culture. A native of Michigan, Carpenter has lived in Japan for more than twenty-five years, and is professor of English at Doshisha Women´s College in Kyoto.) |
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