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Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML: Gail Tsukiyama's 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. 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 holdâ??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.… (more)
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This is a beautifully written novel with richly formed characters that I really cared about. Tsukiyama, as in all of her books, tells so many complete stories within this novel that upon finishing the book one feels so satisfied with the reading of it. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I recommend all of her books. They are all absolutely wonderful and beautifully written.
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms covers the world of sumo wrestling and Noh theater. Both
Even as the Japanese armies gain more victories around the Asia Pacific, hardship descends on the Japanese people at home. Rations, military police harassment and abuse, hunger,fear and the horrors of the atomic bombs change families and people as no one could have foretold.
Through the war, through American occupation and through the gradual rebuilding of Japan, the reader is provided ring-side seats into the lives of everyday Japanese. We are given the privilege of understanding the thoughts and feelings of each person. We learn their secrets, their fears, their hopes, their dreams and their aspirations. While the 2 orphaned boys grow up to become confident men in their chosen profession of sumo wrestling and mask making, happiness wars with grief. You celebrate their triumphs and you grieve with their tragedies. What you don't do, is lose hope because they don't lose hope. What's subtly weaved through is that of balance.
The cadence throughout the book is one of respect, quiet determination and acceptance. You lose yourself among the pages and you forget that these people aren't real. You can see them in your mind's eye and you want to reach out and hug them.
This is a book that leaves a soothing calmness in you even as you close it.
As I have already mentioned in my bookclub, I fell absolutely and irrevocably under Gail Tsukiyama's spell. Her writing is exactly what I expect from the best literary fiction, it's very lyrical, with a lot of passages that I woud want to commit to memory and with wonderful characters. Why are they so wonderful, you ask? Because they are painfully human and very real. Not only Hiroshi and Kenji, but their friends, their grandparents and everyone they meet on the road of life, deal with life, death, loss, tragedy and happiness in their own ways and the more I got to read about them the more they seemed like people I'd love to know and the less like a characters on the pages of the book. Some are strong and determined to get what they want despite the circumstances, others just 'go with the flow' simply to survive and a few can't make it at all.
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is not an action packed book, it's rather a panorama of people's lives in the midst and aftereffects of great tragedy. And because it's Japanese, the author imparts a lot of wisdom that I think I always like the most about Asian fiction. Most of it is simple but it has stronger impact on my own thoughts and actions than any self-help book out there. I know that not everyone will appreciate this novel for precisely the same reasons I loved it so much: it's not about one main plot so much as about the characters, relationships and dealing or not dealing with whatever may come. It's one of those books that once you get familiarized with the people in there, you pick your favorites, most intriguing or most tragic and then you just want the story to go on and on. You want to know what happens in their lives after you turn the last page. I am now ready to go to the bookstore and get every single book Ms. Tsukiyama penned.
An orange soda of a book. Sweet and easy to sip at on a hot day. But not filling.
BTW even though Michael Chabon blurbed the book, it has no flashy writing. It plods on cliche after cliche, and never gallops, rears up, or takes a bad turn.