Cloud of Sparrows
by Takashi Matsuoka
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Book Summary Information
Author: Takashi MatsuokaEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2002-10-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Book Reviews of Cloud of Sparrows
Book Review: Another masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I read "Autumn Bridge" back in January, and I just had to read this book. I wanted to know how everything started, and I also wanted to read more of Matsuoka.
In this book Matsuoka was testing his own abilities. It lacks the superb refinement of "Autumn Bridge," but is still, by far, an exceptional book to read: well imagined, well crafted and well developed.
Matsuoka style is unique, elegant, elaborated and refined. I cannot ask anymore from any writer.
The characters are interesting and complex. Lord Genji, the dilettante leader of the Okoshumi Clan, has the gift of prophecy. Emilly, the troubled American missionary,tries to escape her own beauty, Heiko the Geisha/Ninja who falls in love in the midst of her mission, and Shigeru, the mercurial lord who is a murderer and feared throughout the land. Their interactions go beyond regular, casual encounters, which describes the subtle, refined culture of the times.
(Everybody cries, I noticed, like a kabuki play)
The battles are well described and here is when Eiji Yoskikawa comes to mind. His books "Musashi" and "Taiko" are so rich in details that I have no doubt Matsuoka must have read them before starting his own book, which by the way is very original. (Or maybe Yoshikawa amd Matsuoka shared same sources)
I can tell by reading these two books that Matsuoka is not a violent man. Witnessing violence is not the same as describing it, and it's evident that Matsuoka has never been around violence. Violence is described with such gruesome detail, as if Matsuoka wanted to illulstrate the volatile environment of the era. Shigueru massacres his own family as he goes mad with prophetic visions, and in "Autumn Bridge" is Lord Yorimasa who is the sexual sadistic psychopath. These violent scenes stand out in this story like blood smearing a sheet of chiyogami paper.
Mr. Matsuoka is not only a talented writer. He has a gift and I am glad he's sharing his gift with all of us, enlightening the way for us, aspiring writers, to follow the path of our creativity and allow it to take us where Matsuoka is now in his "literary nirvana."
I cannot give this book less than 5 stars.
Summary of Cloud of Sparrows
Emily Gibson has come to Japan as a missionary, to start a new life. In America her beauty drove men wild. In Japan she possesses no beauty at all. Matthew Stark speaks like a missionary but wears a pistol like a gunslinger. Emily has come to Japan to bury her past, Stark has come to kill his. It is 1861 and after two centuries of isolation Japan has been forced to open its doors. A whole way of life is about to die. Lord Genji of the Akoaka Clan knows this. Blessed with his family's power of prophecy he has foreseen that his and Japan's fate lie in the hands of outsiders. But this knowledge is dangerous to many powerful men, and deadly for Genji. As intrigue mounts and the city of Edo and the Shogun's palace are smashed by foreign ships, Genji plans his escape to his ancestral home, the Cloud of Sparrows. With him travel Emily and Stark, and Heiko, his beautiful geisha and a deadly spy. However, the road is long and there are many places along the way for a samurai to attack and for Genji to die.Following in the substantial footsteps of filmmaker Akiro Kurosawa and Shogun author James Clavell is Takashi Matsuoka, whose action-packed debut novel, Cloud of Sparrows, unfolds as the age of the samurai warrior starts to wane. The year is 1861, and Lord Genji of Akaoka, last in line of the Okamichi clan, welcomes missionaries Emily, Matthew, and Zephaniah to Japan. Cut off from the West for more than 2,000 years, Japan is as completely unprepared for these outsiders as the missionaries are for geishas and honor killings. Genji, his geisha love Heiko, and the missionaries suddenly find themselves in the middle of several nefarious plots to overthrow the Okamichi leader from as far away as the shogun's palace and as close as Genji's own henchmen. Genji and his visitors journey together across treacherous terrain to seek refuge at the faraway Cloud of Sparrows palace. Although it's a rip-roaring yarn full of ambushes, swordfights, cross-cultural friction, love, and prophetic visions, the book does read a bit like a screenplay, cutting quickly from one scene to another. But the frequent shifts in the story's tempo succeed in making the novel all the more vivid, allowing simultaneous action and contemplation to deepen the story and its inhabitants. --Emily Russin
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