• Hardcover
• 352
• The Courtesan and the Samurai
• Lesley Downer
• English
• 14 October 2019
• 9780593057933

Lesley Downer Å 4 Read & Download

review The Courtesan and the Samurai The Courtesan and the Samurai Read & Download  104 Na is just seventeen when her husband goes to war leaving her alone and very vulnerable Book ReviewTitle The Courtesan and the SamuraiAuthor Lesley DownerGenre RomanceCulturalHistoricalRating Review The Courtesan and the Samurai is the second book in a series of historical fiction by Lesley Downer set in 1860s Japan This novel is set in 1868 9 a particularly turbulent year covering the civil war between the shogunate forces or northerners and the imperial Japanese forces or southerners as the two sides are simply called in the novel This period is usually known as the Meiji RestorationWritten from the point of the losing side in the civil war the protagonist here is Hana a 17 year old daughter of a samurai married to one of the fiercest commanders of the ex shogun s forces of the Northern Alliance The last shogun Yoshinobu had resigned at the end of 1867 under duress from the Mikado s councillors and the Southern clansHana s marriage is based on Confucian patriarchal ideals She is expected to obey her husband as she would a father or even a sovereign Her husband is not expected to love her or to particularly treat her kindly But like a good samurai she is trained to fight While her husband goes to rally forces for the Northern Alliance she is given the task of being the sole defender of her household in Edo And when the southerners come to the gates of her residence she promptly kills one of them with a halberd and escapes at the behest of her servants across the river towards Nihonbashi or Japan Bridge There she is sold by a procuress to become a courtesan in Edo s licensed uarters the five streets of the YoshiwaraHana has read about these uarters in the romantic fiction The Plum Calendar but she has never yet visited Downer s descriptions of life in the walled enclave of the Yoshiwara established by the shogunate as a way of controlling prostitution are a tour de force of literary dramatisation Downer has previously written about the Yoshiwara in her book Geisha The Secret History of a Vanishing World 2000 a history of the customs of Japanese courtesans and geisha In her talk for this book s launch the author provided a rare glimpse of her visit to the courtesans in Kyoto in the 1990s There are five women who still uphold the traditions of courtesan they are not the same as geisha but they occupy the same world of the flower and the willow she said Courtesans are high class prostitutes whereas geisha are women who sell their arts and social skills Hana is euipped with the ability to write poetry and so uickly promoted to being a star courtesan given the honorific title Hanaogi In her talk Downer described the awesome appearance of a courtesan a re enactor in this day and age dressed in many layers of kimono escorted by child attendants with a head of lacuered hair pinned together with tortoiseshell combs She described the electric atmosphere among the men on this occasion who were all lining up for an audience The scene is recreated in the book when Hana appears in a cage along with her companions During this viewing she is meant to pick out a man to be her lover Outdoor scenes of this can also be seen in Utagawa Hiroshige s printsThe year that Downer chose to portray the life of a courtesan is crucial At this time courtesans were still sought after by the elite but very shortly after geisha women partners of the new ruling Imperial elite installed in the newly named Tokyo were elevated to higher social status A few years later the old Yoshiwara was burned down and then moved Interestingly there are no photographs of the old Yoshiwara It is as though Downer has chosen a period just beyond our reach to create a lavish world of high romanceThe other half of this story of star crossed lovers is seen through the eyes of Yozo Tajima a samurai sailor fighting on the side of the Northern Alliance serving the historical figure of Admiral Enomoto of the ex shogun s navy Both have recently returned from an expedition to the West licensed by the shogun Part of their mission there is to build and bring back a warship the Kaiyo Maru which was later sunk But on their return they are appalled to find shogun has in fact resigned but Enomoto refuses to hand over the navy to the southern Imperial forces Instead he is motivated by a mix of loyalty to the previous regime and idealism gained from his exposure to the democratic ways of the West to lead the Northern Alliance to Ezo present day Hokkaido From there the Northern Alliance will establish the Democratic Republic of Ezo in the name of the shogun with Hakodate as our capital and from there move South and take the rest of Japan as Downer has him proclaimThe army of the Northern Alliance is here led by Commander Yamaguchi a fictional figure based on the formidable leader of the shinsengumi the new select corps Toshiz Hijikata His story is cleverly woven into Downer s tale of star crossed lovers This army included crack troops some of whom had been trained by the French to protect the shogun before he resigned Thus historically nine French officers sailed with the Japanese including Jean Marlin who features in the novel as Yozo s friend and supporterDowner imaginatively recreates the internal tensions of such a dynamic mix of personalities Yamaguchi turns out to be bitterly opposed to the foreign leaning Enomoto and Yozo who is so adept at languages that not only has he read Charles Darwin s On the Origin of the Species but he also sings an English sea shanty to entertain the troops When Kitaro a friend of Yozo is murdered mysteriously by one of Yamaguchi s men Yozo is motivated to take revenge for his friend s deathThe defeat of the Northern Alliance at Hakodate gives Yozo the opportunity to take his chance at revenge but Enomoto Yozo and his French protector Marlin are eventually captured and brought back to Edo They escape to the Yoshiwara where Hana is preparing for her debut or mizuage Once a courtesan attracted a wealthy patron who would arrange for her mizuage she could escape her debts and leave the Yoshiwara So when the wealthy merchant Saburosuk Kashima catches sight of Hana her fate is sealed or is it The pi ce de resistance here is the mizuageitself a grotesue affair where the odious merchant Saburosuk meets his match at last in a manner appropriate to this exaggerated world gaudy lascivious and grotesueThere is a symbolic ending for the other characters too Yozo and Enomoto survive their skills needed in the new Japan Meanwhile the old style samurai Yamaguchi is killed and in fact Hijikata died at Hakodate Without such inspiring and entertaining books to draw our attention to it Japan s less well known history of the 1860s might be in danger of going the way of the Kaiyo Maru herself

review The Courtesan and the Samurai

review The Courtesan and the Samurai The Courtesan and the Samurai Read & Download  104 And in Japan's frozen north a diehard band of loyalists plans a desperate last stand Ha I enjoyed this novel for the rich historical detail than the actual love story between Yozo and Hana I know little about this period of Japanese history and found this aspect of the novel absorbing The details of the lives of courtesans in Yoshiwara were intriguing as was Yozo s story as one of several Japanese who spent time in the west

review The Courtesan and the Samurai The Courtesan and the Samurai Read & Download  104 Japan 1868 the last shogun has been defeated the age of the emperors is about to begin I wanted to like this book After all I preordered it a year ago and waited and waited waited for it to grace my mailbox so it s with some disappointment that I write thisThe Courtesan is Hana In the beginning her husband is leaving for war and she wields a sword to defend her home I thought Oh goody a chick with balls Not really She is terribly naive and ends up permitting some strange woman to sell her into prostitution And well I m all for making the most of a bad situation but this chick ends up actually liking her new profession I didn t like this partly because I don t like the damsel in distress bit and partly because I think the whole geisha thing is overdone The Samurai is Yozo His parts are full of ships sinking war strategies and fights Basically testosterone Naturally his parts didn t interest me all that much Nevertheless my number one complaint This was supposed to be a forbidden romance I picked this up hoping for something along the lines of The Scarlet Kimono However the Courtesan and Samurai don t even meet until page 295 Just not for me