Waking of the Samurai


Book Description

This is the story of Gabriel Dunne, a lower class white kid growing up in South Florida. At the age of ten, he is thrust, along with his best friend, Thomas, into a hair-raising adventure. Stalked by a savage foreign killer, they only have each other and one way out to escape. Gabriel's life-and-death experience as a boy serves as an initiation, unwittingly sending him into manhood. As an adult, Gabriel becomes an elite member of a commando unit rescuing hostages behind enemy lines. Suspense, adventure, humor and a touch of horror are mixed together in this tale that spans over fifteen years.




Samurai Awakening


Book Description

**Winner of the 2013 SCBWI Crystal Kite Award** David Matthews is having a rough time. Being a teenager is bad enough, but when he picks up and moves to Japan for a year, with barely any knowledge of the language or social behaviors of Japanese teenagers, things go from bad to worse. Until one day, David attends a temple ceremony and finds himself possessed by a Japanese god. Suddenly, he can understand and speak Japanese. He has unbelievable new powers, including the ability to shift into a tiger, and a powerful sword he can materialize at will from its sheath--his body. But nothing comes for free, and these changes bring David face-to-face with the most terrifying creatures of Japanese legend--vengeful okami, demonic oni and terrifying ghostly yurei. Trained by his host family, famous sword-makers and the keepers of an ancient secret entrusted to their family by the first Emperor of Japan, David must fight desperately to save his host sister from a hoard of Japanese monsters. Evil has returned to Japan, and David must overcome his own insecurities if he is to save her and become a True Samurai--the protector of Japan.




Embracing Defeat


Book Description

This study of modern Japan traces the impact of defeat and reconstruction on every aspect of Japan's national life. It examines the economic resurgence as well as how the nation as a whole reacted to defeat and the end of a suicidal nationalism.




American Samurai


Book Description

A study of the cultural dynamics of ground combat.




The Sadness of the Samurai


Book Description

A betrayal and a murder in pro-Nazi Spain spark a struggle for power that grips a family for generations in this sweeping historical thriller Fierce, edgy, brisk, and enthralling, this brilliant novel by Victor del Árbol pushes the boundaries of the traditional historical novel and in doing so creates a work of incredible power that resonates long after the last page has been turned. When Isabel, a Spanish aristocrat living in the pro-Nazi Spain of 1941, becomes involved in a plot to kill her Fascist husband, she finds herself betrayed by her mysterious lover. The effects of her betrayal play out in a violent struggle for power in both family and government over three generations, intertwining her story with that of a young lawyer named Maria forty years later. During the attempted Fascist coup of 1981, Maria is accused of plotting the prison escape of a man she successfully prosecuted for murder. As Maria's and Isabel's narratives unfold they encircle each other, creating a page-turning literary thriller firmly rooted in history.




Wake Warrior


Book Description

A Descendant in search of an ancestor or Family from the Old Country. visits a graveyard surrounded by abandoned villages. A Guardian's Graveyard. my great grandfather would tell us Tales of Warriors. Stories his Father would tell him when he was a child. He would have to pray, light a candle, and leave a picture of the person that needed him. if a teardrop fell from an eye onto a headstone. it would wake him from his sleep. With him, his Spirit would rise from his grave, Travel anywhere in the blink of an eye. After he saw a Picture. a spirit would transform him back into a man. His skill would follow him wherever he would go. Since the Warrior is a Guardian. what is worse than dying. waking a warrior from his sleep. His new life will consist of finding the man responsible for Waking Him. It must be a grave feeling to die. Even worse to wake A Guardian from a Graveyard. they say if his spirit heard Your pea, your cry, or felt a tear fall upon his Grave. you would have found him. horror, dark fantasy, action, and dark. 22000 words.




The Taming of the Samurai


Book Description

This book demonstrates how Japan's so-called harmonious collective culture is paradoxically connected with a history of conflict. Ikegami contends that contemporary Japanese culture is based upon two remarkably complementary ingredients, honorable competition and honorable collaboration. The historical roots of this situation can be found in the process of state formation, along very different lines from that seen in Europe at around the same time. The solution that emerged out of the turbulent beginnings of the Tokugawa state was a transformation of the samurai into a hereditary class of vassal-bureaucrats, a solution that would have many unexpected ramifications for subsequent centuries.




兵法家伝書


Book Description

This is a translation of an important classic on Zen swordfighting. Yagyu's Buddhist spirituality is reflected in his central idea of the life-giving sword' - the notion of controlling an opponent by the spiritual readiness to fight, rather than during the fight. This is a translation of an important classic on Zen swordfighting. Yagyu Munenori was so widely renowned that he was appointed official sword instructor to two Tokugawa shoguns. (The position was always coveted by Miyamoto Musashi, but he never succeeded in gaining the post). Yagyu's'




In the Wake of the Empress of China


Book Description

Three people are quietly involved in a conspiracy in 1941 to keep America out of a war in the Pacific with Japan. They refer to themselves as “pirates.” They are plagued by one intractable question: is war inevitable in the Far East? If unable to forestall a conflict, they are determined to create and intellectual life raft for the post-war survivors to avoid a final disaster in the looming nuclear age. Though they cannot undo past events, they are determined to reset the human compass with sharp-edged idealism to save humanity from its inclination to engage in war.




In the Wake of Basho


Book Description

According to the author Yury Lobo this book just happened. After very intense submerging into Japanese culture, history, art and poetry one early morning the whole idea of the book came to him as one piece: to introduce Shakespeare to Japan at least two centuries before it actually happened. The idea (however as crazy as it may sound) is not quite too far away from reality: it could truly have happened that a Roman Catholic Japanese with initial traditional samurai background escaped to Christian Macao in 17th century, where he was introduced to English, which became in time his second mother tongue und through English was captured with the genius of Shakespeare. Of course Haruki Okami's core was still Japanese. Once a samurai, forever a samurai. The tiger doesn't change his stripes. His Basho and Shakespeare-influenced existential poetry is a sort of crossover or fusion of both languages, cultural, poetic and religious traditions of Japan and England. Hokku married with Shakespearean blank verse. Haruki Okami (the fictitious poet) was impressed by Shakespeare like French artists were impressed by Japanese art in the second half of the 19th century which brought impressionism to life. His impressionistic poetry is sort of extended minimalism with more attention to transient details. Important is the architecture of Haruki Okami's verse: 3 lines: long, shorter one and the shortest. It is sort of backward steps or stairway arranged sense wise in ascending order. The reader is kind of going downstairs but actually he is going up. The suspension is growing toward the climatic end and ends up with an ellipsis [...] inviting the reader to fill up the omitted words, connotations and meanings (the reader can find all this intended omissions in extensive Notes which covers a significant part of Japanese and English history, the animal world, religious symbols and traditions).




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