Hisashi Inoue Books

Tokyo Seven Roses' is set in Japan during the waning months of WWII and the beginning of the Occupation. It is written as a diary kept from April 1945 to April 1946 by Shinsuke Yamanaka, a fifty-three-year-old fan-maker living in Nezu, part of Tokyo's shitamachi (old-town) district. After the war, Shinsuke learns by chance that the Occupation forces are plotting a nefarious in order to cut Japan off from its dreadful past, they intend to see that the language is written henceforth using the alphabet. To fight off this unheard-of threat to the integrity of Japanese culture, seven beautiful women – the Seven Roses – take a stand.

The sound of a trumpet across a Japanese mountain valley leads a young man to befriend a mysterious stranger. During repeated visits to the cave where the stranger has set up home, the young man learns about his past – in the mines, villages and ports of the region. The stranger’s hilarious, bawdy and touching narratives captivate the young man, but he begins to doubt their veracity. Finally, as the young man decides his own fate, the full truth about the stranger is revealed. ‘Tales from a Mountain Cave’ is a translation of Hisashi Inoue’s highly popular ‘Shinshaku Tono Monogatari’ (新釈遠野物語), set in the Kamaishi area of Iwate Prefecture, Northeast Japan. Kamaishi was devastated by the tsunami of March 2011, and royalties on sales of this book will be donated to post-tsunami community support projects.

Der Fächermacher Yamanaka Shinsuke hält in seinen Tagebuchaufzeichnungen ein lebendiges Alltagsbild von Tokyo in den Jahren 1945/46 fest: Amerikanische Bombenangriffe versetzen die Bevölkerung in den letzten Kriegsmonaten in Angst und Schrecken. Es folgt die Kapitulation Japans und mit ihr übernimmt die amerikanische Besatzungsmacht das Sagen in der Stadt. Unter den Bewohnern hält sich derweil hartnäckig das Gerücht, die japanische Schrift solle durch das lateinische Alphabet ersetzt werden, um die Verbindung der Japaner zu ihren kulturellen Wurzeln zu kappen. Sieben Gespielinnen von amerikanischen Soldaten – die Sieben Rosen von Tokyo – versuchen, diesen Plan zu vereiteln …