Meet Lady Chiyome’s Army of “Deadly Blossoms” — Before Risuko Does! After a century of brutal civil war has torn Japan apart, Lady Mochizuki Chiyome gathers together the most unlikely army imaginable to unite the empire and bring an end to the bloodshed: an army of girls clad in the red and white garb of miko, shrine maidens. An army of kunoichi. Together, these girls work as spies, as bodyguards, as assassins — going where no soldier could go, doing what no soldier could do. Here are six stories of the kunoichi, set before the award-winning Seasons of the Sword novels (Risuko and Bright Eyes): 1 - White Robes — Mired in her own grief, Lady Mochizuki Chiyome encounters two young women who give her a whole new, much more interesting opportunity 2 - Silk & Service — A young Takeda warrior meets a servant who is much more than she seems 3 - Waiting for Kuniko — Mieko is waiting at a rendezvous behind enemy lines. In the rain. Without a hat. The person who comes up the road is the last person she expected to encounter. 4 - Wild Mushrooms — A Hōjō commander is delighted when two pretty young shrine maidens enter his camp on the evening before a battle. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been. 5 - Ghost — At a banquet to celebrate a new alliance, Chiyome contemplates murder, and discovers a new servant 6 - Schools for Talented Youngsters: Monthly Headmistresses’ Dinner — Three unique ladies get together once a month to share the joys and challenges involved teaching young ladies with very particular... talents. (Historical fantasy/crossover) Preview (from “White Robes”) Chiyome considers the two girls, still dressed in their oh-so-innocent miko garb. They are standing now, no pretense of humility. Kuniko’s face is dark, her nostrils flaring. Mieko looks as if she’s been enjoying a lovely nighttime stroll, except for the dark circles in the middle of her cheeks and the splash of dark red across her white sleeve. “Well, well, well,” Chiyome laughs. “Aren’t you two entertaining.” “Yes, my lady,” Kuniko grunts through clenched teeth. Mieko says nothing. [...] An image: a beautiful screen Chiyome saw at the imperial palace, when her father brought her there to observe some ceremony or other. The screen seemed to her child’s imagination to have shown the whole of Japan, peopled by thousands of figures: armed samurai, elegant nobles, monks, merchants, and, scattered throughout, young girls in red and white. An army. An anonymous army. Invisible. Able to go everywhere. Able to gather information. Able to strike. With her toe Chiyome writes on the dusty floorboards: ku (く), then no (ノ), and then finally ichi (一). “Can you two read?” Kuniko scowls down at the marks. “Nine... in... one?” Mieko’s peers at Chiyome. She murmurs, “Kunoichi.” Kuniko blinks at her companion. “Kuno... What’s a kunoichi?” Mieko’s eyes remain on Chiyome. She knows. “Ah,” says Chiyome, grinning to herself, “it is... a very special kind of woman. Tell me, ladies. Would you like to end this ridiculous war? Would you like to be kunoichi?” “Yes, my lady,” the girls answer. Kuniko’s eyes are dark, but Mieko’s glisten.

Can One Girl Save A School? Contains Risuko and Bright Eyes, as well as six prequel stories! Kano Murasaki, called Risuko (Squirrel) is a young, fatherless girl, more comfortable climbing trees than down on the ground. Yet she finds herself enmeshed in a game where the board is the whole nation of Japan, where the pieces are armies moved by scheming lords, and a single girl couldn’t possibly have the power to change the outcome. Or could she? "Kano Murasaki, you may not realize it, but I have done you a great favor. I have it in my power to give you a gift that you don’t even realize you desire. Make yourself worth my trouble, and you will be glad of it. Disappoint me, and you will be very, very sorry." At the Full Moon, an isolated mountain school for training young women to become shrine maidens (and much more), Risuko finds friends, challenges, and danger. Intrigue, poison, invasion, murder — she must survive from winter into spring if she is going to figure out who she is truly going to be. This thrilling collection contains the first two novels in the award-winning teen historical fiction series Seasons of the Sword. In addition, Winter into Spring includes a half-dozen short stories set before the novels, exploring the characters and world: a sixteenth-century Japan torn by over a century of civil war. PRAISE FOR RISUKO: ”Tight, exciting, and thoughtful!” — Kirkus “Risuko is an artfully crafted novel that evokes a heavy sense of place and enchantment…. Risuko’s development and evolution are fascinating to watch in this powerful and relentless coming-of-age adventure.” — Foreword Reviews (spotlight review) “Vividly portrayed, flush with cultural detail, and smoothly written.” — BookLife PRAISE FOR BRIGHT EYES: “Bright Eyes is imaginative, original, exceptionally well written, and highly recommended” — Midwest Book Review “An enthralling. unputdownable tale! […] The well-crafted mystery, well-honed history and world-building, and Risuko’s adventurousness leave the reader wanting more.” — Shailyn Rogers, Ind’Tale Magazine “The author crafts a highly unique and captivating world in the pages of Bright Eyes.” — BookLife

Sato Haruo has been called one of the most representative writers of the Taisho era (1912-1926), a transitional period following Japan's monumental push toward modernization. Although he never identified himself as a modernist, Sato exhibited what some writers have identified as a characteristic of modernism: a complex net of contradictory impulses that embrace both the revolutionary and the conservative, revealing both an optimistic looking to the future and a pessimistic nostalgia for the past. Six stories of amazing diversity and two critical essays revealing the understated Japanese ideals of beauty make up this volume, all translated into English for the first time. Forming a sequel to the three stories published in Sato's The Sick Rose, these stories exhibit an extraordinary variety of themes and styles, ranging from poetic fairy tales to psychological portraits to who-done-it crime stories. The title story is a utopian dream of a better city, populated by ideal people, that vanishes in a mirage. Another tale portrays the loneliness of a man unsuccessful with women. A third embellishes a bare Basho haiku about the man next door. Here too are the dream ballad of a Chinese prince, the imaginary world of a mad Japanese artist in Paris, and the probing search for an opium-drugged murderer. Sato's critical essays that conclude this volume have their themes in an exploration of the sad beauty of impermanence, the nature of enlightenment, the awareness of self, the merging of the instant and the eternal, and the "self-indulgent, unrestrained beauty" of the Japanese language. This collection not only affords insights into the complexity of the work of a gifted writer, but also significantly broadens the perspective of the literary world of the Taisho period.

This remarkable second novel recounts the fated attraction of an American seaman and a beautiful Japanese girl whose lives-and fortunes--are greatly influenced by their Zen Master.

ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • Winner of Japan's Grand Prix for Crime Fiction • Edgar Award Finalist • Nothing in Japanese literature prepares us for the stark, tension-filled, plot-driven realism of Natsuo Kirino’s award-winning literary mystery Out. This mesmerizing novel tells the story of a brutal murder in the staid Tokyo suburbs, as a young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime. The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot’s ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society. At once a masterpiece of literary suspense and pitch-black comedy of gender warfare, Out is also a moving evocation of the pressures and prejudices that drive women to extreme deeds, and the friendships that bolster them in the aftermath.

Behind every face is a life and a story... The Japanese 5,000 yen note circulates round the world and changes hands every minute but has anyone really stopped to look at the face on this note? Take a closer look and you will see the face of a young Meiji era Japanese woman looking serenely out at a 21st century world she has never known nor ever dreamt she would be a part of someday. What is the story behind this face that moved Japan so much as to put it on a Japanese legal tender, an honor accorded to no other Japanese woman? "A Note from Ichiyo" is the story of the turbulent life, struggles and achievements of Ichiyo Higuchi, a young Japanese female writer of extraordinary talent and the tongue in cheek ability to effortlessly cut through all the rigid constraints of being a woman in a man's world and ended up having the world, including some of the most prominent male writers, at her feet, grudgingly so but still at her feet! Ichiyo's agonizing, enduring and unfulfilled love for Nakarai Tosui, a rakishly handsome writer of some repute is also told, showing the vulnerable and passionate side of a woman whom many of that era thought to be too masculine for her own good. She was brazen and unapologetic that she was a woman without any formal education or prominent family backing and she cut through all the lines of prejudice and acute poverty to emerge, a star that shone much too brightly, just months before her death at the tragically young age of 24. And then, just as suddenly as she had appeared, Ichiyo Higuchi was gone, like a butterfly that flew in to dazzle within its short lifespan. The only difference was that Ichiyo Higuchi continued to dazzle long after she was gone and her poems and novels are read and honored hundreds of years later, a surreal dream started over 200 years ago come true... This is the story of Ichiyo Higuchi whose face is now immortalized in the 5,000 yen Japanese legal tender, it is truly a testimony of one woman's determination, courage and faith to defy all odds, even from beyond the grave.

A Kyoto geisha describes her initiation into an okiya at the age of four, the intricate training that made up most of her education, her successful career, and the traditions surrounding the geisha culture.