Child of Vengeance: A Novel

Product DescriptionA bold and vivid historical epic of feudal Japan, based on the real-life exploits of the legendary samurai Musashi Miyamoto.Japan in the late 16th century was a land in turmoil. Lords of the great clans schemed against each other, served by aristocratic samurai bound to them by a rigid code of honor. Bennosuke is a high-born but lonely teenager living in his ancestral village. His mother died when he was a young boy, and his powerful warrior father Munisai has abandoned him for a life of service to his Lord, Shinmei. Bennosuke has been raised by his uncle Dorinbo, a monk who urges the boy to forgo the violence of the samurai and embrace the contemplative life. But Bennosuke worships his absent father, and when Munisai returns, gravely injured, Bennosuke is forced to confront truths about his family's history and his own place in it. These revelations soon guide him down the samurai's path-awash with blood, bravery, and vengeance. His journey will culminate in the epochal battle of Sekigahara-in which Bennosuke will first proclaim his name as Mushashi Miyamoto. This rich and absorbing epic explores the complexities of one young man's quest while capturing a crucial turning point in Japanese history with visceral mastery, sharp psychological insight and tremendous narrative momentum.Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Exclusive: The Code of the SamuraiWhat did it mean to be samurai Over the centuries they were prevalent in Japan, the concept was quite open to interpretation. Malleable may be too strong a word, for there were many constants--a stoic and reserved sword-bearing man who valued the honor of his name and clan above all--and yet change was undeniable. When the samurai began to emerge as a dominant class in the eleventh and twelfth centuries they were simply those who were the best at hitting things with bow or sword, and yet by the end of their era in the mid 1800s many could be fairly described as little more than heavily armed bureaucrats.The period this novel depicts happens to be a time of great upheaval: the transitory years as samurai society evolved from a meritocratic order of warriors into a caste that one was either born into or forbidden. The warlord Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who effectively ruled Japan from 1585 to his death in 1598, was the great instigator of this process, starting off by forbidding any non-samurai to bear weapons early in his reign. Though it would be a few decades later that codified law would be put in place by the Tokugawa Shogunate, it was Toyotomi’s decree that truly began the separation of the populace into rigid strata of samurai, peasant, artisan, merchant, and lowest of all the corpse-handlers.The great and unavoidable irony of course is that Toyotomi was himself born a peasant, and tried a number of vocations in his life before he enrolled as a soldier and discovered his aptitude for war, clawing his way upwards through the ranks to the highest position of all. Though lineage had always been given prestige, by the decree of a commoner it now became everything, much to the carefully hidden disgust of a lot of his contemporaries and descendents.Though this kind of radical alteration tended to happen in sporadic violent bursts of activity and incident rather than a steady and continual progression, it was nevertheless the case that different ideals of ‘samurai-hood’ waxed and waned from decade to decade, even from city to city. Attitudes towards dress, towards the spiritual or practical importance of the sword, towards art - some Lords encouraged their samurai to study poetry because they thought the practice civilizing, whereas others rejected it as a feminine distraction - all varied with time and location.The protagonist of Child of Vengeance is the man who would come to be known as Musashi Miyamoto, the greatest samurai ever to grace this earth. His father, Munisai Shinmen, was a legendary samurai in his own right. The father’s belief, espoused throughout the no
Author: Kirk, David

Publisher: Doubleday

Binding: Hardcover

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0385536631

ISBN-13: 9780385536639