Akira Yoshimura Books In Order

Novels

Zero Fighter (1996)
Shipwrecks (1996)
On Parole (2000)
One Man’s Justice (2001)
Storm Rider (2004)
Typhoon of Steel (2009)
Seibold’s Daughter (2015)

Novels Book Covers

Akira Yoshimura Books Overview

Zero Fighter

From a North American standpoint, Zero Fighter makes a number of highly interesting points, having been written for the Japanese market. For example, North Americans are generally not aware of the success of the Zero Fighter or of its significance in Japanese minds. Both the superiority of the aircraft in the early stages of the Pacific War and the great stature of Jiro Horikoshi as an aircraft designer he is to Japan what the designer of the Spitfire is to the U.K. will come as a revelation to most readers here. Also completely unknown to most North American readers is the story of the transport section at the Nagoya Aircraft Works. This information is woven nicely into the book, and has a great deal to say about the startling quality of Japanese wartime industry: rigid in many ways, while producing a plane of brilliant originality. The book is a moving picture of the patience of the Japanese in the face of adversity, but perhaps most important, Zero Fighter is Japanese. It is not often that a Japanese book is encountered here that divulges intimate knowledge about such a fascinating subject. There is significant value in this as we enter an era in which the Japanese and American people must share and respect the other’s cultural point of view.

Shipwrecks

Isaku is a nine year old boy living in a remote, desperately poor fishing village on the coast of Japan. His people catch barely enough fish to live on, and so must distill salt to sell to neighboring villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: the fires of the salt cauldrons lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, the villagers slaughter the crew and loot the cargo for rice, wine, and rich delicacies. One day a ship founders on the rocks. But Isaku learns that its cargo is far deadlier than could ever be imagined. Shipwrecks, the first novel by the great Japanese writer Yoshimura to be translated into English, is a stunningly powerful, Gothic tale of fate and retribution.

On Parole

After spending sixteen years in prison for a crime of the heart, Shiro Kikutani is released into a world he no longer recognizes. He must readjust to the bright and vigorous stimulus of Tokyo while fending off his own dark memories. In a spare yet powerful style, Akira Yoshimura paints the psychology of a quiet man navigating his way through the unsuspected traumas of freedom finding a job, finding a home, even something as simple as buying an alarm clock. Kikutani takes comfort in the numbing repetition of his new daily life, only to be drawn inexorably back to the scene of his crime. A subtly powerful story, On Parole explores the fragile life of a murderer and the conditions of freedom in an unforgiving society. Yoshimura’s startling novel raises provocative questions of guilt and redemption.

One Man’s Justice

Japan just after World War II is the setting for this searching and provocative novel. Takuya, an officer in the former Imperial Army, is only mildly surprised when he receives a postcard asking him to report to the U.S. Regional Command Headquarters in Tokyo. He assumes that the occupying authorities have learned of his involvement in the execution of American prisoners of war. Now he is a fugitive in his own country. As he travels on crowded trains through a land of defeat, humiliation, and hunger, he is haunted by dark memories of the war. With newspapers denouncing the Imperial Army and widespread talk of prosecution for war crimes, he fears that his past will be revealed. And yet Takuya doesn’t feel like a criminal. Why should an honest and dutiful man like him be prosecuted by the very people who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slaughtering thousands? As he soon learns, truth and justice have no place in a world where the victors determine the rules of the game. One Man’s Justice is an unnerving story of timeless relevance from a master of the psychological novel.

Storm Rider

Based on real characters and events, Storm Rider is a vivid historical portrait of Japan and America in the mid nineteenth century, as well as an exciting high seas adventure and a moving story of a man lost between two cultures. At the age of thirteen, Hikotaro is orphaned and left to a life at sea. When the merchant vessel he sails on is caught in a violent storm on the Pacific, an American ship comes to the rescue and takes the young boy to San Francisco. With trepidation and hope, the boy now dubbed Hikozo accepts his new country. Still, he dreams of returning to Japan, but shogunate policy forbids reentry to Japanese who have been abroad. He tries anyway, only to be refused and returned to America, where a wealthy American adopts Hikozo and introduces him to a world of influence and power. Some ten years later, Hikozo returns to a Japan stirred into violence by the opening of the country. At the same time, America is in the midst of its bloody Civil War, and Hikozo finds that there is no place he can call home.

Typhoon of Steel

Translated by Mark Ealey, this is a vivid account of the Battle of Okinawa as seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old Okinawan schoolboy who served as a child soldier.