Legends of the Samurai

by Hiroaki Sato

Overview

In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors.

Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai’s historical origins to his rise to political power.

A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.

“A welcome antidote to the one-dimensional image of the samurai . . . a revealing, entertaining, and often surprising portrait of pre-modern Japan’s heroic warrior elite.” —Mangajin

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780879516192
Publisher:	The Overlook Press
Publication date:	11/28/1995
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hiroaki Sato is a prize-winning writer and translator with over 40 works of classical and modern Japanese poetry, prose, and fiction published in English. His reviews and articles have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times Book Review, AsiaWeek, Mainichi Daily News, St. Andrews Review, Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, The Journal of American and Canadian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, The Japan Times, The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Modern Haiku, Japan Focus, and others.

Editorial Reviews

Sato, the editor and translator of One Hundred Frogs (LJ 4/15/83), has compiled an interesting collection of stories about Japan's warrior class, the samurai. In translations that seek to capture the nuances of the original, Sato illustrates the evolving ethos of the samurai class over a period of 1000 years. In choosing a story to illuminate an incident, Sato selected the version closest in time to the event rather than a more modern retelling. This gives his collection a sense of immediacy and authenticity that is often missing in translations that attempt to recast stories for a Western audience. The value of this work lies in the way it illuminates a non-Western cultural tradition-a way of thinking and acting that may seem alien. It offers a rare look into the mindset of Japan's warrior aristocracy. Recommended for academic and public libraries with a strong reader interest in this area.-Robert James Andrews, Duluth P.L., Minn.

Library Journal