Wind and Stone

by Masaaki Tachihara

Overview

The story of Mizue, a housewife, and Kase, a traditional-style garden designer hired by her husband to landscape their home. As the garden takes shape, Mizue wakens to a new sensuality and desire, and her carefully structured life begins to crumble. Explores the psychology of human passion in an oblique language filled with references to art and aesthetic values.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780893469979
Publisher:	Stone Bridge Press
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Series:	Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	978 KB

About the Author

Tachihara (1926-1980) was born the son of a Zen priest in Taegu, Korea, and grew up studying the arts of medieval Japan, expecially literature and the Noh theater. A resident of Kamakura, he wrote novels and short stories, as well as a collection of essays on the Japanese garden. In 1961 he was awarded the Naoki Prize for Fiction.

Read an Excerpt

"In the presence of this garden that exposed its wide and empty spaces to her, Mizue was again haunted by an uneasiness. She tried to see the bare trees and evergreen hedge as nothing more than a pattern of colors and shapes. She tried to do the same with the stones. Again she had the fleeting feeling that the stones were Kase's eyes watching her. But when she looked closely at them they were just stones. Seen as part of the total garden they were flat and one-dimensional. Still, Mizue could not help feeling they were composed of invisible colors and empty spaces. She did not know what to make of this feeling. What was this invisible color?