Yoshiko wrote:arigatou. I see I already knew about the bakamatsu, but I didn't know it was called like that
I'm reading Gai-jin bij James Clavell at the moment (I mean, I try to read it but I am stuck on page 240), that's also bakamatsu period.
What do you think of Clavells books about Japan?
yoroshiku san,
It's the first time I see James Clavell popping up on the JapanesePod101 forum, so excuse me for intruding (as I was expecting it to pop up a lot earlier).
Personally I enjoy reading James Clavell's books a lot. I've read almost all of them. It's an amazing author : During WW2 he was a prisoner of war of the Japanese. Instead of having an aversion of them afterwards, he was dazzled by the Japanese and this culture and started writing. He even wrote one book about a Japanese prisoner camp during WW2 : "King Rat". I don't like WW2 stories in general, but this one is very unlike anything you've seen before : it's not a dark and sad story.
Gaijin was a bit of a disappointment for me, as it was his last (or one of this last) books and to my feeling it did not reach the level of "Taipan" or "Shogun".
He actually planned to write a sequel, and as this won't happen anymore (he died in the early nineties) you are left with a lot of questions at the end of the book.
Apart from Shogun, I think "Taipan" 's his best work (although it is situated in Hong Kong and only sporadically the topic of Japan is touched). Taipan is all about a Hong-Kong pirate (or entrepreneur as they would call it nowadays
. Wirlwind is also fun reading, but it needs some time as it is about 1,200 pages if I'm not mistaking.
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Smoke Kills
