Books - The Tokaido Road

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	Books - The Tokaido Road

The Tokaido Road is a 1991 historical novel by Lucia St. Clair Robson. It is an account of a famous Japanese revenge story set in 1702. In feudal Japan, The Tokaido Road (meaning, the "Eastern Sea Road") was the main road, which ran between the imperial capital of Kyoto (where the Emperor lived), and the administrative capital of Tokyo (where the Shogun lived).

Plot of The Tokaido Road

:So lonely am I :My soul is a floating weed :Severed at the roots

This is how Lady Asano has felt since the forced suicide of her father. Adrift in a dangerous world, she vows to avenge her father’s death and restore his name to honor. To do so, she will have to travel the Tokaido Road.

As the novel opens, Lady Asano has transformed herself into Cat, a high-ranking courtesan, to support her widowed mother. Yet Cat’s career is temporary; the powerful Lord Kira’s campaign against her family is continuing and she must find Oishi, leader of the samurai of the Asano clan, weapons master, philosopher, and Cat’s teacher. Cat believes he is three hundred miles to the southwest in the imperial city of Kyoto.

Disguising her loveliness in the humble garments of a traveling priest, Cat begins her quest. All she has is her samurai training—in Haiku and Tanka poetry, in the use of the deadly six-foot weapon, the naginata, and in Japanese Zen thought. And she will need them all, for a ronin, a lordless samurai—Tosa no Hanshiro, has been hired to trail her.

Excerpt from The Tokaido Road

:Hanshiro prowled the narrow back corridor toward the dark doorway to the storeroom. He walked with a straddle-legged swagger and a slight limp. If the long, divided, pleated skirts of his hakama had been new and crisp, they would have flared almost to the wall on either side. But this hakama was limp and faded from black to a streaked bluish gray. The hems had raveled into a pale fringe. Even the tips of the fringe were frayed.

:Behind him Hanshiro heard the rustle and squeak of women. He knew the maids were fluttering like radiant butterflies behind the paper walls, trying to see and hear. He could picture them whispering behind their sleeves. For a morning, at least, they had more on their minds than hairdos.

:Hanshiro stood in the doorway of the storeroom and tried to conjure up the image of Cat, the woman who was to have been Lady Asano. He tried to form her from her handwriting and from the scent that lingered in her rooms. Was she a fugitive or a victim or a murderer?

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