Yoshio kubo biography books

Nogami Yaeko almost became a hundred years of age and left an immense body of work, of which very little has been translated into English. Happily, that was not the fate of her greatest novel, published when she was 77, a historical tale focusing on the complex relationship between tea master Sen no Rikyu and 16th c. warlord and finally de facto ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi. Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose through the ranks from a common foot soldier to become the military ruler of Japan but struggled to win respect among the cultured nobility. Sen no Rikyu was a wealthy merchant from trade center Sakai, who not only had become the country's most accomplished tea master, but who also functioned as political advisor to Hideyoshi. Nogami contrasts Hideyoshi's love of ostentatious display with the ideals of simplicity and rusticity emphasized by Rikyu. The intertwined lives of these two iconic historical figures ended in disaster for one of them: as is well known, the warlord forced the tea master to commit suicide. Nogami is very knowledgeable both about the tea ceremony and the No theater, adding to the interest of this historical novel. But above all it is an absorbing psychological portrait of two powerful men. Nogami's novel won the Woman's Literatu

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