Stranger in the Shogun's City
A Woman’s Life in Nineteenth-Century JapanSelect a format:
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Summary
Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2020, a vivid work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman in Edo - now known as Tokyo - and a portrait of a great city on the brink of momentous change
'Compelling... Deeply absorbing' Guardian
The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a village in Japan's snow country and was expected to lead a life much like her mother's. Instead - after three divorces and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval - she ran away to follow her own path in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo.
Stranger in the Shogun's City is a rare, captivating portrait of one woman as she endeavours to recreate herself and her life, and provides a window into the drama and excitement of Japan at a pivotal moment in history.
'Marvellous... Stanley builds up a picture of Tsuneno's world, immersing us in an experience akin to time travel' TLS
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography 2020 *
* Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2021 *
* Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography *
* Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown *
'Compelling... Deeply absorbing' Guardian
The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in 1804 in a village in Japan's snow country and was expected to lead a life much like her mother's. Instead - after three divorces and with a temperament much too strong-willed for her family's approval - she ran away to follow her own path in Edo, the city we now call Tokyo.
Stranger in the Shogun's City is a rare, captivating portrait of one woman as she endeavours to recreate herself and her life, and provides a window into the drama and excitement of Japan at a pivotal moment in history.
'Marvellous... Stanley builds up a picture of Tsuneno's world, immersing us in an experience akin to time travel' TLS
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography 2020 *
* Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2021 *
* Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography *
* Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown *
Reviews
How did it feel to live in what was even then one of the largest cities in the world, a place of vivid and brilliant creativity, isolated by decree from the world at large? This is the question that Amy Stanley has set herself in this quietly ambitious book... She has extracted a touching and accessible story about leaving the provinces for the thrilling loneliness of the big city, about making mistakes and making the same mistakes again... a minor miracle of documentary and literary archaeology
Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times