/lit/ - Literature

Cloud of Sparrows is a really tremendous book.
It's about how the West first started to properly interact with Japan in the 1800s, with good historical accuracy, told through a fiction between missionaries and a minor Japanese lord.

I very much liked how he switches between western and Japanese characters throughout, showing you the very different psychology of the two cultures at the time. There's similar situations in a certain movies where a culture clash is displayed, it's a fairly common theme, but in movies it tends to be a very visual experience and it doesn't get too deeply concerned with minutiae or psychology. Modern Japan is seen nearly the same way, you can see the chopsticks and sushi, the bowing, the paper doors etc, but you don't get a penetrating insight past the dazzle, and you can't really get a sense of just how very different they really are. In this book it digs deep into this, and for maximum it does it from the cool past period when they were still using samurai swords.
Reading it felt like finally getting the real scoop on Japan, the behind the scenes information, sort of like the DVD directors commentary on the whole country.
The author is a Japanese American who lives in Hawaii. It feels like he knows America well enough to have a revolver carrying old west guy turned missionary written the way a Californian would write him, but then he understands that classic peak Japan aesthetic also, but then thirdly he also he understands exactly how to convert it for your brain to understand because he has both halves, and he gets why you find in interesting or confusing, and he's like 'It's actually even more interesting that you suspected, here's all the stuff you wanted explained that whole time, but also all this other stuff you had no idea about that I know you should be seeing, and it's also explained in a non weeb way so it isn't faggy and you learn things, but actually also the weeb way after all, because swords are cool, so are revolvers and ship cannons.' It's like a Japanese guy made his own version of 'The Last Samurai' that's 10 times better that has a minor Japanese lord as the main character. There's a strong tribute to the west from the author, as well as the explanation of Japan element.
Also there's a sequel novel, Autumn Bridge, that is of the exact same quality of the first one and feels like an extension of the first book.

>>15226730
Found this in a box of free stuff on someones garden wall that they were giving away because they were moving house.
Fantastic book, and the sequel is just as good, no drop in quality whatsoever.

I once found a book in a train station that was also pretty good.