The Street of a Thousand Blossoms: A Novel

The Street of A Thousand Blossoms is filled with tragedy from the start. Kenji and Hiroshi are orphans who are being raised by their grandparents. Then World War II happens impacting their lives, setting them on an unexpected path. After each sadness, they appear to move forward only to have misfortune follow them again and again.

Recently I asked one of my writing mentors to give me a critique on a story I was working on. Her first words were that it was too depressing. Depressing doesn't lure in the reader. Then she listed all the reasons it was too depressing and trust me, the list was long. Her advice taught me a great lesson about writing. I wish someone had given Ms. Tsukiyama a list. Maybe we would have had more happiness in this novel.

This novel gave great insight into the Japanese culture. For that I'll give it credit. The story however, was so depressing it was often a struggle to keep reading. Add to that what I thought was poor editing and I was even more disappointed. The outside of the book is beautiful. The inside was too sad to be enjoyable. I rate this book 2 out of 5 stars.

Linda C. Wright
Author
One Clown Short

I have always had a great interest in Asian culture - particularly Japan - and I was looking for my next read when I found this book. From seeing all of the fabulous reviews it has received, I had anticipated a wonderful read but I never could have imagined just how good it was.

The book is incredibly detailed and truly puts you "in the moment". It is full of heart wrenching moments but while it was a difficult read simply because of how emotionally connected you get to the characters, all of the events stay historically accurate and honest.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who asks although I believe that those who have previous knowledge of Asian culture would probably enjoy reading it the most.

4/5 Stars.

Early this morning around 2 AM, I finished The street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tskiyama. Once again she took me in showed me the Asian culture but this time Japan right before WW II,thru the war and the dropping of the bombs and how Japan recovered. It could have been gory but this author has in incredible way with words,so lyrical,even when telling about the horror of the nuclear holocaust.. i give this book a 4.5/5. my favorite by her still is The Samurai's Garden.when I finish one of her books, i am so immersed by her that i wonder if i will ever be able to read another book right away!

This book is about what happens in Japan before, during, and after WWII. I found it incredibly rich and full of insight into the (fictional) lives of the Japanese characters. It should be required reading in US high schools.

I have enjoyed all of Gail Tsukiyama's books, and she did not disappoint me with this one. I felt as if it was not only thoroughly researched for period details (life in Japan during WW2) but also a moving story with vividly-drawn characters. Don't miss it if you would like to read a novel that is beautifully written, compelling, and poignant--with the added benefit of being a "page turner."

Gail Tsukiyama is a wonderful writer. This is the first book of her's I have read and the beauty of her writing is captured in the first chapter.After that you are hooked. Plan on reading all the others she has written. Well recommended.

Third book I have read by this author. Each book has taught me something about the asian cultures for which they were written. This book however is my favorite. Those of us who remember WW2 receive a new picture as to the suffering of the Japanese families who were as much a victim of the times as Americans were. A very worthy read and a book I will pass on to friends.

Samurai! Geisha! Sumo! Nô masks! What tropes of 'Aulde Japan' has Tsukiyama yet to plumb and exploit?

Fans of Tsukiyama will find another reason to rejoice in this novel, which continues along her well-worn path of Asian-American nostalgic fiction. The usual patterns are in place: dynastic family histories of emotional angst, contexted against Big Events of the last century. The strengths of the novel are Tsukiyama's steady, if also prosaic, prose style; its sense of grand ambition; its abundance of situational detail; and its rather sentimental narrative voice which is clearly American, creating war time Japanese puppets, to move around an epic novel.

Of course, some of these strengths are also its . . . not weaknesses . . . but with this work, despite its grand ambitions, we don't have something that compares to Tanizaki's _The Makioka Sisters_ . . . which truly is a multi-generational portrait of Japanese society during incredible social upheavel. Tsukiyama aims for such heights, but the prose lands in book-club genre-land.

First, the details. Tsukiyama has done some homework, and is proud of it. Each page is positively littered with Japanese loanwords . . . awkwardly inserted into English prose. We suspend belief to a point . . . we have an entire realm of Showa-era Tokyo speaking in crisp, business English . . . peppered throughout with actual Japanese words. The effect is paradoxical: Tsukiyama deploys so much Japanese terminology to make her book more 'Japanese' . . . which it isn't. The capricious methods of transliterating the loanwords reveals as much. The Japanese terms are window dressing, for nikkei sensibility of what Japan 'must have been'. At it's best moments -- and there are great moments -- the effect is 'Memoirs of a Geisha' like . . . a rather well-wrriten, operatic version of Japanese pseudo-history. The fire-bombing sequence, for example, is particularly breathtaking. But, the pedestrian descriptions of tea houses, cherry blossoms, and beancakes . . . well, if not cliche, than certainly a bit pat. There is a gap, here, between a book which should have been written in Japanese, but wasn't . . . and I'm sure somewhere a dissertation is being written on authors such as Tsukiyama, who as American authors, are conjuring up a thematic 'Japan' as a kind of reliable repertoire. I know most readers won't be concerned with such matters, but just as many will. At the very least, please try a translation of Tanizaki for comparison.

The Japanese-American voice, made as 'Japanese' as possible, thus creates the kind of languid nostalgia that pushes the book into sentimental chicklit territory . . . sorry, but it's true. One character becomes the most famous sumo wrestler in Japan. A bearer of tradition! A continuation of the Japanese soul. Yamato damashi squared. How interesting, to read all this yearning for pre-war ideals, at a time when the top yokozuna has been suspended for playing hokey and match-fixing. And the noh masks . . . always a source of mystique! Tsukiyama has provided enough 'details' on these topics that lay readers will enjoy a brief survey of these arts through the act of this fiction. But the subject matters themselves, in striving to represent Japanese Art, only act to hyperbolise the notion of culturality. It's no different than certain Irish-American authors who write stories of the aulde sod about red-haired harpers, Irish dancing schools, and a plucky young clan playing sure and begorrah on the hillsides. This book's sakura motif, liberally photocopied on the top of each chapter heading, should tell you what this book is about.

Indeed, much of the moral pronouncements of this war, and their dishearteningly simplistic assessment of wartime Japan, are truly cringe worthy. The last line of the book -- spoiler! -- is a nice, happy ending where the Japanese nation has shed its State Shinto and is now dedicated to the Dogma of Toyota:
". . . a new Japan prospered and grew; the ghosts of the past were put to rest . . ."

Been to Yasukuni Jinja lately, Ms Tsukiyama? Such deplorably facile commentary is what concludes this novel, the same hack sentiments and forged cultures that propelled it. It's exactly the way in which 'the old country, invented as heritage for whatever personal curiosity, fails to muster up the necessary complexity that makes for either a great work, or at least a penetrating study of individuals and their place in national self-consciousness I know that's the bit you don't like, but I couldn't supress the laughter when I read this book's 'acknowledgements: _Japanese for Busy People_ is credited as Tsukiyama's source materials. There you have it, folks, exactly the sense I had of this novel: a breezy, introductory version of Japan that reads like a textbook, full of coined phrases and earnest musings on Tradition. Except, with Tsukiyama, we get the cardboard version -- which will no doubt make it a bestseller amongst fellow dabblers.

All of the above comments are not meant to say that this book is 'bad'. In terms of what it is trying to do, it's a wonderful book. But I'm surprised how little people are willing to acknowledge exactly what the 'what' is . . . and that what is ethnic fictionalising, heavy on historical details, but equally heavy on cultural ventriloquism. The effect is, ultimately, dreamy, even as the incedinary bombs are coming down. It's very interesting to compare this book with books about Japan . . . written by Japanese authors. The works of Tanabe Seiko, who wrote extensively about family life during and after the War, compellingly reveal the big gap between Tsukiyama's far-off glance, and those who actually lived through the experience. Questions of authenticity, whether we like it or not, still matter; the timbre of the author's voice becomes distinguished thereby.

_Street of a Thousand Blossoms_ is a fine, crafty read, but Tsukiyama has made a name for doing this . . . . I mean, _Samurai Garden_?? The ethnic cachet is overworked, becoming ethnic nostalgia. Noh masks and sumo wrestlers represent a tradition, but it's a tradition Tsukiyama is not a part of . . . even with 400 pages of loanwords. The more I think about this book, the more I regret purchasing a hardcover. Historically, it's a lame dis-service to a terrifying, violent era of national chauvinism -- gussied up with Tsukiyama's little sumo-flavoured glossary. Culturally, it's little more than a projection of sentimentality for another time, another place, definitely not her own. All in all, it'll makes you appreciate Kawabata even more.

Ethnic phantasy at its most prosaic.

Stephen Park is a good enough narrator but if you are a person who can't stand for Japanese words to be miss pronounced, avoid the audio version of this book. Example: the difference in Japanese between "uncle" and "grandfather" is how long you hold the second vowel. So, throuout the book, the main character's grandfather is referred to as uncle in Japanese. Overall, Parks pronunciation is good, thus lulling you into a false sence of enjoyment. Then you are jarred by a word with the wrong emphasis and find yourself annoyed. I do better when the Japanese is all mangled because I'm not expecting it to sound good. My one star is for the narration, not the book. People who enjoy this book would probably also like Expatriate Heart by Janet Sasaki which takes place in the same postwar Japan but with a female American protagonist.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

This book was about Japan before, during and after the war. Three generations of view. The story follows the life of two boys: Kenji and Hiroshi. These boys were orphaned at a young age and lived with their grandparents. Kenji would be a mask maker for the theater and Hiroshi a Sumo wrestler.
This book gave me a front row seat to an eye witness account of how WW2 affected Japan. Gail wrote in such a way as for me to feel the heat, experience the pain and see the results of the atomic bomb. It will be life long memories of a nation at war under a brutal regime and how Japan came through it. I will never look at Japan the same.
At the end of the war a character says, "The number of lives lost abroad and at home was staggering. And in the end, what was it all for?" The author did a good job at showing the futility of the war. As I read I saw the senseless loss of families, the dislocation of the same. It was heart wrenching to experience these tragedies through the eyes of the characters.
I highly recommend this book. It's not a book of surprises but of normal (if you can call it that in a war) Japanese lives. I had to will myself to keep reading at times but was so rewarded when I did. I came away with a great appreciation of peace time and a greater love for the Japanese people.