Wind and Stone

by Masaaki Tachihara

Overview

In detailing the affair between a garden designer and his client's wife, this stylistic Japanese novel explores the roots of passion.

Mizue is a Japanese housewife. Kase is a garden designer hired by her husband to landscape their home. As the garden takes shape, Mizue awakens to a new sensuality and desire. A disturbing tale of seduction, based on Japanese aesthetics and the artistic pursuit of destructive beauty.

Tachihara Masaaki (1926-1980) was an award-winning Japanese novelist, essayist, poet and literary critic of Korean descent, active during the Shōwa period. Wind and Stone is his only full-length novel in English.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780962813771
Publisher:	Stone Bridge Press
Publication date:	07/01/1998
Series:	Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Masaaki Tachihara (1926-1980) was born the son of a Zen priest in Taegu, Korea, and grew up studying the arts of medieval Japan, especially literature and the Noh theater. A resident of Kamakura, he wrote novels and short stories, as well as a collection of essays on the Japanese garden. In 1961 he was awarded the Naoki Prize for Fiction.

Read an Excerpt

"In the presence of this garden that exposed its wide and empty spaces to her, Mizue was again haunted by an uneasiness. She tried to see the bare trees and evergreen hedge as nothing more than a pattern of colors and shapes. She tried to do the same with the stones. Again she had the fleeting feeling that the stones were Kase's eyes watching her. But when she looked closely at them they were just stones. Seen as part of the total garden they were flat and one-dimensional. Still, Mizue could not help feeling they were composed of invisible colors and empty spaces. She did not know what to make of this feeling. What was this invisible color?