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Hideyoshi and Rikyu
Written by one of Japan's major women novelists, Nogami Yaeko (1885-1985), and set in the turbulent atmosphere of late-sixteenth-century Japan, Hideyoshi and Rikyu is a fictional account of the close and tense relations between the great warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his celebrated tea-master Sen no Rikyu.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published February 25, 1964
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About the author
Yaeko Nogami
32 books7 followersYaeko Nogami (野上 弥生子 Nogami Yaeko?, 6 May 1885 - 30 March 1985) was the pen-name of a novelist in Shōwa period Japan. Her maiden name was Kotegawa Yae.
Nogami was born in Usuki in Oita prefecture as the daughter of a wealthy sake brewer. She was taught at home by private tutors, including Kubo Kaizo, who introduced her to classic Chinese literature, classic Japanese literature and taught her the art of writing tanka poetry. She met the novelist Kinoshita Naoe, who persuaded her to enter the Meiji-Jogakkō, a Christian-orientated girls’ school in Tokyo. While a student in Tokyo, she met Nogami Toyoichirō, a student of Noh drama and English literature under Natsume Sōseki. They were married in 1906, but she continued to work towards literary recognition. Her first published work was a short story Enishi ("Ties of Love") in the literary magazine Hototogisu in 1907.
In the 1910s, Nogami submitted poems and short stories to the mainstream literary journal Chuo Koron, Shincho, and to the feminist magazine Seito, and gained a substantial following with fans of the proletarian literature movement. She maintained a correspondence with fellow female writers Yuasa Yoshiko and Miyamoto Yuriko, with whom she shared the sentiment that literature must serve a purpose towards increasing morality and social activism. In 1922, she published Kaijin maru ("The Neptune", tr. 1957), a shocking semi-factual account of four men in the crew of a wrecked fishing boat who must struggle with the choice of starvation or cannibalism. This novel was adapted into the 1962 film Ningen directed by Kaneto Shindo.
Nogami started to explore historical fiction in the 1920s, with Oishi Yoshio, a story about one of the Forty-seven Ronin in 1926.
As the Japanese government turned increasingly toward totalitarianism and it appeared that war was inevitable, she and her husband traveled to Europe where they witnessed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and ominous signs that would lead up to World War II. They returned to Japan prior to the outbreak of WWII, and she concentrated on her writing. In the post-war period, she resumed her contacts with Miyamoto Yuriko, and joined her in the foundation of the Shin Nihon Bungakukai.
Her postwar output was prolific and varied, including Hideyoshi to Rikyu ("Hideyoshi and Rikyu", 1962–1963), in which she explores the relationship between artist and patron (in this case Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Sen no Rikyū). The novel was adapted into the film Rikyu by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara.
(from Wikipedia)
Nogami was born in Usuki in Oita prefecture as the daughter of a wealthy sake brewer. She was taught at home by private tutors, including Kubo Kaizo, who introduced her to classic Chinese literature, classic Japanese literature and taught her the art of writing tanka poetry. She met the novelist Kinoshita Naoe, who persuaded her to enter the Meiji-Jogakkō, a Christian-orientated girls’ school in Tokyo. While a student in Tokyo, she met Nogami Toyoichirō, a student of Noh drama and English literature under Natsume Sōseki. They were married in 1906, but she continued to work towards literary recognition. Her first published work was a short story Enishi ("Ties of Love") in the literary magazine Hototogisu in 1907.
In the 1910s, Nogami submitted poems and short stories to the mainstream literary journal Chuo Koron, Shincho, and to the feminist magazine Seito, and gained a substantial following with fans of the proletarian literature movement. She maintained a correspondence with fellow female writers Yuasa Yoshiko and Miyamoto Yuriko, with whom she shared the sentiment that literature must serve a purpose towards increasing morality and social activism. In 1922, she published Kaijin maru ("The Neptune", tr. 1957), a shocking semi-factual account of four men in the crew of a wrecked fishing boat who must struggle with the choice of starvation or cannibalism. This novel was adapted into the 1962 film Ningen directed by Kaneto Shindo.
Nogami started to explore historical fiction in the 1920s, with Oishi Yoshio, a story about one of the Forty-seven Ronin in 1926.
As the Japanese government turned increasingly toward totalitarianism and it appeared that war was inevitable, she and her husband traveled to Europe where they witnessed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and ominous signs that would lead up to World War II. They returned to Japan prior to the outbreak of WWII, and she concentrated on her writing. In the post-war period, she resumed her contacts with Miyamoto Yuriko, and joined her in the foundation of the Shin Nihon Bungakukai.
Her postwar output was prolific and varied, including Hideyoshi to Rikyu ("Hideyoshi and Rikyu", 1962–1963), in which she explores the relationship between artist and patron (in this case Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Sen no Rikyū). The novel was adapted into the film Rikyu by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 25, 2018
They had their own “beauties” and also they were lonely persons. They could make good relationship, however, they couldn’t make friendship. Because, if they saw same thing, they could not understand the feelings each other. It’s the story about persons who could have hegemony or respect, but couldn’t have friend or “harmony” so they knew the importance of friendship and harmony.
February 5, 2022
Un libro straordinario bellissimo di per sé, che diventa ancora più memorabile se visto nell'ottica della biografia dell'autrice.
August 5, 2025
came to learn abt Rikyu stayed for the fascinating glimpse into this historical world, the people, tensions, pressures, social currents & fucked up power dynamics that comprised it..
December 6, 2024
Romanzo storico bello e interessante, si legge d’un fiato senza un attimo di noia. Qualche dubbio sulla traduzione dall’inglese.
August 8, 2021
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 Literature Prize in 1964 and was beautifully adapted into the film Rikyu by Teshigahara Hiroshi.
Read more about modern Japanese fiction on my blog: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/p/...
Read more about modern Japanese fiction on my blog: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/p/...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews