In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking and blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War. They are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable. Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.
Author
Akiyuki Nosaka (野坂 昭如 Nosaka Akiyuki) is a Japanese novelist, singer, lyricist, and former member of the House of Councillors. As a broadcasting writer he uses the name Yukio Aki (阿木 由紀夫 Aki Yukio) and his alias as a chanson singer is Claude Nosaka (クロード 野坂 Kurōdo Nosaka). Nosaka was born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, the son of Sukeyuki Nosaka, who was a sub-governor of Niigata. Together with his sisters he grew up as an adopted child of Harimaya in Nada, Kobe, Hyōgo. One of his sisters died as the result of sickness, and his adoptive father died during the 1945 bombing of Kobe in World War II. Another sister died of malnutrition in Fukui. Nosaka would later base his short story Grave of the Fireflies on these experiences. He is well known for children's stories about war. His Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki won the Naoki Prize in 1967. His novel, The Pornographers, was translated into English by Michael Gallagher and published in 1968. It was also filmed as The Pornographers by Shohei Imamura. In December 1978, he was credited for giving former rugby player-turned pro wrestler Susumu Hara his ring name, Ashura Hara. He was elected to the Japanese Diet in 1983. Nosaka suffered a stroke in 2003 and although still affected by it, he keeps writing a column for the daily Mainichi Shimbun. (from Wikipedia)
