Striking and eloquent stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex A whale falls in love with a military submarine, and dies courting her; a mother caught in a fire following a bombing gives all her body's water to save her son, and her desiccated form turns into a kite; a wolf rescues a sick child abandoned by her parents, only to die himself at the hand of men. However, bunkers can also become real homes, a small Japanese girl and an American POW briefly understand each other and a miraculous tree feeds starving children... This is war, no doubt, but told by someone who understands how children truly experience war and its aftermath - the bombings and parents' deaths, the life of orphans who roam the streets, the starvation and blind violence in a society beyond destruction. Akiyuki Nosaka remembers what it was like to be a child caught in war-torn Japan in 1945, and he retells his experiences in this collection of powerful and beautifully expressive stories for children.
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)
