Song of the Samurai By C.A. Parker
Song of the Samurai
By C.A. Parker
Japan 1745 is a land under the iron grip of the Tokugawa shoguns. Roads are monitored, dissent stifled, and order maintained through blackmail and an extensive network of informers. Amid rumors of rebellion, Kurosawa Kinko – samurai and monk – is expelled in disgrace as the head music instructor of his Zen temple in Nagasaki. He begins an odyssey across Japan, dogged by agents and assassins from an unknown foe. Along his journey, Kinko encounters a compelling cast of merchants, ronin, courtesans, spies, warriors, hermits, and spirits, on a quest to redeem his honor.
The historical Kurosawa Kinko was a Zen monk of 18th-century Japan. A brilliant musician from a samurai family, he founded the kinko-ryu school of shakuhachi music (an end-
blown bamboo flute), which continues today. We know little of his actual life, his dairies having been destroyed in the bombing of Tokyo during World War II. We do know that he was born on Kyushu island and became a member of the Fuke temple in Nagasaki. The Fuke (named after an ancient Chinese monk) were a minor sect of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism. Like other Rinzai monks, they practiced zazen or sitting meditation but also played the shakuhachi as a form of meditation called sui zen or “blowing meditation.”
A work of literary/historical fiction, Song of the Samurai follows Kurosawa on a year- long journey from Nagasaki to Edo. The novel takes place over the course of a year, with each section of the book taking place in a different season, a nod to traditional Japanese poetry. While the story itself is fiction and all of the characters in the novel – besides Kurosawa himself and his teacher Ikkei – are fictitious, the locations are (or were) actual places, many of which we know that Kinko visited. Many of the temples were places where he collected the music that would make up the repertoire of his school of shakuhachi playing.
More than a simple tale of adventure and romance, Song of the Samurai is also a redemption story, recounting the spiritual pilgrimage that shaped Kinko into the transformative artist that we know today. Kinko’s journey takes him from the cloistered meditation halls of his monastery, to the pleasure quarters of Hiroshima, to the isolated holy mountain of Koya-san, to the treacherous courts of the shogun in the capital Edo, exploring the fascinating intersection of music, spirituality, and martial arts. Ultimately, the novel takes the reader on a richly-textured exploration of feudal Japan and the complexities of the human spirit.
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Song of the Samurai: Parker, C. A.: 9781960018007: Amazon.com: Books
