Description
Fiction. Asian American Studies. Based on historical events, ANSHU is a tale of passion and human triumph in the face of extraordinary adversity, spanning the cane fields of Hawai'i and the devastation in Hiroshima. A pregnant and unmarried Hilo teenager, Himiko Aoki, finds her Hawai'i Japanese American identity clashing with Japan's cultural norms when she is sent to live with relatives in Tokyo in 1941 and becomes trapped there with the outbreak of war. When America drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Himiko finds herself adapting in unexpected ways just to survive.
“ANSHU, a Japanese word written with the characters for ‘darkness’ and ‘grief,’ is a powerfully moving and vividly rendered story of destruction by fire and the flames of memory.”
—Gayle K. Sato, Meiji University
“Juliet S. Kono has crafted a remarkable novel, weaving together experiences of darkness and flames and turning it into a story of luminous strength and determination. Himiko is a very young child who is consumed with fire—burns them everywhere even at the risk of turning her own body into fuel for the flames. Pregnant in pre-World War II Hilo, Hawai‘i, she is sent to Japan where she encounters harsh treatment from relatives who have little to spare. Caught in Japan during WWII, she endures the firebombing of Tokyo, an event akin to the planned devastation of Dresden, Germany. Later, she becomes a victim of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. As a cruelly scarred hibakusha, she makes her way back to life as an American in Occupied Japan. But she works her way to relative freedom from worldly constraints. Woven through this world of fire, Kono intersperses the gentle offerings of Japanese Buddhism, not the meditative Zen of American celebrities but the counsel of centuries of experience passing through earthly existence, ‘this burning house.’ This is a great story, lovingly written by someone whose skills were honed by years of dedication to poetry. Read this book.”
—Franklin Odo, founding director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program
“By the time she published her first book, HILO RAINS, in 1988, Juliet S. Kono was already living with her protagonist of ANSHU, Himiko Aoki. Kono’s second book, TSUNAMI YEARS, and her experiences in between affirmed her growing understanding of human tragedy, suffering, and transience. To write ANSHU the author had to live with the novel’s fictional narrator for years of her life, in order to learn and to tell the unspeakable about a subject few if any Americans before Kono have been able to speak about without guilt and revulsion. ANSHU, the very word defined by this novel, means an understanding, an apprehension deeper than guilt, deeper than fear, than hate, than love and pity and sympathy, deeper than resignation, deeper than acceptance.”
—Stephen H. Sumida, University of Washington
“Simply put, Juliet Kono fleshes out the heroism that defines the miracle of survival during World War II Japan and after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. We follow Hi-chan (child of fire) from the Big Island of Hawai‘i when, because of her pregnancy, she must emigrate to Japan and live with impoverished relatives. Enduring hardships and loss—trials by fire—Hi-chan becomes a courageous, self-sacrificing Japanese woman, as admirable as her author. That is, ultimately, Kono, through graceful yet unstinting prose, gives us a memorable story of atonement and transcendence.”
—Joe Tsujimoto, author of Morningside Heights: New York Stories
“From Hilo to Hiroshima, ANSHU traces the harrowing journey of its ‘fiery’ young protagonist, Himiko Aoki, through the cataclysmic events of World War II and its aftermath in Japan. It is a courageous and necessary book, steeped in the wisdom of Buddhist cosmology, taking on the large issues of the human condition. Through its rich detailing of the ‘dark sorrow’ of a single human journey, Himiko’s story illuminates the relation of each of us to the other, of the very small to the incomprehensible.”
—Sylvia Watanabe, author of Talking to the Dead
Author Bio
ANSHU is Juliet S. Kono's first novel. Her previous publications include two books of poetry, HILO RAINS and TSUNAMI YEARS; a collaborative work of linked poems with three other poets, NO CHOICE BUT TO FOLLOW; a short story collection, HONOLULU PARK AND THE PEPSODENT SMILE; and a children's book, The Bravest 'Opihi. The recipient of several awards, including the US/Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, most recently in Imagine What It's Like: A Literature and Medicine Anthology. In 2006, she won the Hawai'i Award for Literature. Born and raised in Hilo, Hawai'i, she now lives in Honolulu with her husband and teaches composition and creative writing at Leeward Community College.
Author City: HONOLULU, HI USA