The Laws of Evening

by Mary Yukari Waters (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.24

  In the wake of World War Two, a generation of Japanese women found itself frozen, as if in amber - the last representatives of an exquisite, ancient culture slowly being crushed between the realisation of its own brutality and the coming American Century. Mary Yukari Waters' astonishingly assured and elegant portraits show these women, with their husbands and fathers gone and their children at risk from appalling hunger and illness, still drawing sustenance from the dying tradition in which they were raised. Upheaval is balanced with renewal, estrangement with reconciliation: a mother tries to leaven her son's appetite for baseball and American food with the memory of his father; a woman asks few questions of an old, lost friend so that he might save face. With her completely authentic and alive stories, Yukari Waters gives her readers a passport into an otherwise alien culture, taking us beyond the usual images of Japan and into the human heart behind the ritual.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.24

  After the war, the destruction begins. With exquisite prose and breathtaking insight, Mary Yukari Waters brings to life a generation of Japanese women who survived the war their husbands did not - the last representatives of a delicate, ancient culture. In their past lies the brutality and defeat of World War Two, which fills them with shame. In the future looms the American Century, which their children want to embrace. THE LAWS OF EVENING captures the heartbreaking loss and fragile beauty of a dying civilization.