El guerrero a la sombra del cerezo by David B. Gil

I think that there’s a new interest in Japan today in the West. I was surprised to find Japanese characters kissing, which would have been unlikely or even unthinkable in those days. Some aspects are exaggerated and some characters behave inconsistently with the lives of Japanese people at that time. GIL It’s a great novel, but I have doubts concerning the historical approach and the way the Japanese appear.

However, it doesn’t seem that any big novels have appeared since then. INTERVIEWER James Clavell’s Shogun is one of the major reference points in the West for books set in Japan. It’s such a rich time period that it’s surprising more Western authors haven’t made use of it. The era the novel takes place in-the end of the Sengoku period and the beginning of the Edo period -is a prime setting for a story because it has everything: epic battles, itinerant warriors, social and religious disturbances, impossible love affairs. It may seem strange, but for those who spend their youth reading samurai novels and watching the films of Kurosawa Akira and Yamada Yōji, they become everyday cultural references.

It seemed to emerge naturally, so that I don’t feel I chose the setting. I’ve always been drawn to Japanese culture, literature, and history, although I never thought that I would write my first novel about feudal Japan. In my case, around 20 years ago, before the Japanese literary boom in the West, I went looking for translations of works by authors like Mishima Yukio and Yoshikawa Eiji. Many Spanish writers have started working in genres like fantasy and science fiction, which used to be rare in Spanish literature. GIL Once writers simply got ideas from what was nearest at hand, but now their cultural references have become globalized. INTERVIEWER Why did you decide to set your first novel El Guerrero a la Sombra del Cerezo in Japan?

El guerrero a la sombra del cerezo by David B. Gil