Forty-Seven Samurai

Reviews / Votes

"One of Japan's most sprawling and endlessly intriguing of bloody epics... Hiroaki Sato weaves a rich portrait of a paradoxical society governed by value systems vastly different to our own."

-Damian Flanagan, The Japan Times


"The vengeance of the Forty-Seven Samurai ended in an early-morning flash of violence and bravado. This book is the scaffolding under that flash. Here are the warring claims to how the incident came to pass; here are contemporary accounts, but also the vivid poems, plays, stories and penal codes that have been revivifying that legend in the centuries since."

-Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author


"Hiroaki Sato, a poet, author of Legends of the Samurai (where he first retells this story) and the PEN award-winning translator of many Japanese writers including Princess Shikishi, Yukio Mishima and Kenji Miyazawa, does something which others have not attempted, namely to provide more than just an accurate historical account of the event and its aftermath. Sato allows the participants to speak in their own words through their own haiku and letters, which immediately renders them three-dimensional and thoroughly human."

-The Asian Review of Books


"A striking mosaic of original source materials. By creating a Rashomon Effect with his multi-faceted approach Sato deepens the mysteries of the 47 Ronin Incident."

-Doris G. Bargen, Author of Suicidal Honor


"Sato enlightens his readers, in English, on Japanese customs and culture relative to the incidents of the 47 Ronin with history, correspondence, and poetry, which may be unknown even to the Japanese people."

-Prof. Allan Sosei Palmer, Urasenke Chanoyu, Kyoto, Boston


"The pre-eminent translator of Japanese poetry in our time...possessed of an unfiltered enthusiasm and spontaneity."

-August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books


"Over the last four decades, English-speaking aficionados of modern Japanese literature have delighted in the numerous translations, both of prose and poetry, undertaken by the masterful hand of translator, essayist, and poet Hiroaki Sato."

-Meera Viswanathan