Pages and Pastries Book Discussion: Stranger in the Shogun's City

Pages & Pastries is back in person and new members are ALWAYS welcome! Check out an ebook or audiobook in Libby/Overdrive and/or Hoopla, or stop by the Adult Services Desk on the second floor to pick up a copy (quantities are limited).

Questions? Email Katie at kallan@orlandparklibrary.org or call 708-428-5150 for more information.

Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley

Northwestern University history professor Stanley debuts with an evocative and deeply researched portrait of 19th-century Japan through the events of one woman’s life in the decades before Commodore Perry’s 1853 arrival and the opening of the country to the West. Drawing from a collection of family papers, Stanley recreates the life of Tsuneno, “the loudest, the most passionate” daughter of a Buddhist priest, from her birth in a farming village in 1804; to her first marriage, at age 12; her long-awaited departure for Edo (present-day Tokyo) in her late 30s; her fourth and final marriage, to an unsteady samurai; and her death in 1853. Stanley fills in the blanks of Tsuneno’s letters and diary entries with well-informed speculation about her daily life and atmospheric descriptions of corrupt and sophisticated Edo during the Tokugawa shogunate. Japanophiles and readers of women’s history will be entranced.