Rating: 
Summary: Shipwrecks - A Morally Conflicted Tale
Review: Akira Yoshimura's novel "Shipwrecks" tells a story of a small fishing village's struggle for survival. The story, seen through the eyes of a young boy, is a disturbing tale of the lengths some will go to survive. Each year, the village has a gift from the gods, in the form of a vessel blown off course. It is a tradition to lure the boats to the jagged shores with large fires buring off shore. The boats are lured towards the shore and are damaged. The people kill the survivors and steal the supplies in order to stay alive. The young boy is an innocent witness to such a disturbing act, yet as the reader, I found myself trying to simpathize with these murderers.I think this story has a similar theme to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery", and has the same amount of horror. However, there is more emotion in this tale because it is seen through the eyes of such an innocuous main character. I highly recommend this story. It left me feeling morally conflicted, yet highly satisfied as a prolific reader. Hope you enjoy!
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Summary: A Beautiful, Simply-Written, Suspenseful Tale
Review: I wont giveaway the story, and I'm glad I had not read the other reviews before reading this as I feel they gave away far too much of the story.
Transport yourself to a medieval Japanese fishing village, and experience the life of Isaku with his family and fellow villagers over a period of 3 years. The tale is filled with ironies - a land that sounds like paradise yet the people living here are in constant struggle with poverty and starvation; shipwrecks that bring bounty and joy to the people yet they live in fear of being discovered; and the final outcome of a blessed shipwreck that washes in to their shore.... The author does not make any judgements nor does he describe in detail the emotions of these villagers in their plight. Rather, the reader is left to imagine a riot of emotions - empathy, horror, and.. hope. I couldn't put this book down.
I cannot wait to read Yoshimura's other works.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: One hundred and fifty four exquisitely written pages,the last six of which will "haunt" me for a long time to come.
A wonderful tale of life in medieval Japan narrated by nine year old Isaku who lives with his mother and three younger siblings in a remote and very poor fishing village.
Life is spartan with little respite from days spent trying to eke out a meagre existence and stave off starvation. Relief and celebration come finally in the form of O-fune -sama (a shipwreck) but exact a final and chilling punishment from which there can be no salvation.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bleak Morality Tale
Review: PUBLISHED IN JAPAN in 1982, this is the first of the prolific Yoshimura's provocative novels to appear in translation. The story spans three years in the life of a young boy (ages 9-12) living in a tiny, isolated coastal village in medieval Japan as he struggles to come of age. The village exists purely on a subsistence level, forcing many people-including the boy's father-to sell themselves as indentured laborers so that their family may eat. In his father's absence, the boy struggles to learn the tricks of fishing, and must make do with less food. Through sparse prose, the reader is shown a life of pure work, the villagers' waking hours are completely devoted to gathering food (mainly fishing for octopus, squid, sardines, and the like) or household chores-allthewhile worrying about absent family members. The villagers, who number about 200 or so, seem to accept their grim existence with stoic fortitude, with the only glimmer of hope coming during the stormy winter season. It is then that the sea every so often delivers bounty in the form of a shipwreck, providing foodstuffs, tools, and other useful items the villagers could never hope to obtain any other way. There is a dark side to these boons, however, and the karmic consequences are both inevitable and heartrending. The story slowly builds to its tragic conclusion by detailing the flow of the seasonal cycles of fishing and chores. This is pretty slow, sedate stuff, which can be annoyingly repetitive. Finally, however, when the shipwreck comes, we share in their joy at the small comforts it offers, such as rice. Soon after this, the insular village is threatened by powerful outside forces and the tension mounts. Ultimately, a tragedy occurs, one that is all the more poignant to modern readers because it is so easily prevented, but then again, the story is essentially a bleak morality tale. Altogether it's good, but not very demanding reading-kind of interesting as a period piece as it details mundane chores and customs with almost anthropological attention. I'd read another of his books, One Man's Justice, previously, and liked it a bit better.
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Summary: An incredible tale of survivor
Review: SHIPWRECKS by Akira Yoshimura Written by one of Japan's most honored novelists, Akira Yoshimura, SHIPWRECKS is a tale that takes place in a poverty stricken Japanese fishing village during Medieval times and centers on the difficult life that the villagers endure to keep alive. Translated from the Japanese by Mark Ealey, it is a tale of suffering and hard work, told from the viewpoint of a young boy as he grows from child into man. Young Isaku is 9-year-old boy at the start of this story. But for him, childhood is short-lived, and even as a young boy of five, he was expected to pull his weight and help support his family. The village where he lives is isolated from the rest of the island, and to make ends meet, they resort to fishing and trading, depending on the season. The other option is selling oneself into servitude or bondage, in exchange for goods. Isaku's father has sold himself, and at the start of this novel he is already living in another village working for his master. In the meantime, Isaku is the man of the house, and it is up to him to catch their food and to keep his mother and siblings from starvation. Rice is hard to come by, and most of their meals are vegetables or grains traded for salt with the neighboring village. He barely knows how to fish, so it is not often that they have anything substantial to eat. Isaku eventually learns about the "ofune-sama", which is Japanese for "ship god" or "ship master", and it is this ofune-sama that helps the village thrive. Every few years, a ship or two will ground itself upon the rocks that border their shores and the villagers will pillage and kill any survivors on that ship to take what they can to feed their families. The villagers see no harm in this. It is what they have done for many generations and it is how they live. They know no other way, and Isaku follows his family in obeying their customs. One year, a ship arrives that they think is "ofune-sama", but brings bad fortune to the people of this tiny village. What happens to them is beyond description. Is it karma that brings this ill luck to them? Yoshimura's tale of life in this impoverished town does not point fingers, but serves as a parable. I found this book one of the most unique stories I have read in my entire life. Not only did it describe a way of life that was totally foreign to me, but also it was done so to the minutest detail. The first half of the book was dedicated in describing this lifestyle, so by the second half the reader has become quite familiar with the routines that are performed month by month that Isaku and his family had to endure to keep alive. It is a trip into another world and another time, with a possible lesson to be learned at the end. I recommend this book for those who are serious readers, and are willing to read "outside the box".
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Summary: Read it in Japanese, if at all possible.
Review: Shipwrecks is a book about how a remote, extremely isolated Japanese coastal village depends on plundered shipwrecks for its sustenance. It is set in medieval times.
These shipwrecks are known as "O-fune-sama". To say that these villagers are destitute is, if anything, an understatement. Every springtime sees more and more of the villagers having to sell themselves into indentured servitude to support their family. Fathers are usually the first to go.
Everyone left behind in the village hopes... indeed, BASES their entire continued existence on the good fortune of an O-fune-sama wrecking itself on their reefs, thus providing their village with a life-giving bounty of rice, utensils, wine, and unheard-of delicacies.
Yoshimura's story-telling lense focuses on the plight of nine year old Isaku and his family. His father has already left for indentured service, and Isaku, as the eldest male, is left to provide food for his mother and siblings. He develops his craft as a fisherman. Isaku, as a character, is by far, the strongest point in this novel. Well done. Yoshimura did well in providing a glimpse into the struggle of Isaku's forced initiation into the realm of responsible manhood.
Isaku soon learns the mysterious origin of the salt cauldrons that burn on the beach all night long, when he is asked to tend to these fires.
The fires are meant to lure floundering cargo-laden ships in the night... to coax them onto the treacherous shoals... to run them aground. These ships are subsequently plundered for all the goods on board, and the crew is slaughtered.
Isaku becomes a witness and recipient of one of these bounties. He, along with the rest of the village, longs for a similar occurence the following year. After all, Isaku's father is about due to return. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to present him with prosperity, however ill-gotten it may be?
Well, what the heedless waves bring these villagers next... is not quite what was expected, nor desired. Yoshimura has written a good story, but I am of the opinion that a bit may have been lost on the English translation. (Do medieval Japanese really say "I reckon" as Mark Ealey suggests they do in chapter 8)?
I found "Shipwrecks" to be poignant in a few respects... but overall unmemorable in most.
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Summary: Empty and Bland Tale of an Isolated Japanese Village
Review: Sorry.-I just don't understand.-I bought this book because of a catalogue's description of it as "Japanese Gothic."-Further, a quote from the Los Angeles Times on the front cover describes it as "A haunting read."-There is nothing haunting nor "Gothic" about this book. This is the book for you if you're interested in: a)The difficulty of learning to fish in different ways off the Japanese coast, in detail. b)What it might have been like for a young boy growing up in a poor Japanese village a long time ago. c) What the effects of smallpox are like.-It really reads like a non-fiction work, not a fantastic haunting or Gothic novel, best exemplified by the Brontes, particularly Emily's Wuthering Heights. Nothing in the book evokes passion or is really more than commonplace. The practice of lighting fires to attract ships to founder on reefs in order to pillage them was a common practice around the globe, particularly in England. Young boys growing up frequently have a hard time of it (whether in Japan or Nigeria), and I reommend a medical textbook to get a better idea of smallpox, its etiology and symptomotology. Why did this book get all these reviews praising it as "haunted" and "Gothic." There's nothing haunted or Gothic in a tale a young boy growing up in a poor fishing village where they cause ships to wreck in order to sustain themselves and then accidentally catch smallpox on one of these ventures. Did Yoshimura bribe everybody? Is it taboo for us to give a Japanese novel translated into English anything other than superlative reviews because of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II?-Why is everybody giving this bland book such stellar reviews?-That's the truly haunting question about this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Japanese Fishing Village With An Unusual Tradition
Review: This is a quiet tale of life in a Japanese fishing village so poverty stricken that members of families must sell themselves into bondage for years to put food on the table. After ingratiating us into the yearly cycle of village life, the tale tells us of the villagers' rather macabre secret that keeps them alive, and the unexpected outcome of their activity. It contrasts their own judgments on their means of self-preservation -- by no means limited to them alone in the history of the world -- with the condemnation that would come from their neighbors. The book is simply written, interesting, emotionally involving, and compelling; very informative of how such villagers live. An enjoyable if strange story of what people do to stay alive. What a pity the ending has been more or less given away already in these pages.
Rating:
Summary: A Japanese Fishing Village With An Unusual Tradition
Review: This is a quiet tale of life in a Japanese fishing village so poverty stricken that members of families must sell themselves into bondage for years to put food on the table. After ingratiating us into the yearly cycle of village life, the tale tells us of the villagers' rather macabre secret that keeps them alive, and the unexpected outcome of their activity. It contrasts their own judgments on their means of self-preservation -- by no means limited to them alone in the history of the world -- with the condemnation that would come from their neighbors. The book is simply written, interesting, emotionally involving, and compelling; very informative of how such villagers live. An enjoyable if strange story of what people do to stay alive. What a pity the ending has been more or less given away already in these pages.
Rating:
Summary: A young man and the sea.
Review: This is an amazing book, while its text is short and simple it's impact is profound and deep. Taking a story that wouldn't raise an eyebrow when summarized on half a page, Akira Yoshimura has crafted a book that deserves the title quintessential Japanese classic. I recently read Tanizaki's "Makioka Sisters": a book in which the author goes in the greatest details to bring a family's history alive. This book is an example of the opposite side of virtuosity, in which the author's skill comes to light in all words that he didn't write. Using this style Yoshimura conveys the hardship of life in Isaku's village on par with the greatest of existentialists. In addition, on the backdrop of this hardship the author's limits himself in describing acts and consequences. While it may come as more than a little disconcerting to the Western reader, a lot of the bitter strength of this short novel results from Yoshimura's reluctance to become a moralist. Thanks to this approach this book represents the very opposite of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. As a result the reader becomes very much part of the action and learns that history allows little room for the armchair-quarterbacking moralist. A must.
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