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Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperately poor fishing village on the Japan Sea coast. To save the family from starvation, his father has sold himself into indentured servitude, leaving Isaku and his strong-willed mother to care for three younger children.
Forced to grow up well before his time, Isaku is faced with a number of mysteries, not least among them his own nascent sexuality and the legend of O-fune-sama - the merchant ships that wreck offshore from time to time, providing the village with unexpected bounty: rice, wine, and rich, unheard-of delicacies.
The villagers catch barely enough fish to subsist on, and distill salt from seawater to sell to other villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: they hope the fires of the salt cauldrons will lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, they slaughter the crew and loot the cargo. As the end of his father's bondage approaches - the day Isaku has been waiting for - a ship founders on the rocks, and the villagers rejoice.
But its cargo is not at all the manna of their hopes.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Boys, Fiction, Shipwrecks, Social life and customs, Translations into English, Manners and customs, Fiction, historical, Japan, fiction, Fiction, historical, generalPeople
Akira Yoshimura (1927-)Places
JapanTimes
To 1600Showing 6 featured editions. View all 6 editions?
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Shipwrecks
January 17, 2002, Canongate International
Paperback
- New Ed edition
1841952214 9781841952215
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Shipwrecks
September 2000, Tandem Library
School & Library Binding
in English
061322373X 9780613223737
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Book Details
First Sentence
"Old conical hats made of sedge moved in the line of surf."
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- Created April 29, 2008
- 7 revisions
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April 30, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
August 5, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |