Wind and Stone

Stone Bridge Press
Masaaki Tachihara
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In detailing the affair between a garden designer and his client's wife, this stylistic Japanese novel explores the roots of passion.

Mizue is a Japanese housewife. Kase is a garden designer hired by her husband to landscape their home. As the garden takes shape, Mizue awakens to a new sensuality and desire. A disturbing tale of seduction, based on Japanese aesthetics and the artistic pursuit of destructive beauty.

Tachihara Masaaki (1926-1980) was an award-winning Japanese novelist, essayist, poet and literary critic of Korean descent, active during the Shōwa period. Wind and Stone is his only full-length novel in English.

Contributor Bio

Masaaki Tachihara (1926-1980) was born the son of a Zen priest in Taegu, Korea, and grew up studying the arts of medieval Japan, especially literature and the Noh theater. A resident of Kamakura, he wrote novels and short stories, as well as a collection of essays on the Japanese garden. In 1961 he was awarded the Naoki Prize for Fiction.