One of Osamu Tezuka's masterpiece's, Ayako is a desperately tragic story of a fictional Japanese family known as the Tenge Family. Once wealthy land-owners, they come up against economic upheaval in post World War II Japan. The story begins in 1949 with a reasonably happy family harbouring a dirty secret. The story is full of espionage when the second eldest son returns from working in a POW camp, now secretly working for America to eliminate leaders of the red parties in Japan. He returns to find he has a new sister of 4 who everyone claims was born of the matron at 47. Disbelieving, Jiro finds out the truth of the matter when he sees his father sleeping with his sister in law. The agreement between the eldest son & father being that he gains the family fortune while the head of the family violates his daughter in law. Further tragedy begins when Ayako witnesses something to incriminate Jiro. To avoid further shame, the family locks Ayako is a cellar for 23 years. She escapes...
The story contains incest and murder, not suitable for readers under 16 I would say but this is all a little VC Andrews don't you think? I loved the story all the same (VC Andrews has always been a guilt pleasure for me). It's a very large book, previously released in 3 volumes, now collected in one large hard cover which I got from the Library. Read it.. you might cry.
No comments:
Post a Comment