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Chigiri,
a divorced single mother, lives in the countryside town where
she grew up, caring for her sword-smith father whose trade and
health are failing. Her life seems to be going nowhere. When a
documentary filmmaker who worked on a piece about her father many
years ago revisits the town, Chigiri, who was still a high school
student back then, begins to feel like one again. Yet feelings
aren't where it ends when a half-serious offer of prostitution
is floated between the financially desperate Chigiri and Go, the
visitor, who has since become successful in Tokyo.
With a philsophical acumen and
exaltation of passion reminiscent of Yukio Mishima, Milan Kundera,
and Marguerite Duras, Translucent Tree follows the story
of mature lovers for whom, despite all, innocence is never a thing
of the past.
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“Nobuko
Takagi writes with a fluidity that complements the hard, metallic
background story about swords and daggers and the families that
made them. Her descriptions of sex, especially, sluice through
the reader’s conscious with careful deftness.”
—ForeWord magazine
No romance
novelist enjoys more critical accolades than author Nobuko Takagi,
who won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize when she made her debut
in 1984. In this novel, penned nearly two decades later, Japan’s
queen of love stories harkens back to her roots in literary fiction
to offer a tale as exquisite as it is torrid. Translucent
Tree not only won the Tanizaki Award, granted to the best
literary novel of the year, but also garnered further acclaim
as a successful feature film.
 After
working as an editor, Nobuko Takagi won the Akutagawa Prize in
1984 and became a professional writer in her thirties. In addition
to the Tanizaki Award for Translucent Tree, she has been
the recipient of the Women’s Literature Award and the Minister
of Culture Award. Translucent Tree is her first novel
to appear in English. The author lives in Fukuoka, Japan.
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