THE STORYTELLER AND HIS THREE DAUGHTERS

‘Storytellers are all thieves. They pilfer from old legends, history books, newspaper reports.' So Akabane Sei IX is told by his manager. A professional storyteller for over fifty years, as the book opens Sei recalls the inspiration behind the story that made him famous, ‘The Silk Kimono'. It was a story pilfered, not from any of these sources, we learn, but from his own life.
He transports us to Tokyo, 1884, a time change. It is summer and the country is gripped by the words of Jack Green, an Englishman who spins exotic tales from his European past and even Sei's wife is won over by the heady melodrama. Sei himself is feeling old, beyond passion, but he knows passion is what people want so that, he decides, is what he will give them. Soon everywhere he looks, everyone he sees, is involved in some form of intrigue - political, sexual, emotional - and each conversation leads to a possible plotline, each person a possible character, an adulterer, a murderer, a mistress, a spy. Yet even as his imagination tries to embroider his world, real life draws Sei back. Two of his daughters return home, unhappy with their husbands; a play produced by his third daughter's husband opens and a real sword is substituted for a false one; Sei is attacked after performing a new story. Secret societies, samurai warriors, vendettas and illicit love: the story that will save Sei is all around, all he has to do is recognise it, tame it, and, of course, survive it. Then he can really begin to write.