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Library 
This page has book reviews from staff and selected students - you may also wish to browse our library discussion groups.
Title: Autumn Bridge
Author/ess: Takashi Matsuoka
Category: Fiction
Cultural Perspective: Japanese
Reviewer: Janelle Guerrero
Overall Rating: 8/10
How many people have actually wondered what it would be like in the old days of... wait for it... Japan? As in the days of the samurai and the ladies dressed in these gorgeous flowing kimonos and when everything revolved around honour and respect... and the missionaries form the States as an added bonus?

Not many, huh? People wonder about the days of places like Europe and the earlier days of the United States of America, but it's not often they reflect on the days of the samurai.

Takashi Matsuoka's 'Autumn Bridge' takes us back to the 1860's - the time of the increase of missonaries but the decrease in the Japanese samurai - and tells us the story of Lord Genji, Great Lord of Akaoka, and Lady Emily, a missionary from the States and a dear friend of Lord Genji.

Genji's family, or rather, the Okumichi Clan, has been said to bear the curse of prophecy as they are the descendants of the Lady Shizuka, a supposed witch; Genji's grandfather, Lord Kiyori, had been haunted by the ghost of Shizuka for most his life, and shortly after his death, Genjji himself begins to see visions of the future and images of a child wearing a locket with an engraving of the fleur-de-lis (and this locket, Geji knows, belongs to Emily).

Emily, meanwhile, begins to decipher a five hundred year old set of scrolls with the help of her best friend, Lady Hanako, to find that these ancient scrolls were written for her and her alone; the authoress from the early 1300's knowing that she would one day stumble across them five centuries later.

These events, coupled with the stories of the first Lady Shizuka in the 1300's, Midori, the daughter of the 'Lord of Apples' in the late 1700's and early 1800's, Lord Kiyori himself and the traitorous deeds of Genji's friend Taro makes for one heck of an interesting read.

Despite the huge number of characters that may somewhat confuse the reader (I had to make a chart so I could remember which character was which - the list in the front of the book doesn't help much), 'Autumn Bridge' opens an entirely new cultural perspective as the reader reads through Matsuoka's detailed and accurate description of old Japan but with his own blend of imagination and originality.

Because not many people think about the samurai days of Japan very often. 'Autumn Bridge' ought to change that.
8/10 from me.




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