Abstract

In the spring of 1576, Oda Nobunaga is conducting a relentless military campaign against the Ikkô-ikki, a powerful faction of Buddhist monks and lay peasants opposed to the rule of the samurai class. Central to his attack is the attempt to besiege the cathedral fortress of Osaka Hongan-ji and starve out its 56,000 inhabitants. To make sure provisions get through safely and in time, Suzuki Magoichi, supporter of the resistance and head of a band of gunmen armed with muskets, persuades the monk Kennyo to seek the aid of the Murakami Kaizoku.

Author’s Information

Author Ryô Wada, who was born in 1969 in Osaka and grew up in Hiroshima, graduated from Waseda University and then worked for three years as assistant director for a television production company. In 2003, his original screenplay won the Kido Award, sponsored by the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan to train and educate new screenwriters. In 2007, Wada made his literary debut with the historical novel Nobô no Shiro (Floating Castle). That bestselling novel, which was based on his winning script, was nominated for the Naoki Prize and captured second place in the 2009 Booksellers’ Award. In 2012, it was made into a successful film. His second novel, Shinobi no Kuni (Land of Stealth), entertainingly depicts a deadly struggle between Iga ninja and warlord Oda Nobunaga, a clash between wits and military power. Wada again wrote the screenplay for the film version, which was released in 2017.
Murakami Kaizoku no Musume (The Murakami Pirate’s Daughter), Wada’s fourth novel, came out in 2013 and was awarded the 2014 Booksellers’ Award, the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Award for New Writers, and the Shinran Prize. Set in the late sixteenth century, the novel features the historical Murakami Kaizoku, masters of the swirling currents around the Geiyo Islands in the Seto Inland Sea from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.