Latest children’s novel by Swiss author Karine Yoakim-Pasquier, “The Samurai Sword” tells the initiatory adventure of the young apprentice Ryosuke who is in search of his master’s stolen sword. The book is also accompanied by a rich educational file.
In medieval Japan, in 1281, the young Ryosuke must become a samurai. His master Keitaro entrusts him with the very important mission of bringing him a sword that he received from the supreme regent of the nation. But one morning, while Ryosuke is on his way to deliver his precious cargo, he wakes up unconscious. He was attacked, remembers nothing, and the sword is missing. He must therefore find the weapon as quickly as possible. If he fails, not only will he endanger his master, who is preparing to fight the Mongols, but he will have to pay for this affront with his life.
In “The Samurai Sword”, Karine Yoakim-Pasquier places the action precisely during the second attempted invasion of Japan by Kublai Khan, grandson of the famous Genghis Khan, on August 15, 1281, the day when fell on Japan a typhoon which will be named “Kamikaze”. The natural phenomenon is said to have helped save the country from the Mongol invasion.
Samurai and typhoons
The Swiss author’s children’s novel was born from an order from her publisher who was launching a new historical collection and ordered a book from her on the theme of samurai which covers a very vast period of more than 900 years of history. Karine Yoakim-Pasquier, who divides her time between Montreux and Hong Kong, where she works remotely and where life is punctuated by typhoons, therefore decides “to tell the story of this period very linked to typhoons in the history of the samurai”.
“I read a lot on the subject, I found out and I went there, to Kyūshū in particular, where my sister’s family comes from a line of samurai. (…) And then during a another trip to Tokyo, I visited the sword museum where I was able to observe the Tachi, which are the ancestors of the katana that I mention in the book. And finally the museum of the Mongol invasions allowed me. to discover the entire samurai arsenal of the 13th century”, details the author in the Vertigo program of January 14.
-“The Samurai Sword” is full of details that immerse us in the era. At the end of the book there is also a rich educational file which further illuminates and deepens the historical themes treated by Karine Yoakim-Pasquier, in particular the restrictive hereditary dimension of the samurai profession.
Radio subject: Michel Ndeze
Adaptation web: olhor
Karine Yoakim-Pasquier, “The Samurai Sword”, ed. Oskar, December 2024.
