Lesley Downer on Across a Bridge of Dreams
August 1, 2012
I’ve always wanted to do a Japanese Romeo and Juliet and the story behind the film The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise) fitted perfectly.
In my last two novels, The Last Concubine and The Courtesan and the Samurai, I wrote about the civil war that ripped Japan apart in the 1860s, when north fought south and brother fought brother. Now it’s the 1870s. Japan is finally at peace – or so it seems – and shooting with extraordinary speed out of the middle ages into the modern world. New buildings spring up made of brick and stone, not wood. People who’ve only ever eaten fish and rice try beef and the first train line opens, linking Tokyo and Yokohama. […]