The Sacred Era PDF
Preview The Sacred Era
The Sacred Era Parallel Futures Series Editors: Thomas Lamarre and Takayuki Tatsumi THE SACRED ERA A Novel Yoshio Aramaki Baryon Tensor Posadas Translated by Takayuki Tatsumi Foreword by Parallel Futures University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The Sacred Era was first published as Shinseidai. Copyright 2015 Yoshio Aramaki Original Japanese edition published by Sairyu- sha, Tokyo English translation published by arrangement with Sairyu- sha through The English Agency (Japan) Ltd. English translation copyright 2017 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, elec- tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Aramaki, Yoshio, 1933– author. | Posadas, Baryon Tensor, 1978– translator. | Tatsumi, Takayuki, 1955– writer of forword. Title: The sacred era : a novel / Aramaki Yoshio ; translated by Baryon Tensor Posadas ; foreword by Takayuki Tatsumi. Other titles: Shinseidai. English Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017. | Series: Parallel futures | “The Sacred Era was first published as Shinseidai. Original Japanese edition published by Sairyu-sha, Tokyo” [2015] — Verso title page. Identifiers: LCCN 2016059302 (print) | IsBN 978-0-8166-9985-8 (hc) | IsBN 978-0-8166-9986-5 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction, Japanese | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / General. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | GSAFD: Science fiction. Classification: LCC PL845.R29 S3513 2017 (print) | DDC 895.63/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059302 Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The lord gave and the lord has taken away; may the name of the lord be praised. — Book of Job 1:21 CONTENTS FOREWORD Apocrypha Now! Welcome to the Quintessence of Japanese Speculative Fiction Takayuki Tatsumi ix THE SACRED ERA The Sacred Service Examination 3 Clara Hall 25 The Quadrinity 71 The Southern Scriptures 105 Mechanical Doll 139 Space Clock 173 Sacred Route 201 The Garden of Earthly Delights 225 Translator’s Acknowledgments 253 Chronology of Igitur’s Millennium of Prosperity 254 FOREWORD APOCRYPHA NOW! Welcome to the Quintessence of Japanese Speculative Fiction Takayuki Tatsumi Like the strange peregrinations in his works of speculative fic- tion, Yoshio Aramaki’s career might be described as an explora- tion of currents and countercurrents. Born April 12, 1933, in the town of Otaru on the northernmost island of Japan, Hokkaidō, where his father, Aramaki Yoshi, managed a quarrying company, the young Aramaki, like so many of his generation coming of age in the immediate postwar era, left his hometown to pursue his education and fortune in the booming metropolis of Tokyo. He studied psychology at Waseda University between 1954 and 1957 and then worked for a publisher in Tokyo for a few years. He did not remain in the metropolis but returned home in 1961, in the wake of the student protests of the renewal of the Japan– U.S. se- curity treaty that had rocked the city of Tokyo in 1960. Aramaki renounced his ambition of becoming a professional writer along with the ideals of post-M arxist revolution promulgated around the student protests. Instead, intent on taking over the fami- ly business, which had expanded to include several companies, Aramaki returned to Sapporo to pursue a degree in architecture within the Department of Civil Engineering at Hokkai Gakuen University in 1962. His interest in art persisted, and even as he began to run one of his father’s construction companies, he also ix
The list of books you might like
