Fudoki [Hardcover]

Kij Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

In her skillful debut novel, Kij Johnson took the classic Japanese myth of the fox who dared to become a woman to win true love and created The Fox Woman, a luminous, lyrical tale of love, desire, joy, and the nature of the soul.

Set in the same universe as The Fox Woman, this time Kij Johnson takes on another animal totem and enters the world of the creature who comes to be known as Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen.
And who may or may not be the figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing as she follows the paths that are leading her to the nunnery and death.
Fudoki is the tale of a being who starts her journey on the kami, or spirit road, as a humble-if ever a being such as a Cat can be humble-small tortoiseshell feline. She has seen her family destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city. This loss renders her taleless, the only one left alive to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell, the Cat with a Litter of Ten, the Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki-self and soul and home and shrine-she cannot keep the power of her clan together. And she cannot join another fudoki because, although she might be able to win a place within another clan, to do so would mean that she would cease to be herself.

So a small cat begins an extraordinary journey. Along the way she will attract the attention of old and ancient powers, including gods who are curious about this creature newly come to Japan's shores, and who choose to give the tortoiseshell a human shape.
And who set her on a new kami road, where Kagaya-hime will have to choose a way to find what happiness she can.

Weaving a haunting story of one being's transformation and journey of discovery with the telling of another's long life set against the backdrop of the courtly rituals of Imperial power, Kij Johnson has written a powerful novel about the nature of freedom and the redemptive power of transformation--if only one is brave enough to risk it all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Johnson's mesmerizing second fantasy based on Japanese myth surpasses her inspired debut, The Fox Woman (2000). As the half-sister, aunt and great-grandaunt of the last three Japanese emperors, respectively, the princess Harueme has lived a long life of privilege at court, but now she is dying and must go to a convent. While sorting through her belongings, she comes across several blank notebooks, and a "blank notebook demands words." To fill them, Harueme spins the tale of a nameless tortoiseshell cat living in a ramshackle estate in the capital. When a fire raging through the city destroys the estate, the cat is the only survivor. Her aunts and cousins having been killed, she is bereft of her fudoki the chronicle of all the female cats who have inhabited her home. Homeless and nameless, she sets out on a journey that will take her to humanity and back, and earn her a name both as the Cat Who Survived and as Kagaya-hime, woman warrior. The author interweaves the story Harueme tells with Harueme's own, equally absorbing tale. To call Johnson a stylist is to call Michael Jordan a basketball player each word and phrase glitters gemlike on the page. This tale of life and dying, of love and humanity, soars with feline grace.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The successor to The Fox Woman (2000) is set in the same Japanese-myth-influenced universe and just as charming. It is the story of a tortoiseshell cat who has lost her (feline) family in a fire in the imperial capital. Now only she knows the tales and traditions of her clan. So she sets off on a journey, during which she encounters a kami of the roads, who gives her a new shape, that of a human, without removing her feline soul. The cat-souled woman becomes the warrior Kagaya-hime amid the intrigues of early twelfth-century Japan. Her story is a tale within a tale, for it is framed by the story of Princess Harueme, who tells the cat's tale, and whose life is hedged about by the restrictions of the imperial court. Now, old and dying, Harueme finds, first, relief, and then, renewed interest in the world as she sorts through her possessions and her memories. And in the end, Kagaya-hime sends the princess on a journey. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765303906
• ISBN-13: 978-0765303905
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,042,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Princess and the Cat Woman, September 21, 2004

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fudoki (Hardcover)

Inspired by Japanese myth, Johnson's ("The Fox Woman") second fantasy follows the wanderings of an orphaned cat, a creature sprung from the mind of Harueme, a Japanese princess who has lived a long, privileged and circumscribed life.

Near death, Harueme begins to fill blank notebooks - a new one for each chapter - with the cat's story, interwoven with her own memories. The young tortoiseshell cat lost her family, and with them, her fudoki - her spiritual lineage - in a terrible fire. She sets out on an aimless journey, bereft of name, family and purpose, and encounters gods and people, none of whom hold any interest for her. But ignoring the gods can have a price and the little cat is transformed into a woman - with enough cat qualities and spirit-aid to help her on her adventures.

Free and alone, she is unlike Harueme who has never been either. But Harueme has her own power, not least of which is her imagination. Harueme absorbs the world as people bring it to her in tales, and the cat-woman keeps the world at bay as she moves through it, defending her life, making friends, acquiring a reputation and a name: Kagaya-hime, woman warrior.

Johnson's writing is fluid and musical, her characters archetypes and real at the same time, and the historical detail is imaginatively, visually realized. But Harueme, though pampered, selfish and captive, is more involving than the cat-woman, whose humorless detachment is, well, too feline, for real identification. But Johnson makes us believe that Kagaya-hime is what a cat-turned-woman would be like, and this tale of love, belonging, freedom and redemption is as rewarding as it is different.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic and down-to-earth story, April 26, 2005

By 

L. McPhee (NB, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fudoki (Hardcover)

There's a saying that I can't remember at the moment, something about painting a picture with words. I wasn't really aware until I read this book that it was possible to paint an entire world with them - that's the way this book comes across to me, as broad strokes on rough canvas.

Fudoki takes place in Japan round about 1000AD-ish, and the story is that of a princess, Harueme, who is nearing the end of her life. She, in turn, is telling a story about a cat, and the book takes us through both her own and her character's tale, weaving back and forth between them at Harueme's whim.

I'm glad I bought this book, because I knew even half way through reading it that I would want to re-read it in the future - so much is touched on in the story. I think it will be well worth going through it again, knowing the characters better right from the get-go. There are some great themes, and they're touched on in so many different ways: death, freedom, strength, and how they all intertwine. This is one of those stories that I didn't want to end - I kept checking to see how many pages I had left - but am glad it did where it did. Open-ended, and yet extremely satisfying.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Educational and Entertaining, February 20, 2005

By 

Orlando Just "xaerieon" (St. Louis, MO, USA, EARTH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fudoki (Hardcover)

Fudoki allowed me a glimpse of medieval Japan unlike any I've encountered before. The text itself is a fairly engaging story littered with jewels of prose that left me thinking, "Wow. Lovely." I had trouble getting into it at first, I think because I was being impatient, but once I was more than a quarter of the way through, I was hooked.