The Sun Wheel

A princess is carried off in the night. A prince burns a kingdom for her. In the age of Himiko, the shaman-queen of ancient Japan, desire and vengeance move armies across a land of volcanoes, deer-hunts and sacred storehouses.

The Sun Wheel (Nichirin, 1923) is the novella that announced Yokomitsu Riichi, later the leading figure of the Japanese New Sensation school. Himiko, princess of Fumi, sees her husband killed on her wedding night by Nagara, prince of Na; passing from husband to husband, she turns her beauty into a weapon and plans to rise above the kings of the earth "like the sun-wheel."

Spare, ritualized dialogue, a dazzling catalogue of plants and beasts, and a pitiless view of power make this one of the most striking Japanese historical fictions of the Taishō era.