Black-Naped Oriole in Hokkaido Snow

By Leonard Seet

After a tsunami has taken his daughter and leukemia his wife, Yasahiro Kobayashi goes to the mountains of Hokkaido to commit seppuku, but not before he rescues an old man from several delinquents. "Black-Naped Oriole in Hokkaido Snow" is a story of a man grabbling with love and lost, and life and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leonard Seet
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310181092

Leonard Seet

Leonard Seet is the author of the novels Magnolias in Paradise and Meditation On Space-Time and the non-fiction The Spiritual Life. His articles and short fiction have appeared in the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Banana Writers and Pilcrow & Dagger. Through his writings, he probes the dynamics of existence, including human consciousness, good and evil, and rationality and spirituality.

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BLACK-NAPED ORIOLE IN HOKKAIDO SNOW

by Leonard Seet

Excelsior Publishing

Copyright 2014 Leonard Seet

License Notes

First published in Quarterly Literary Journal Singapore. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. May not be copied, distributed, re-sold or given away without prior written permission.

First, write a death poem in the waka style. Then, open the kimono; take up the tantō or wakizashi, holding the blade with a portion of cloth around the haft; plunge the blade into the left side of the abdomen; and draw it across to the right, with a sharp upward cut at the end...

Yasahiro Kobayashi pointed the tantō below his left ribs and was tracing an arc in front of his abdomen when the phone interrupted his contemplation of death. As if trying to distract him from the blade and the book. But he continued to stare at the page and speculate on the samurai’s last thoughts. On the second ring, he put blade and book on the tatami and walked toward the phone. Outside the window, snow had blanketed the nearby slopes and the distant peaks and he wished the scenery could calm his mind. But images of his daughter’s hand slipping away replayed in his head as he picked up the phone. He eased into the