Himiko, the Warrior Queen: The Goddesses of the World
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Cocooned in the indulgences of the Yamato Court, Empress Himiko is suddenly thrown into the war environment, where she has to mature fast to lead an army into battle to honour the name of her deceased husband, her country and her unborn child. The prophecy of the sword she has inherited from her mother foretells a gruesome event to its guardian; but after the storm, a life of achievements and glory. But how can she surmount her predicament when she goes into labour in the middle of a battlefield?
Kazuko Nishimura
I’m a Historical Fiction Author. My family hails from the Land of the Rising Sun, though, I am based in the UK, where I have lived for the past twenty years. I am an Economics graduate and have worked for over twenty years in finance and IT. I have lived in four countries – UK, Switzerland, Japan & Brazil. Am I blessed? Yes, I believe I am. Acquiring the knowledge of different cultures and customs made me a better person. I believe that ignorance is the root of bigotry and tradition is the living treasure of peoples’ history and heritage. Every country has a history that is compelling, every culture carries a unique heritage and they deserve to be respected. History is my passion. My bookshelves (and kindle) are stuffed with historical books and historical fiction novels. I love travelling too. I travel around the world (workload permitting) and my destinations are usually chosen after I finish reading an absorbing historical (fiction or non fiction) book. I started writing when I was a child and continued through adulthood. After many trials and errors, I believe I made my narratives good enough to share them with other people. Yet reading and writing helped me to deal with problems at difficult times. One can call it escapism, but reading or writing words can never become a harmful addiction. I wrote “The Goddesses of Japan” in memory of my late father. When I was seven years old, he used to read the stories of the Creation and Ancient Japan to me at bed times and I got hooked to them. I hope my readers enjoy reading my books, as much as I enjoy writing them.
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Himiko, the Warrior Queen - Kazuko Nishimura
First published in Great Britain in 2019
by Amazon
Copyright @ Kazuko Nishimura, 2019
All rights reserved
Himiko, the Warrior Queen is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogues, and all characters except for some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional. They are not intended to depict actual events or change the work’s entirely fictional nature. In all other respects, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ASIN B07N8HPR9X
To the memory of my father, Youzi
and to my son, Alan
Also by Kazuko Nishimura
THE GODDESSES OF JAPAN
THE BRIDES OF THE RISING SUN
THE GODDESSES OF BRAZIL
THE BLACK QUEEN OF DIAMONDS
image-placeholderAll sold on Amazon
Get FREE copies of my short novels
Himiko, the Warrior Queen
and Secrets of the Mighty Amazon
from my website
www.kazukonishimura.com
Contents
1.Prologue
2.The Story So Far
3.Himiko’s Story
4.Katari-be’s Notes
5.Glossary of Terms
Prologue
image-placeholderIcome from an ancient hereditary tribe of " Katari-be."
In English, it can be translated as a raconteur,
and as you might have guessed, I am a storyteller.
For generations, we served as the sole custodians of the nation’s historical records—the Creation of Japan, the great feats of the country’s rulers, and the heroic achievements of epic characters. It was a role we embraced with great pride and carried out with immense reverence.
Whether the crowd was large or intimate, every listener deserved a captivating tale, be it a fable, a poem, or a prose piece, and whether it was enriched by music or enhanced by a sip of quality wine, the storytelling flowed effortlessly.
Moreover, since the true worth of art lies in its ability to communicate the artist’s thoughts and emotions, each generation of katari-be built upon the language of those who came before them, adding new fictional elements and integrating romantic nuances that sometimes veered more into the world of fantasy than historical accuracy.
Yet, our audience either embraced this approach or adapted to it, because who could definitively distinguish where history ends and a compelling narrative begins?
By the Fourth Century, we had learned from our Chinese neighbors that apart from the brain, we could rely on another technology to record our chronicles—the written language.
Alas, it was a goal more easily considered than accomplished.
Applying the written Chinese ideographs to the Japanese spoken language was a procedure akin to writing in English using the Arabic alphabet.
Characters could be cherry-picked from the Chinese ideographs to match a Japanese word’s meaning; however, the phonetics were far too different to be converted without further thought.
But fear not; after many years, we had attained a great degree of proficiency. Not limited to that, by the Eighth Century, my tribe had invented its own, much simplified, alphabet—two of them, to be precise: the katakana and the hiragana. There was only one problem—we decided to keep the Chinese ideographs too. 😥
We reckoned our alphabet became an orgy of semantics, grammar, and syntaxes supported by three alphabets, amounting to an excess of two thousand characters. Though a linguistic carousel or not, we still carry our katari-be’s pride and will do so for many centuries