It did this, she shows, by constantly invoking worlds,” or sekai, largely derived from medieval military chronicles, and overlaying them onto the present.

Challenging the common understanding of kabuki as a subversive entertainment and a threat to shogunal authority, Shimazaki argues that kabuki actually instilled a sense of shared history in Edo’s inhabitants, regardless of their class. The novel was adapted into a live-action feature film in 2005.Satoko Shimazaki revisits three centuries of kabuki theater and its dynamic representations of medieval Japanese tales and tradition, boldly reframing Edo kabuki as a key player in the formation of an early modern urban identity. In 2009, an English-language edition was published by Vertical. The novel was first published in 1994 by Kodansha. Only Kyōgokudō's knowledge of Japanese folklore - and specifically the legend of the ubume, often associated with death in childbirth - can make sense of the conflicting evidence, and Kyōgokudō agrees to perform an exorcism that will solve the mystery once and for all.

With the help of his friends - Kyōgokudō, private eye Reijiro Enokizu, police detective Shujiro Kiba, and fellow reporter Atsuko Chuzenji (Kyōgokudō's sister) - Sekiguchi attempts to discover the disappearing husband's fate, but he soon learns that there is much more to the Kuonji Clinic than meets the eye, and that his own involvement with Makio Kuonji's disappearance may run deeper than he thinks.

Sekiguchi is further drawn to the case when he meets the pregnant woman's beautiful sister, Ryoko Kuonji, and she asks for his help in solving her brother-in-law's disappearance from a locked, sealed room. He seeks advice and help from his close friend Akihiko Chuzenji, whom Sekiguchi refers to by the name of his bookstore ('Kyōgokudō'). The Summer of the Ubume is told from the perspective of freelance writer Tatsumi Sekiguchi, who is investigating rumors of a woman at the Kuonji Clinic who has remained pregnant for twenty months after the disappearance of her husband. It has been turned into a live-action feature film. It is Kyogoku’s first novel, and the first entry in his Kyōgōkudō series about atheist onmyōji Akihiko 'Kyōgokudō' Chūzenji. The Summer of the Ubume (姑獲鳥の夏, Ubume no natsu) is a Japanese novel by Natsuhiko Kyogoku.

The summer of the ubume ebook