The Doctor's Wife
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Doctor's Wife | |
 |
|
| Author | Sawako Ariyoshi |
|---|---|
| Original title | Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma (華岡青洲の妻) |
| Translator | Wakako Hironaka and Ann Siller Kostant |
| Cover artist | Komaro Hoshino |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese (original) |
| Publisher | Kodansha International |
| Publication date | 1966 |
| Published in English |
1978 |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 174 |
| ISBN | 4-7700-2974-8 |
The Doctor's Wife (Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma) is a noted novel by Ariyoshi Sawako written in 1966.
The novel is partly a historical novel by telling about the life of Seishū Hanaoka, a noted physician. Though a lot of the information in the novel is based on fact, many events were added for dramatic purposes. The protagonist of the novel is Kae, whom the story follows from a young age until death. From a young age, she is fascinated with the wife of Naomichi Hanaoka, Otsugi, who is said to be the most beautiful woman in the Kishu province. Otsugi requests that Kae be married off to her son Seishū and Kae's family eventually agrees. From there Kae learns that Otsugi is not the angelic beauty she outwardly displays and they both compete for the affections of Seishū, who is experimenting on animals to develop an anesthetic for surgery.
[edit] References
- Rimer, J. Thomas, A readers guide to Japanese literature, 1991 ed., p. 185-188, ISBN 4-7700-1477-5
