Constantine Vaporis with Lia Purpura: SAMURAI: A BIOGRAPHY IN TWELVE LIVES

The samurai are often viewed monolithically as fearsome warriors, driven by a fixed code-the Bushido-and bent on dying in service to a lord, or daimyo. However, the Tokugawa Era, the long period of peace (1600 to 1868) after the Shogunate had centralized control in Japan, forced them to adjust. While many samurai continued to uphold martial values, others became bureaucrats, teachers, scholars, artists, and even entrepreneurs.

In Samurai: A Biography in Twelve Lives, Constantine Nomikos Vaporis uses the lives of individual samurai during the Tokugawa Period to illuminate and explore this transformation. We’ll hear more about these biographies in his conversation at The Ivy Bookshop with poet and essayist Lia Purpura.

This is history at its most humane, even poetic, inviting us to look closely at 12 individuals that collectively offer a deeper understanding of Japan’s early modern era.