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Glimpses of Masoko

by
February 2007, no. 288

Princess Masoko: Prisoner of the Chysanthemum Throne by Ben Hills

Random House, $34.95 pb, 320 pp

Glimpses of Masoko

by
February 2007, no. 288

Ben Hills’s biography of Princess Masako has a second subtitle: The Tragic True Story of Japan’s Crown Princess. It is a taste of the work to come, of both the hyperbole and the author’s tendency to explain everything to the reader. But then, the book is promoted not as a serious biography but as a ‘romance gone wrong’. Written by a Fairfax investigative reporter, it reads like an extended feature article, with the historical strands teased out but little empathy with its main characters.

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