Julie Otsuka: The Buddha in the Attic

Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor Was Divine ; Wakako Yamauchi, Songs My Mother Taught Me ; Hisaye Yamamoto, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories ; Toshio Mori, Yokohama, California ; R. A. Sasaki, The Loom and Other Stories ; Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

When the Emperor Was Divine

Copyright © 2011 by Julie Otsuka, Inc.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Chapters of this novel were originally published in slightly different form in the following magazines: “Come, Japanese!” and “The Children” in Granta and “Whites” in Harper’s.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

for permission to reprint Haiku by Masahide from

Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter,

translated and edited by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto,

copyright © 1995 by Lucien Stryk.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Otsuka, Julie, [date]

The Buddha in the attic / Julie Otsuka.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“This is a Borzoi book.”

eISBN: 978-0-307-70046-9

1. Mail-order brides—Fiction. 2. Japanese—California—Fiction. 3. San Francisco (Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title

PS3615.T88B83 2011

813’.6—dc22 2011013568

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket photograph by John Clark

Jacket design by Gabriele Wilson

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