One Hundred Million Hearts
During the Second World War, the Japanese government stirred the people to support its war effort with the image of ‘One hundred million hearts beating as one human bullet to defeat the enemy.’ Kerri Sakamoto, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Japan-Canada Literary Award for her first novel The Electrical Field, draws on this wartime propaganda in her second novel as she casts light on a fascinating figure from wartime Japan: the kamikaze pilot.
These devout young men offered their lives to fly planes into enemy artillery; both human sacrifice and deadly weapon. A cherry blossom painted on the sides of the bomber symbolized the beauty and ephemerality of nature. Coming back alive from a sacred mission…
Kerri Sakamoto was born in Toronto to a Japanese Canadian family. Her first novel, The Electrical Field, was a finalist for a slew of awards—the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award—and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book and the Canada–Japan Literary Award. The Toronto Star said “Kerri Sakamoto represents a major new force in the landscape of Canadian fiction.”
Kerri’s second novel, One Hundred Million Hearts, also earned widespread critical acclaim. After taking a sabbatical from writing to raise a family, she returns in 2018 with her third novel, Floating City. She has written scripts for independent films as well as writing extensively…
Floating City
Kerri Sakamoto
The Electrical Field
Kerri Sakamoto