, or "Clouds Above the Hill" is a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

historical novel by Shiba Ryōtarō originally published serially from 1968 to 1972 in eight volumes. A three-year

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

television special drama series based on the novel and also entitled '' Saka no Ue no Kumo'' was shown in thirteen episodes from 2009 to 2011. The novel is set in the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

and focuses on three characters from the city of

Matsuyama file:Matsuyama city office Ehime prefecture Japan.jpg, 270px, Matsuyama City Hall file:Ehimekencho-20040417.JPG, 270px, Ehime Prefectural Capital Building is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan ...

Akiyama Yoshifuru was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, and is considered the father of modern Japanese cavalry. He was older brother to Vice Admiral Akiyama Saneyuki Biography Early life Born as the third son to a poor samurai in the Matsuyama Domain, ...

, his brother

Akiyama Saneyuki was a Meiji-period career officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy. He was famous as a planner of Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese general Akiyama Yoshifuru was his elder brotherDupuy, Encyclopedia of Military Biography ...

, and their friend, Masaoka Tsunenori, better known as

Masaoka Shiki , pen-name of Masaoka Noboru (正岡升), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during ...

. The novel follows their lives from childhood through the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...

, culminating in the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

of 1904–05. The city of

has a Saka no Ue no Kumo Museum dedicated to the novel and associated TV series.

English translation

An English translation of '' Saka no Ue no kumo '' was published in stages by Routledge as '' Clouds Above the Hill '' in four volumes. Vol. 1 describes the growth of Japan’s fledgling Meiji state and introduces the main protagonists. Vol. 2 () describes the early stages of the Russo-Japanese war up to the battle of Liaoyang, where Japan seals a victory which shocks the world. The first halves of both volumes were translated by Paul McCarthy and the latter halves by

Juliet Winters Carpenter Juliet Winters Carpenter (born 1948) is an American translator of modern Japanese literature. Born in the American Midwest, she studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studie ...

. Vol. 3 () contains the middle stages of the war and was translated by Carpenter. Vol. 4 () contains the battle at Mukden and the naval showdown in the Tsushima strait, resulting in the destruction of the Russia’s Baltic Fleet and the triumphant return to Yokohama of the Japanese fleet. Vol. 4 was translated by Andrew Cobbing. A set containing all four volumes () was released in 2014.

References

Novels by Ryōtarō Shiba Historical novels Novels first published in serial form Japanese serial novels Novels set in the Meiji period Works originally published in Japanese newspapers {{1970s-hist-novel-stub