Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (夕凪の街 桜の国, Yūnagi no machi, sakura no kuni?) is a one-volume manga written and illustrated by Fumiyo Kōno. The two connected stories were first published in Japan by Futabasha in Weekly Manga Action in 2003 and 2004, then collected in a single tankōbon volume in 2004. The story is about a family of survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The author based the characters on people who were in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms was adapted as a live-action film directed by Kiyoshi Sasabe released in 2007, called Yunagi City, Sakura Country in English. It has also been adapted as a novel by Kei Kunii and as a radio drama produced in 2006.
The manga has received international praise for its simple but beautiful artwork and its quiet but "humane" anti-war message. It received the Grand Prize for manga at the 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2005 Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Creative Award. Kumiko Aso won several acting awards for her portrayal of Minami Hirano, one of the two protagonists, in the film adaptation.
Read more about Town Of Evening Calm, Country Of Cherry Blossoms: Plot, Development, Reception
Famous quotes containing the words town, evening, country, cherry and/or blossoms:
“The town is divided into various groups, which form so many little states, each with its own laws and customs, its jargon and its jokes. While the association holds and the fashion lasts, they admit nothing well said or well done except by one of themselves, and they are incapable of appeciating anything from another source, to the point of despising those who are not initiated into their mysteries.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not believe I am exaggerating in affirming that the empire of Russia is a country whose inhabitants are the most miserable on earth, because they suffer at one and the same time the evils of barbarism and of civilization.”
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)
“I think it was your cherry pies.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I have passed down the river before sunrise on a summer morning, between fields of lilies still shut in sleep; and when, at length, the flakes of sunlight from over the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to the influence of the sun’s rays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)