An Autistic Teen’s Journey to Topple a Shogun in Medieval Japan

Imagine yourself as a teenage girl unable to speak in a culture that worships perfection and despises defects. Suppose you are one of the “defective” and lack a common ability. Suppose you lived a life where your “condition” is concealed to spare you from insults, humiliation, and physical harm. Until one day your aged father dies, and you are thrust into a hostile world alone.

This tumultuous saga set in Medieval Japan, rife with personal challenges for Asayi and ever-widening political conflict, unlocks a chaotic world where courtiers, ronin-monks, despised classes, Buddhist nuns, and the Shogun’s elite knowingly and unknowingly participate in the Rice Farmers’ Uprising. Physical survival, deadly intrigues, hidden identities, secrets, untold stories and violent clashes propel this restive novel. If you’ve enjoyed the works of novelists like Lisa See, Gail Tsukiyama and Julie Otsuka, “Asayi” will not disappoint.

As a historical fiction, Volume I of “Asayi An Autistic Teen’s Journey to Topple a Shogun in Medieval Japan” presents an autistic teen (who presents as mute) trained by her father, Oktani, Chief Scribe to the Shogun, to brush the characters that spell out the Shogun’s tax decrees and legal codices. Asayi goes with her father to the palace to deliver their finished work but along the way she sees the Shogun’s forces burning villages. Asayi nudges her father, and points. What is going on? Oktani tells her that the Shogun is punishing the rice farmers who refuse to pay his new, higher rice tax. Asayi shudders. Smoke and ash swirl while farmers and peasants pour onto a road to escape soldiers who plunge hot irons into their backs. As Asayi’s fingertips pinch her nose to stem the stench of burning flesh, little does she know that within a year she will smell her own burning flesh and be used against the Shogun as a person believed to be dead.

Asayi’s journey is one of awakening to the world, warts and all. After her father’s death, she must navigate all the harshness and cruelty levelled upon the disabled as a teenager. She experiences deep sadness, fear, loneliness, isolation, abandonment, despair and even outrage but never allows these emotions to overtake her. Instead she flows with and through life’s bitter and changing circumstances with a trust that change flows as well. As she undauntedly confronts the men who have harmed her, her inner tenacity and steadfastness nudge her forward to stand and prevail.