The Snow Empress

Infobox Book
name = The Snow Empress
title_orig =
translator =

|200px
image_caption = Front Cover
author = Laura Joh Rowland
illustrator =
cover_artist = Pete Garceau (Jacket Design), Temple photograph © Panoramic Images, Empress photograph courtesy of Veer.com
country =
language = English
series = Sano Ichiro
subject =
genre = Detective,Mystery
publisher = St. Martin's Minotaur
pub_date = November 2007
english_pub_date =
media_type = hardback
pages = 293
isbn = ISBN 0-312-36542-X
oclc = 154309118
preceded_by = The Red Chrysanthemum
followed_by = The Fire Kimono

The Snow Empress is the 12th book in the "Sano Ichiro" series written by Laura Joh Rowland, set in the Genroku (AD 1688-1704) of historical Japan. The plot combines samurai fiction with kidnapping, murder mystery and xenophobia.

The prologue begins in autumn of AD 1699 with a murder of an unidentified woman in Hokkaido, followed by the kidnapping of Sano Masahiro, son of the Shogun's Lord Chamberlain, Sano Ichiro, at the autumn festivities at the Zōjō Temple in Edo city.

It continued with the court intrigue of the bakufu where Sano Ichiro was blackmailed by his rival, Lord Matsudaira, to set off to Ezogashima to investigate why Lord Matsumae of country's northernmost domain failed to turn up at the capital city as scheduled, and why there were no news from messengers despatched. Matsudaira showed Sano a hilt of a miniature toy sword belonging to Masahiro, and revealed Masahiro had been sent to Ezogashima.

Left with little choice, Sano set off on an official mission with a more important personal quest to himself, along with his wife Reiko, his closest follower nihongo|Hirata|平田, and a reluctant Ezo migrant to Edo by the name of Rat. Hirata had been training with an ancient martial arts mystic when he sensed Sano was in trouble. He also sensed that the attainment of the next level of mastery which had eluded him would be found in the mission.

The mission was almost over before it begun when their ship was wrecked off the coast of Hokkaido. The survivors were found and sheltered by local natives refer to themselves as the Ainu instead of the derisive term Ezo used by the Japanese. The Ainu were much spiritually closer to their natural world than the Japanese, and in there Hirata sensed the key to his breakthrough.

When Sano finally managed to get an audience with Lord Matsumae in his court at his castle in Fukuyama, he found the daimyo half-mad with grief at the unsolved murder of his favourite concubine, who was an Ainu native.

In order to locate and rescue his son, Sano agreed to investigate the murder to find the real culprit. He was simultaneously assisted and hindered by the daimyo's retainers, who on the one hand had little regard for the concubine for her perceived barbaric background, and on the other hand, desired their master's return to normalcy.

As the story developed, Sano and his friends got a first-hand glimpse on the little-known effects of the impacts and clashes of the "civilised" Japanese people intruding into the lives of the natives who were of very different backgrounds and views of the world.

References

* The Snow Empress, ISBN 0-312-37948-X.