The Tatar Whirlwind: A Novel of Seventeenth-Century East Asia

By the early seventeenth century the Tokugawa shogunate had achieved supremacy over nearly all its opponents throughout the islands of Japan. Meanwhile, the great Ming dynasty of China, which came to power in 1368, was on its last legs. Corruption was rampant, extravagant expenditures emptied state coffers, while rural poverty and banditry were destroying the fabric of life in north China. North of the Great Wall, the nomadic Jurchens were beginning to cause the Ming government trouble. Yet the ...