Clouds above the Hill, a long-time best-selling novel in Japan, is now translated into English for the first time. An epic portrait of Japan in crisis, it combines graphic military history and highly readable fiction to depict an aspiring nation modernizing at breakneck speed. Acclaimed author Shiba Ry?tar? devoted an entire decade of his life to this extraordinary blockbuster, which features Japan's emergence onto the world stage by the early years of the 20th century.This four volume epic centres on the careers of two ambitious brothers who work their way up from a rural backwater to positions of eminence in the new post-1868 Meiji State. The Akiyama brothers are determined to build a Japanese military capable of holding its own in an unstable region and the Russo-Japanese War becomes the central stage for their involvement in the frenzied modernisation and ascendancy of Japan in the region and subsequently, the world.Anyone curious as to how the "tiny, rising nation of Japan" was able to fight so fiercely for its survival should look no further. Clouds above the Hill is an exciting, human portrait of a modernizing nation that goes to war and thereby stakes its very existence on a desperate bid for glory in East Asia.