David Mitchell Appreciation discussion

Anything about this book: thoughts, discussions, ideas, frustrations.

http://maps.google.com/maps?client=sa...

If you keep zooming in, you can see pictures from the street level!

What am I looking at Steve?

This is Dejima, Japan which is the setting of this book.

Stephen M wrote: "This is Dejima, Japan which is the setting of this book."

Duh, Sorry about that Stephen. Have you seen any paintings or drawings of what it looked like at the time? I think it'd be cool to build a model of that island.

Yes. I should look that up. It's a relatively smaller part of history, in terms of what people are writing about. Plus the fact that access to source material of Japan in general is tough because they were such a closed off and guarded society. But if anyone else finds anything I'd love to share artwork, writings from the time. It'd be a fun project to have historical context for the next I read the book.

The Google Maps link given above points to the wrong Dejima; the Dejima of the novel was an island off Nagasaki.

Here's a link to the correct location:
http://g.co/maps/us8ft

Note that since the reconstruction of Nagasaki harbour in the early 20th century and the associated land reclamation, Dejima no longer exists as an island, although there are plans to reconstruct Dejima and make it an island once more.

The Wikipedia article...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima
... is a good source of information, images and links.

(Edited to workaround the poor rendering of HTML links in the GoodReads iPhone app.)

Great, thanks for the links and the info Gary.