Nakagami Kenji
Mille anni di piacere

Far from the stereotype of the geisha, the sumptuous kimonos, the zen wisdom, and the contained sexuality, Nakagami is not the typical Japanese author. His personal experience influences his writing in themes and style. Belonging to the Burakumin caste, the outcasts, the "invisible minority" not determined by religious or customary differences but linked to the ancient practice (645 A.D.) of assigning jobs related to death and blood (meat slaughter, leather tanning...) to a part of the population destined for discrimination and ghettoization. The regulatory interventions that have established equality between classes have not at all affected the popular attitude. Nakagami is a child of this condition.

Thanks to the opportunity to study and escape very young to Tokyo, he achieves redemption. But the experience of the ghetto does not leave him; it has shaped his personality and influenced his writing. His novels are set in the Alleys, where life is hard and difficult, where there is no possibility of redemption, where men work day jobs and are often driven to commit petty crimes, and women are struggling to find food to feed their offspring. In this environment, the impulse to lust is irresistible, but Nakagami's eroticism is unrestrained and often violent; women are not submissive and weak but know how to seduce and attract men with their sensuality.

The six stories in "A Thousand Years of Pleasure" feature six young men belonging to the same lineage, the Nakamoto, whose events unfold in the ghetto of the Alleys, where lives intertwine and blood mixes. The narrative voice is that of the old midwife, Aunt Oryu, who participated in the birth of all six young Nakamoto, and who, following the thread of memories, sees their destiny unfold.

A sad fate for the Nakamoto, noble, carriers of a "stagnant blood," a poisoned blood. Only the men of this clan are condemned, for seven generations, by a negative Karma to an early and violent death to atone for the sins of the ancestors and the punishment of Buddha. Though unaware of the cruelty of their inevitable destiny, these beautiful young men spend their short existence indulging in life's pleasures, abusing them. The audacious women of the Alleys cannot resist their sensuality and abandon themselves to wild copulations with them.

The beautiful Hanzo, whose smile no woman can resist, killed by the jealousy of his lover's husband; Miyoshi, who committed suicide, surprised by the indifference with which he killed the lover’s husband and frightened by wanting to make his lover scream with pleasure in the husband's blood; Fumihiko, also a suicide, who kidnaps his Miko, and after a night of unrestrained lust, takes her lifeless body to the hill where as a child he had seen tengu with crow faces; Ko the oriental, libertine with a strong passion for tango, the only one to leave the Alleys and emigrate to South America; Shinichiro, daring and very skilled thief found dead in his home by Aunt Oryu herself; Tatsuo the last to die prematurely, thanks to whom the Nakamoto are freed from Buddha's punishment.