Changes

|title=Blossoms and Shadows

|author=Lian Hearn

|publisher=Quercus

|date=April 2011

|summary=As 19th century Japan undergoes a social seismic shift, our fictional narrator's intriguing life story gets buried in too many historical facts.

}}

Ansei 4 – or 1857 to the western calendar – Itasaki Tsuru's older sister was getting married. It was a bittersweet day and the ''skies wept in sympathy with the steady trickle of the plum rains. It was the fourth year of Ansei in the intercalary fifth month, four years after the black ships had arrived in Uraga Bay; a strange time like waiting for a potion to boil…''