Tetsuo "Ted" Takashima Webpage
"RANSHIN : Samurai Crusaders"
In 1276 AD, after losing a battle with the Saracens, Edward Gawain, an English knight, and his band of fellow Crusaders flee the Holy Land by sea.
A violent storm sets the Crusaders adrift off the coast of Nippon (modern-day Japan), which has been under siege by Mongolian invaders from the Yuan Dynasty for several years. Hatred and distrust of foreigners run high among the locals. And Edward and his men are equally wary of their samurai captors, whose language they do not speak and whose culture they do not understand. After Edward heroically saves the life of the samurai leader from a Mongolian scouting party, barriers between East and West begin to fall.
Brought to Kamakura, Edward meets Hojo Tokimune, a young regent of the shogunate. They relate to each other immediately as knight and samurai. The English Crusaders soon become accustomed to life in Nippon, and Edward falls in love with a beautiful courtesan. One day, news of a second Mongolian invasion arrives in Kamakura. Entrusted by Tokimune, Edward leaves for Hakata, where he takes command of the Nippon army and fights with his new comrades to defend the people and civilization he has come to love and respect. Does he become a ranshin—a divine force that Nippon believes has supernatural powers?
Ranshin, Ted Takashima’s fifth book to be translated from Japanese into English, is an epic new take on the historical-fiction genre.
The GENE of LIFE
After he delivers a lecture in Berlin, Max Knight, a world-famous professor of genetic research, is kidnapped. His captors are Nazi hunters, who show him a severed left hand, part of a corpse discovered after a bomb explodes at a neo-Nazi rally. The hand appears to be from a male in his 40s, but it actually belongs to Carius Gehlen, a Nazi lieutenant general, who has to be over 110 years old. To solve the mystery, Max and his beautiful, talented assistant Katya follow clues that lead them to the village of Domba, deep in the Amazon where they find remnants of a Nazi lab and evidence of their human experiments. They also meet a mysterious young indigenous girl who provides a key to the mystery. This fast-paced story takes the reader on a suspenseful journey from Berlin to the Amazon jungle, to Rome and the Vatican to California. While Max and Katya work to understand the secrets behind eternal life, their romance grows, even after Max reveals a dark secret.
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About Tetsuo "Ted" Takashima
1949: Born in Okayama Prefecture
1973: Graduated from Keio University’s Technology department
1975: Graduated from Keio University’s Engineering graduate student course; became a research worker at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute
1978: Studied abroad in the University of California
In 1978, an article of his was carried by "Scientific Instruments vol.49"(a publication of the American Institute of Physics).The title of the article was Drive Characteristics of a Fast Movable Limiter in the JT-60 Tokamak (by T.Takashima, M.Ohta, and M.Shimizu), Division of Large Tokamak Development, Tokai Establishment, Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, Tokai-Mura, Naka-Gun, Ibaraki-Ken, Japan (received 26 August 1977; in final form, 17 October 1977). A pair of fast-acting movable limiters are to be installed in the vacuum chamber of the JT-60 tokamak being designed at JAERI. Their purpose is to suppress skin current in the plasma column. They should travel across the vacuum chamber over a stroke of about 1 m in 0.1 s during the build-up phase of the plasma current. Each movable limiter system consists of the drive system, a vacuum seal, a bearing usable at high temperature in a vacuum, and a molybdenum rail limiter head. For the drive a hydraulic mechanism is used with servovalves to control the oil flow. To develop satisfactory movable limiters for JT-60, the full-scale model was constructed and tested. Overall tests with the model showed high reliability, reproducibility, controllability, and safety of the movable limiter. The drive pattern measured is in good agreement with that simulated. The movable limiters should prevent the skin effect of plasma current in the current rising phase and also provide information on particle diffusion during the flat-top phase of plasma current.
1995: Became a member of the Mystery Writers of Japan
2000: Became a member of the Japan Writer's Association
2001: Became a society director at the National Coaching School Cooperative
2007: Midnight Eagle received a film adaptation (Shochiku-Universal Pictures), which was reviewed by Matt Zoller Seitz in The New York Times
Awards
1979: Atomic Energy Society of Japan Technical Prize
1990: Yasushi Inoue & North Japan Literary Prize for Homecoming
1994: Modern Mystery Novel Newcomer Award for Meltdown
1999: Suntory Mystery Award, Grand-prix and Reader Prize for Intruder
2006: Iue Cultural Prize
2011: Kobe Culture Award
2017: Energy Forum Award for Miracle of Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant
2020: Award by Japan Society of Engineering Geology