Nanami Shiono is the preeminent author of popular history in Japanese today. In survey after survey, the most powerful Japanese politicians and industrialists (many of whom she counts as personal friends) name her as their favorite author, and she enjoys a degree of influence in public discourse that few authors anywhere could hope to match. In 1970, the same year she won the first of many literary awards for her early masterpiece Cesare Borgia, or Elegant Cruelty, she moved permanently to her