The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng

Supreme Court judge Teoh Yun Ling was the sole survivor of a Japanese prisoner of war camp; everyone else, including her sister, was abused and raped and then killed, bodies put in a mass grave. After becoming a lawyer and then judge, she prosecuted the Japanese soldiers that could still be found in Kuala Lumpur. Now she is retiring, because of a creeping case of dementia and aphasia. Her story covers the time before the war, when she and her sister visited Japan and saw the gardens her sister fell in love with, but mostly settles after the war, when Yun Ling decides to have a Japanese garden created in memory of her sister. At the urging of Magnus Pratorius, a South African expat tea farmer, she meets Nakamura Aritomo, who was once Emperor Hirohito’s head gardener until he exiled himself. He refuses to take the commission, but says he will take Yun Ling on as an apprentice and she can learn through doing how to create a garden herself. Surprisingly, given her hatred for the Japanese, she accepts. She is to help develop Yugiri, the garden of the evening mists, the still point within a country roiling with guerilla violence.

While there are some violent events, such as the guerilla rebellion that leaves many of the colonists dead, most of the story about small things. The learning of how to borrow scenery in a garden, the art of setting stone, learning archery. It is about Yun Ling and Aritomo’s developing relationship. Yun Ling’s narration is oddly flat; is this because of the aphasia? Does she have PTSD? The dialog is often stilted. The story moves very slowly; it’s very heavy on descriptions. It jumps around in time. Aritomo, the most important person in the story other than Yun Ling, never comes to life. It’s weird; the book was annoying in ways but also oddly compelling and very, very beautiful. I often thought “Will this story ever end?” but still could not even think about putting it down. Four stars.

Rainbirds, by Clarissa Goenawan. Soho Press, 2018

Just when Ren Ishida is finishing grad school, his older sister Keiko is murdered. They haven’t seen each other in a long time, but they talk on the phone every week. She has been living in a small town for years and he knows little of her life there. Ren goes to the town to arrange her funeral and take care of her unfinished business. Their parents do not show up; they have been absent as parents for most of Ren’s life, with Keiko pretty much raising him as she went through school.

The police have no leads; indeed, the police play little part in the story. This is Ren’s exploration of his late sister’s life- he immerses himself in her life, taking over her job as an English instructor at a cram school, and renting her old room in a politician’s house. He learns something about how her life was led by performing the same functions as she did. He also finds little clues in odd places, as well as having dreams about a small child who wants him to figure out who she is.

The story has a blue mood cast over everything, even in more upbeat moments. The writing reminds me of Haruki Murakami, with bits of magical realism thrown into Ren’s voyage of discovery about both his sister and himself. Despite the down mood, I couldn’t put the book down. There are some things that could have been better, but it’s the author’s first novel. Four and a half stars. 

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White Chrysanthemum, by Mary Lynn Brecht. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018

In 1943, sixteen year old Hana is happy with her life as a newly fledged haenyeo woman, free diving for abalone, urchins, oysters, and more in the waters of Jeju, a small island off by what is now South Korea. All her life, Korea has been under Japanese occupation. Her people are required to speak Japanese and obey the Japanese soldiers. It’s a hard life, but her family is happy.

Then one day as she is swimming in to the shore, she sees a Japanese soldier making his way down the beach, where her little sister sits, watching their catch, hidden by some large rocks. It’s only a matter of minutes before he discovers Emi, and young girls are frequently taken by the soldiers, taken to be ‘comfort women’ in military run brothels. Hana runs to the beach, allowing herself to be taken instead. Thus begins her life in hell; life as a sex slave, raped over and over again by Japanese soldiers in a tiny room from which she’s rarely allowed out of.

The story alternates point of views between Hana as she strives to find a way to escape, and Emi, in 2011, who has never forgotten her sister and has never stopped looking for her. Her life, too, has been miserable; Korea’s constant state of occupation and war has not made life easy for anyone. Now she comes to Seoul, to see her grown children and to attend a Wednesday Demonstration- the weekly protest aimed at getting justice from Japan for the sex slave business they were in. She comes, hoping against hope to see her sister. Her children have no idea that their aunt was a sex slave; it shocks them when Emi finally tells them.

The story is, frankly, horrific. But while this volume is fiction, these things really happened to the people of Korea- and the other countries that were under Japanese occupation during this period. The book is really hard to read, because of the subject matter and the verisimilitude of the scenes of sexual violence, but it’s so well written that I just couldn’t put it down. My heart ached for Hana, and for Emi, too. Excellent book, five stars, but could be very triggering for victims of sexual violence. 

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Spring Garden, by Tomoka Shibasaki translated by Polly Barton. Pushkin Press, 2014

This is a rather odd little book. Divorced Taro, who seems to have no friends, lives in a rundown apartment building, which will be torn down once the leases all run out. Over a concrete wall, he can see the top of the house next door from his balcony. It’s a big, expensive, house, with a sky blue roof. One day, he sees one of his neighbors trying to climb up the wall. She’s not a robber; she’s obsessed with the house. Years before, she found a book of photographs called “Spring Garden”- the house the photos were taken of is the sky blue house next door. She wants to see the house, inside and out. The photo book, that is all interior shots some of which show the home owners, has given the house a kind of mythic beauty for her. As she schemes to get inside the house, Taro finds himself drawn into her obsession.

Not much happens in the book. They see the house. He sees the current house under laid by the photos in the book, just like he sees signs of the rivers and streams that have been tamed and forced into culverts underground all over the city. The whole world is a palimpsest.

Despite the lack of action, I sped through the book. I, too, became enamored of the beauty of the house, and how the now overlays the past. Four stars, even though it is, as I said, odd. 

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Inheritance From Mother, by Minae Mizumura. 2012; Other Press English translation 2016

 

The Katsura sisters have long had an embattled relationship with their mother. Noriko Katsura, is an egotistical and selfish woman with a taste for the finer things in life, and little, if any, feelings for people. The sisters dream of the day when their mother will finally die, and her demands on them will stop.

This sounds horrible, especially in a society where children are expected to love, revere, and care selflessly for their parents. But for Mitsuki, the daughter on whom the majority of the burden falls on, it’s a chance to finally live her own life. As a child, she was neglected in favor of Natsuki, her more beautiful and talented sister. As an adult, her life is pretty much run by her husband, a fellow college instructor who wants a luxury condo- and is having (another) affair with a younger woman. What would Mitsuki do if she could make decisions without having to consider either of these people?

The first half of the book revolves around Noriko’s final hospitalization and death, and fills us in on the history of the Katsura family. The second half is what Mitsuki does after her mother’s death as she figures out what she really wants out of life. It’s fascinating reading the history of her family and how it was shaped by Japanese culture, as that culture itself changes through modernization and influences from the West. While told in third person, Mitsuki is the main focus of the tale. Mother/daughter relationships, marriage, aging, and sister relationships are all treated here with sensitivity and depth. 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something- anything- from Amazon, they will give me a few cents. 

I received this book from the Amazon Vine program in return for an unbiased review. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.