“Noriko, promise me that you will obey in all things. Do not question. Do not fight. Do not resist. Do not think if thinking will lead you somewhere you ought not to be. Only smile and do as you are told. Only your life is more important than your obedience. Only the air you breathe. Promise me this.”
So says Noriko’s mother as she leaves her at the gate of the family house at the age of eight.
All Noriko’s unquestioning obedience is required over the next few years, as the grandparents only grudgingly take her in. She is not allowed to leave the (reasonably comfortable) attic where she lives, and only interacts with the maid Akiko and her tutor. She is also made to take daily bleach baths, and this is when the reader discovers that Noriko has brown skin: she is the illegitimate daughter of a Japanese aristocratic woman and a black American soldier.
Set in 1948 just after World War II, this is a promising start to the novel. Japan was under occupation by the American forces. Hideki Tojo, the architect of the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the enslaving of Southeast Asian comfort women, had just been hanged for war crimes. It was a time of social change in Japan, and I was interested to see how that was reflected in this novel.
An added interest is that the protagonist is multi-racial, and the much-publicized experience of Naomi Osaka has cast a light on the racial prejudices in Japan as well as elsewhere. Indeed, the protagonist Nori faces plenty of prejudice, from the bleach baths to the comments from her grandmother and the way her very existence is hidden from others to protect the family honour.
Life improves when her step-brother, the legitimate heir Akira, arrives to stay with the family. Unlike the rest of the relatives, Akira is kind to her in a slightly remote big-brother way. Nori is immediately, completely captivated by him and follows him around like a pet dog as much as he allows. As the heir, he has clout, and he uses it to enable Nori’s escape to the garden (her first experience outdoors in three years), the end of the bleach baths and the beatings. Akira is a very talented violinist, and he begins to teach Nori as well.
At eleven, Nori is abruptly sent off to a geisha house before Akira can intervene. There is more obedience and training, but for once, she is considered pretty. At fourteen, she is sold to the highest bidder, and thenceforth the novel continues as a soap opera with sudden twists and turns, none particularly convincing.
As for the reflection of world events and changing social mores in Japan? Completely nonexistent, which is a huge disappointment that significantly downgrades the novel. There are Japanese phrases thrown in here and there, and a veneer of Japanese culture as described in books and movies (rigid, stern, yakuza, sushi, wasabi), but I suspect a Japanese reader would be annoyed throughout. There is little sense of place, for example there nothing distinctively Japanese about the ancient family house: it has a foyer, main stairs, fine rugs, tapestries and paintings .. could be anywhere in Europe.
Of the characters, Nori’s personality changes with the requirements of the plot (obedient, then defiant, then adoring, then helpless, then throwing a tantrum) and her main tic is that she is constantly biting her lip, drawing blood. Akira would be destined for sainthood were it not for his unfortunate detachment. The other characters barely register: William, the seductively handsome visitor and his cousin Alice; Miyuki, a fellow geisha.
Occasional chapters are told from the viewpoint of Akiko, the maid, and those are really a literary device to provide an outside viewpoint. These chapters are so occasional that Akiko never registers as much of a personality, and never has any thoughts beyond her immediate descriptions of Nori.
I don’t know Japanese, but there are a phrases that very American, completely inappropriate to the place and period.
Go figure.
Lights out
She slips up and talks to me sometimes.
selling your soul
a deal with the devil
Holy shit, Kiyomi.
It left me remembering Pachinko very fondly.
oh dear! Sounds like such a sell out! Exoticised and stereotyped, and then let down by poor writing, not true to place or period. But thank you for the review, which still made lovely reading, and also for the warning not to bother with this novel! There are all too many such, unfortunately, that use a particular period or social crossroads in history as their setting, which promises so much, and then devalue the narrative into soap opera, as you call it, totally betraying its potential, and wasting our readerly time.