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In The Samurai’s Garden, a young Chinese man named Stephen travels to wartime Japan to recover from tuberculosis and forms an unexpected friendship with his grandfather’s gardener, Matsu, and a beautiful, reclusive woman named Sachi.

What I liked:

• For readers who prefer atmosphere over plot, I think Tsukiyama does the best job of establishing place and time of any Nikkei writer I’ve read thus far. Being more plot-oriented myself, it took longer for me to understand why the story seemed to move so slowly. Those of my friends who stick obstinately to “literary” works over genre fiction, this book is probably for you.
• Tsukiyama’s technique of including letters from Stephen’s family and friends within the diary-like format of the book made the entire story feel extremely dreamlike to me, because none of it seemed to be happening in real time. A diary is something that can only be read after it is written, in the same way a letter takes time to reach its destination before the recipient knows its contents. Additionally, Tsukiyama’s use of trains to move her characters back and forth from Tarumi to other parts of Japan further exemplifies the surreal, fantasy-like nature of the story, as if Tarumi is a magical place far removed from the “real” world where the war is occurring. The final image of Stephen beginning to record his experiences on the train reminded me strongly of 千と千尋の神隠し, particularly the beginning and ending scenes when Chihiro uses a tunnel to access the spirit world. I was also struck by how Stephen takes leave of Matsu and Sachi, knowing he will most likely never learn what becomes of them. The haunting, nostalgic ending was one of the most powerful moments in the book for me.

What I learned:

• Was it common for affluent Chinese families to maintain summer homes in Japan prior to the war? I know Korean laborers lived in Japan during the war, but I’ve never heard of anything like the arrangement Stephen’s family has in Tarumi. It’s a topic worth looking into – I’ll have to keep an eye out for other novels or scholarly works with a more detailed overview.

Questions I had:

• Who supervised the romanization of Japanese in this book? Someone previously told me they had noticed errors in Tsukiyama’s novels and unfortunately I have to agree. I do hope publishers are more careful these days, as I believe this book was released a number of years ago.
• Why did Tsukiyama decide to put “samurai” in the title of the book? I wonder if this aspect of the book was a marketing decision, or if she intended to explore the concept of samurai from the start. That said, if the linking of samurai ideals to certain characters was intended to demonstrate how samurai culture has persisted in Japan over time, it seems like an odd topic to juxtapose with Stephen’s constant awareness of Japanese atrocities in China. To me, the book felt like an attempt to illustrate the nuances of Japanese culture with respect to interpersonal interactions and family relationships. Although the story could have been an opportunity to thoroughly explore the gap between Japanese reality and stereotype, I felt it relied a bit too heavily on concepts like samurai and honor, which are already heavily distorted in outsider perceptions of Japan. How did other Nikkei readers feel about the portrayal of Japanese culture in this book?
• What is the significance of including leprosy in the story? I initially wondered if Yamaguchi was based on a real village, but if so, I like to think there would have been an author’s note somewhere in the book explaining the historical significance of how Japanese people with leprosy were treated during this time. If the experiences of Sachi and the other inhabitants of Yamaguchi are based on those of real people, I feel it would have been a mark of respect to acknowledge this on the page. That said, I also wonder if Tsukiyama originally asked to include a note and the publisher refused. If any Japanese readers with leprosy have read this book, what did they think?

Follow-up:

• I know Tsukiyama has written a number of other novels and I was thinking it might be interesting to read one of her historical novels on China, for instance, since she is also of Chinese descent.