The Samurai's Garden

Jim Fonseca

Rating: really liked it
This novel very much focuses on Japanese culture in 1930’s rural Japan. At that time Japan was invading China and savaging China’s people and cities. Yet life goes on in the rural village pretty much as usual with the exception that all the young men are missing as they are off at war.

(Edited 5/11/19 to hide spoilers and add photos)



The main character is not Japanese, but a young Chinese man from Hong Kong. His father is a wheeler-dealer businessman who does much business in Japan as his father before him did. So the father inherited a house with a caretaker in this rural seafront Japanese village.

While in the village he hears of the war only from a distance -- from letters from friends and family and from occasional radio broadcast that the servant/caretaker immediately turns off when he hears the young man approaching. (view spoiler)[The boy contracts tuberculosis and leaves college and his family in Hong Kong to recuperate in Japan for a year. He also learns by letter from his mother of his father’s on-going affair with a Japanese woman. He has to deal with these emotions toward his mother and father – again – at a distance. And what about the caretaker --- has he known all along of the father’s affair? (hide spoiler)]



It’s a very atmospheric novel. We learn of Japanese daily life as well as festivals and celebrations, religious ceremonies, food and cooking. Much of the limited plot revolves around the caretaker’s support for a nearby leper village and a love triangle that existed between the caretaker, a woman who was (and still is) beautiful before she became a leper, and her former fiancée who abandoned her when she came down with the disease. The boy frequently visits the leper village and becomes acquainted with its inhabitants. Both the caretaker and the woman find fulfillment in their painstaking care of their gardens.

The boy also has a puppy love romance with a young Japanese woman whose father is fiercely anti-Chinese. (view spoiler)[ In the end the boy returns home to Hong Kong enriched by what he has learned about Japanese culture but equally decimated by how the Japanese have ravaged his home country while they stand poised to take over Hong Kong. (hide spoiler)]

Top photo from pandotrip.com; bottom from gstatic.com

Chrissie

Rating: really liked it
NO SPOILERS

This book is beautiful. The primary theme is about beauty. (And then there is a love story too.) I think beauty is very important in the Japanese culture. What really is beauty? The tempo is lulling, quiet, and calming. This too creates a kind of beauty. The concept of beauty is drawn through the lives of the main characters. The novel takes place at the time of the Rape on Nanking, when the Japanese were invading and slaughtering the Chinese at the end of the 1930s. In contrast, the novel plays out in a small Japanese village outside of Kobe. You have the quiet village life following the seasons, the routine Japanese festivals and the pervading sense of tranguilty that gardens and gardening create. Honor and respect and traditions of non-confrontation/silence still cannot stamp out the rumbling fears and problems of the time. Not only are we confronted with hatred between Japanese and Chinese but also the fear and dishonor associated with leprosy, the lepers having been pushed out to the village Yamaguchi. Silence and honor cannot remove the threats of natural disasters, fires and storms of nature and of people. These contrasting forces play out against each other. On one side you have the lulling order of society, and yet underneath rumbles these threatening problems. All would seem less threatening if allowed to surface.

This novel teaches the reader about Japanese traditions. The prose style fits the message. Look at Indian art. Compare it to Chinese art and then to Japanese art. You clearly see that as we move eastward all the nonessentials are removed. What is left is pure and simple. Art is incorporated into all parts of daily life - house construction, bathing, gardening, the use of scrolls, food preparation, to name but a few. This pure, simple form of art is also reflected in how the Japanese interact with each other.

I think you will be surprised about who the main protagonists are in this novel. I do not see Stephen in this role. It is Matsu and Sachi. So be a bit patient when you begin the novel. You will delight in the life story of the main two protagonists. Remember, beauty is not always what is on the surface. I said this book was about beauty. Well it is. But What is beauty? Is it that we see only with our eyes? Is it the clicking of stones when you rake a stone garden? Is it the delight of soaking in a hot, clean bath?, Is it all of these things? Is it something more?

P.S. How the Japanese switch between Shinto beliefs and Buddhism for different ceremonies never ceses to amaze me!

Stephen and his family seemed a way for the author to incorporate the confict between the Japanese and the Chinese into the plot. I do not think this was adequately explored. I found it hard to believe the ease with which they were accepted by the Japanese. Maybe that is why I chose three rather than four stars.

And was Yamaguchi truly a Japanese leper colony, or is this fictitious?!

Jessaka

Rating: really liked it
Beautifully written and hypnotic. I found such peacefulness when reading this story even though much of it is about a village of lepers living in Japan in the 1930s.

It begins with the young man, Stephen, who is sent to live at his family’s summer home nearby in order to recover from tuberculoses. While there he meets their housekeeper, Matsu, who tends the garden and finds beauty in all things, which explains why I fell in love with this book and the characters in it even though it was filled with sadness.

TXGAL1

Rating: really liked it
Beautifully written and serenely paced.

Connie G

Rating: really liked it
"The Samurai's Garden" is a touching, gentle novel filled with Japanese culture. A Chinese young man, Stephen, was sent to his family's vacation home in a coastal town in Japan to recuperate from tuberculosis. The artistic student spends time with the caretaker, Matsu, who has created serene gardens. Matsu is quiet, but has hidden depths of wisdom. Matsu has been taking care of an older woman, Sachi, in a leper colony since they were both teenagers. Although Stephen is the narrator of the story, the lives of Matsu and Sachi were the most important focus of the book. Their devotion to each other under challenging circumstances taught Stephen the true meaning of love.

The novel is set in 1937-38 when Japan invaded China. Occasional radio reports and letters tell of the Japanese advance. Stephen meets his first love, a Japanese girl, but her father has a strong anti-Chinese attitude.

The story has elements of isolation and loneliness because Stephen was dealing with tuberculosis, and Sachi and the other lepers had to live away from society. It also had themes of loyalty, honor, and the quiet comfort of gardens. I enjoyed this lovely story, and wished I was reading it in Matsu's peaceful Japanese garden.

Aubrey

Rating: really liked it
3.5/5

The jury's still out on this one, but frankly, I know myself too well to believe that they'll ever return with a definitive answer in hand.

Relying simply on gut instinct, I enjoyed the book. I have never traveled outside the US, and the cosmopolitan feeling of having aspects of China, Japan, and vague traces of Western culture all wrapped into one story was appealing, to say the least. The appeal for me was strengthened by the majority of the story taking place in Japanese landscapes filled with calm and natural beauty, an aesthetic that the prose made an especial effort to convey. However, there were many things that increasingly bothered me as the pages progressed, and were never satisfactorily resolved enough for my taste.

My biggest issue was with the main character, who as the sole first person narrator was entrusted with setting and maintaining the tone through the entirety of the novel. This tone is a very comforting, but ultimately placid one, and it is hard to believe someone would be so overwhelmingly lighthearted and good-naturedly accepting considering all the events swirling around him. Tuberculosis, being in a foreign country that is currently attacking your homeland, leprosy, suicide, parental issues, and so many other major events that seemed to only register for brief moments within the narrator's mind as a side note to an entry. However, I fully admit to being introspective in reaction to external conflicts to the point of neurotic anxiety, so I may be judging the character too harshly in terms of how he chooses to deal with all the chaos around him.

It still seems odd, though, his ability to block out major concerns and focus on the smaller events of the much less chaotic everyday life. One event in particular makes me believe that the author used the epistolary form as a means to achieve exactly that, namely when the narrator (view spoiler)[receives a letter concerning the Nanjing Massacre. Just as he sits down to compose a letter to his family and friends back on the mainland, time skips forward more than two weeks, and there is little mention of what had to have resulted in huge amounts of mental conflict (hide spoiler)]. Ultimately, all conflict both physical and mental is received secondhand by the narrator, and he maintains his well meaning nature all the way through without any repercussions or consequent soul-searching. Forgive me my cynicism, but golden boy characters such as these don't seem the most realistic of beings.

There was an also worrying amount of focus on physical beauty being a synonym for moral goodness, an example being the numerous occasions when the narrator evaluated and reacted to characters seemingly for how their faces look and/or might have looked in the past. I don't see his interest in being a painter, a good looking one at that as mentioned by many of the other characters, as a good enough excuse for this constant preoccupation and lack of further insight into those around him, especially when concerning the females.

There's also the Second Sino-Japanese War to consider, which began before the events of the book and ended long after, fully subsuming this tale of a young Chinese man and his father traveling back and forth between the two participating countries. I have very little hard knowledge of the events, so it is near impossible for me to gauge how feasible it would have been for this kind of story to have actually happened. While it is obvious that the author made an effort to include pertinent cultural details of both countries, as well as the influences the West had on both, there is very little commentary on the difficulties there must have been in traveling between the two during a time of war. I find it hard to believe that the narrator and his father had such an easy time of coping with being in a country currently responsible for the slaughter of so many of their people, or that the Japanese themselves accepted them with minimal signs of anger and distrust. Again, I don't know the facts, so this is all personal perception of the matter.

Lastly, I had an issue with the prose. Admittedly, I am biased against short sentences, but there were too many times when I was thrown off by the basic mechanics of word order and usage, and had to backtrack in order to figure out what the author was trying to say. Many of the better ones were beautiful, to be sure, but I feel that the novel could have used to a better editor. Also, the ending explanation of the epistolary form used throughout the novel was a weak one, and rather than tying up the conclusion left me with a deep feeling of disbelief.

Ultimately, it was a very relaxing and casual novel that fed my craving for lands I have never been to, but didn't do much when it came to my craving for good literature.

Kevon

Rating: really liked it
This was an excellent and peaceful book...it is about a young chinese man who is sent to his parent's summer home at the beach in Japan to recover from an illness. The caretaker of the home becomes his life-teacher and as the book unfolds he learns about relationships, how to find peace within himself, and about love and loss. It is written as excerpts from his journal and so it is from his perspective...as though we, the reader, are sharing his inner-most thoughts and feelings. It gave me an insight into the beauty of Japan and the way of life in the remote parts of that country in the 1930s. I also particularly enjoyed it because the caretaker's garden is his reverent and therapeutic domain..something i can relate to. I had a sense of peace while reading this book and could not wait to find time to sit and read it in my free time. I would strongly recommend this book..it is an easy book to read and a quick read..one that I hated to see come to an end.

Tocotin

Rating: really liked it
Bad, sentimental, insipid book about a young Chinese man from a wealthy Hong Kong family who is sent to a small village in Japan (why?) to convalesce from TB (?), only to discover a leper colony (named Yamaguchi lol) up in the mountains. The Japanese are conquering China, but the young man Stephen who loves to call himself Stephen-san (which he shouldn't do when speaking about himself) doesn't really care either for his country, his friends, or his family. Neither does he care about his illness, swimming in the sea, visiting people whose health has already been weakened by their disease, or kissing Japanese girls, all the time more or less happily spraying his surroundings with bacteria.

What else? There is a supposedly taciturn and secretive gardener Matsu, who after a few days spills all his sweet red beans to Stephen-san. There is his lover Sachi who lives in the colony and is ashamed at not having committed seppuku long time ago (despite the fact that women didn't commit seppuku). There are a few other people, who very often say "I am honored to see you here" and not much more. There is a lot of Japanese, which is funny, because a lot of it is incorrect (genken instead of genkan, yakata instead of yukata, stuff like that). The Japanese people in general are completely dead, killed by their politeness, mysteriousness and I dunno? honor? and rice crackers.

As long as books like these are being published, there is hope for every and all Orientalist charlatans under the sun. Cheers!

Ellery Adams

Rating: really liked it
Languish for a while in the Tsukiyama's Japanese garden and you may never want to leave. The serenity created in Matsu's little haven is contradicted by the military domination of the Japanese over the Chinese and the reclusive leper colony struggling for a peaceful existence in a realm beyond that of war. It is to this environment that a young Chinese boy enters into in search of healthier air and soothing salt of the sea . As his body begins healing, his emotions are delicately fractured by all that he learns of war, leprosy, first love, his family secrets, and the servant Matsu - who is truly a master of wisdom, honor, and faith. I wanted to walk through this garden again and again.

Diane Barnes

Rating: really liked it
This was a good book, a well told, gentle story, with believable, likable characters, but, for whatever reason, I just never got emotionally involved. A solid 3, heading toward 3.5.

Diane Lynn

Rating: really liked it
Buddy read with Jeannette

On the face of it, The Samurai’s Garden is a beautifully told story of one young man’s journey to figure out who he is, a sort of coming of age story. But there is really so much more below the surface. There is an enchanting and poignant love story. The reader is shown how beauty can exist in a cruel world. There is betrayal, adultery, young love, and two gardens that play a large role as a place of peace. Plus other topics I don’t want to mention so as not to spoil anything. All of this is framed by the Japanese invasion of China during 1937-1938. Writing this I wonder how it all came together to make a cohesive story, but it does, and with beautiful imagery.

Stephen Chan is a young man of 20, recovering from tuberculosis. He is sent from his family’s home in Hong Kong to their summer beach home in Tarumi, Japan. Stephen is met at the Tarumi train station by Matsu, the family’s long time gardener/caretaker of the summer home. From the beginning it is clear that Matsu will not baby Stephen and that is just what Stephen needs at this point in his life. At first it seemed to me that Matsu was more the teacher or guide to Stephen. But really Matsu and Stephen form a bond and learn about life and family from each other. Stephen is introduced to other inhabitants of Tarumi who play a large role in his year long stay. Kenzo, Keiko and the most important, Sachi (an older woman who actually lives in Yamaguchi) all develop a relationship with Stephen.

This story is told by way of entries in Stephen’s journal as he learns about loyalty to friends and family. Japanese culture is incorporated into the story. Read the book it really is wonderful!

Lisa

Rating: really liked it
I hesitate to call this a "quiet" novel because often that means dull and boring. I enjoyed every page of this gentle, meditative book. The Samurai's Garden starts as the straightforward story of Stephen, a young Chinese man who goes to his family's seaside vacation home in Japan to recover from tuberculosis during WWII. But underneath the calm surface there is much more going on. Stephen's taciturn caretaker emerges as a hero, a woman whose face is eaten away by leprosy is profoundly beautiful and his Japanese friends are his country's enemies.

Mikayla

Rating: really liked it
So, for starters, this book sucks. Not only is it vapid, shallow, and cliche, it is also factually incorrect. I'm just going to glaze over my problems with this book, or else I'd be writing a novel. First off, the way Tsukiyama wrote the Japanese parts bugged me. At one point Kieko, Stephen's love interest, is apologizing for how rudely her father acted towards Stephen. But instead of referring to her father as "Chichi", she refers to him as "otousan", which refers to someone else's father, which is incorrect. That may seem a little nit-picky, but since I am in first year Japanese, and one of the first things we learn is how to differentiate the two. Also, another nitpick, how is it that Stephen can understand the Japanese citizens perfectly? At the beginning of the book we learn that Stephen only speaks a little Japanese. So does everyone in Tarumi and Yamaguchi conveniently know Chinese? English? Is someone translating for Stephen? I can understand why Matsu could know Chinese since he grew up around Stephen's father's family, but the rest of the village? And it doesn't help that Tsukiyama adds in the Japanese words in the middle of the conversation, further making it seem like they are speaking another language. And the conversations that the characters have are very complex for people who can supposedly only speak a few words in the others language. Secondly, why is Stephen kissing people if he is recuperating from TB? It's a highly contagious disease and in that time, there was no cure for it. Lastly, why is Stephen even in Japan in the first place? His family is letting him go live in a country that they're at war with, pretty much acting like it's no big deal. Why would the Japanese government be okay with this? And the family comes of as being very rich. Why wouldn't they have a country home somewhere safer? Wouldn't you think that letting your sick son go live in another country to recuperate is a bad idea. Overall, I hated it

Karla

Rating: really liked it
A gracefully illuminating novel that is tender and as delicate as a first blooming blossom in Spring. There is so much to discuss in this story, perfect for book clubs. At first it appears so simple, a story of a young Chinese-Japanese young man named Stephen leaving his family house in Hong Kong so his younger sister may not get exposed his sickness. So he travels to stay at his family's Summer shore side home in Tarumi, Japan to recoup from a battle with tuberculosis. He stays with Matsu a master gardener and the home's caretaker. As soon as I encountered Matsu a quite man with little to say and so much inner goodness I wished to be Stephen recovering and learning so much from a humble mentor with so much integrity it brings tears to my eyes. Matsu slowly unveils and shares his life, customs, friends and secrets to Stephen and embraces Stephen as one of his own.
I realized there were so many lessons and metaphors I adored about this writing like nature, time, aging, health, balance, love, humanity and so much more. I could study and tear apart this book in sections but I just simply enjoyed it. A powerfully moving comfort read to encounter once again one day as I mature and find myself needing enlightened once again.

Kathleen

Rating: really liked it
Have you ever turned off the sound on a video or TV program, and just watched the picture? You see things you don’t see when you are distracted by the “noise.” That’s how this book felt for me--quiet and calm enough to expose some details I might otherwise have missed. And they were delicately beautiful details.

One of my takeaways: creating order and carefully-tended beauty can help us deal with the ugly and uncontrollable things that exist in our lives.

I love this kind of quiet and sensitive writing. While there were times when I thought Tsukiyama had taken it a bit too far, that the quietness here was possibly too much of a good thing, I was very much affected by the story. The distinctive characters and atmosphere will stay with me for a long time.

“He showed me that life is not just from within, it extends all around you, whether you wish it to or not.”