The man stood on my doorstep hunched against the chill of a winter morning. When they were too poor to eat, they held a toothpick in their mouth to pretend they had just eaten a meal.Įven the kindness of the half-light could not hide his disfigurement. For example, in olden days, samurai warriors were proud people.
In a shame-oriented society, for persons to lose face is to have their ego destroyed. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict once said that Japanese culture is based on shame while American culture is based on a sense of sin or guilt. Though the story has many moving passages and an initially intriguing plot, the denouement strains credibility.Yasegaman: The combination of yaseru (to become skinny) and gaman-suru (to endure) literally means to endure until one becomes emaciated, or endurance for the sake of pride. Unfortunately, a dark secret that's hinted at and revealed in the final act of the novel is quite outlandish, and it derails the work of the previous chapters. Copleton breathes life into the first two-thirds of the book, an often-poignant narrative of the many forms of love and loss, though it's somewhat hindered by the diary and letter-writing formats. Amaterasu gets a better sense of the past after going through her daughter's journals and reading letters Jomei had written to Yuko after her death, though she remains wary of Hideo and bitter about Jomei's actions. Amaterasu remembers how she and Kenzo attempted to keep the married and much older Jomei from their 16-year-old daughter, Yuko. Amaterasu learns that Hideo was found in an orphanage and raised by Jomei Sato, an old friend of Amaterasu's husband, Kenzo.
In Copleton's uneven debut, Takahashi is visited in her old age by a man who claims to be Hideo, the grandson she believes had died during the WWII bombing of Nagasaki, which triggers memories.
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