Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami (Mariner Books) ~Janet Brown

"I've always thought it makes good sense that the word for 'clean' in Japanese is the same as the word for beautiful." Few sentences have illuminated Japan's culture so incisively as does this quote from Emily Itani's Kakigori Summer. In fact few books have done this as thoroughly as this sweet novel about a family reunion, which makes it a book for anyone intrigued by Japan.

One reason why I avoid Japanese literature is because it's so opaque. With all that I've read, from Yusanari Kawabata to Pico Iyer, nothing has provided a detailed glimpse into Japanese daily life, and that annoys me.

Kagigori Summer tells a conventional story of three sisters who come together in their childhood home after the youngest of them becomes "a national scandal." A popular singer who has been idolized by her fans falls into a pit of notoriety after being photographed kissing the president of a major record company at the entrance to a love hotel. She tumbles into a nervous breakdown and her sisters come to take care of her.

Three sisters are a standard archetype, and true to form, these each embody a different facet of femininity. Rei, the oldest, is the ideal career woman who has achieved success in London. Kiki, the middle sister, is steeped in domestic life, a single mother to an adorable blond moppet of uncertain paternity. Ai is the beautiful, artistic rebel. 

What makes these sisters different is their bloodline. They are hafu, with a Japanese mother who committed suicide when they were young and a British father who left them long before that and is immersed in his second family. Their maternal grandmother is their only surviving relative, living next door to the house where the sisters grew up and where they come after Ai's collapse. 

In predictable fashion, they clash and grow closer over the summer, each finding their true path in life by the novel's end. What isn't predictable are the sharp insights and marvelous details of the Japanese language and culture, served up within the context of the novel.

Rei, living in England, finds herself, when looking at group shots of herself with her friends and colleagues, wondering for a minute or two who the Asian is in the photo.In Japan, she and her sisters are anomalies, "the size of ordinary Westerners. Towering Olympic shot-putter by Japanese standards." As outsiders, they attract attention and they focus it too. They have the knowledge of Japan that comes from living in the country and the perspective that allows them to see what makes their birthplace unique.

Carefully the novel describes the layout of a Japanese family home, the flowering plants in a cottage garden, the appearance of a temple and its shrines in a place that isn't thronged with tourists, the art of fireworks in a small town, the sacred rocks and wind-battered trees of a deserted beach with "paradise colors." It tells exactly how to shop in a place without a supermarket and gives the ingredients for making plum liqueur. 

And by using Japanese words without explanation, leaving readers to figure them out through context or google searches, this story gives as much total immersion as possible in its 322 pages. 

"There's no exact translation for 'cosy' in Japanese," Kiki observes, but in Emily Itami's generous unveiling, readers see the coziness of daily life for themselves and are certain to end up yearning for it--or at least for kakigori, the delectable mixture of shaved ice, syrup, fruit, and beans that the sisters share in their emotionally fraught, yet idyllic, rural summer.