Ryu : Live, Love, Die in the Shadow of the Dragon by Akira Higashiyama, translated by Alison Watts (26 Letters) ~Ernie Hoyt

Akira Higashiyama was born in Taipei, Taiwan and currently lives in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan. His father, Wang Xiao-lien was also a prominent writer in Taiwan and wrote novels, poetry and books about mythology. He writes many of his novels in Japanese. He also wrote novelizations of the popular Masashi Kishimoto manga series Naruto, including the screenplay for Naruto the Movie : Blood Prison. 

Ryu : Live, Love, Die in the Shadow of the Dragon is most easily characterized as a coming-of-age novel. Its protagonist is Yeh Chiu-sheng, a seventeen year old high school student living in Taipei during the seventies. One day his life is turned upside down. It was April 5, 1975 and the news was all about the death of Chiang Kai-shek, the President of Taiwan who was also the leader of the Kuomintang that fought the Communists in Mainland China. 

The death of Chiang Kai-shek shocked the nation who believed the Republic of China would take this opportunity to attack and reclaim Taiwan as its own. Tragic as Chiang Kai-shek’s death was, after a few months, the fervor and mourning of the nation’s leader dwindled - the President’s son, Chiang Ching-kuo became president, things settled down, and people went back to their normal lives. In the midst of all this, Yeh Chiu-sheng’s grandfather was murdered.

Chiu-sheng was close to his grandfather, an emigrant from Shandong Province in Mainland China. Yeh says his grandfather claimed to have seen foxfire when he was born, foxfire meaning a type of supernatural flame, often called “ghost lights”. The story goes that “all the adults looked at my grandfather and pronounced in turn that he was certainly not like other children”.

Chiu-sheng knew his grandfather to be a very superstitious old man. He also knew from his grandfather’s many stories that he did a lot of bad things when he was still living on the mainland and fighting Communists. Yeh would become obsessed with finding the murderer of his beloved grandpa. 

His best friend, Chao Chan-hsiung, also known as Hsiao-chan, is always getting into trouble but he is as loyal as can be. Hsaio-chan becomes involved with a gang leader named Kao Ying-hsiang, known in the streets as Brother Ying. Hsiao-chan is aware that Yeh Chiu-sheng is looking for the murderer of his grandfather and tells Yeh that Kao has already caught the culprit.

Chiu-sheng knows that the man Kao caught is not the murderer. However, Kao tells Chiu-sheng’s friend, Hsiaso-chan, that to become a proper member of his gang, he must kill this man. Chiu-sheng manages to escape with Hsiao-chan and tells his friend he needs to leave that life and not associate with people like that. Chiu-sheng saved his friend from murder but now the two have become marked targets of Brother Ying’s gang.

When he learns that Brother Ying caught his friend, he believes that Hsiao-chan’s life is in danger. Around the time that Yeh Chiu-sheng is determined to save his friend, his uncle, Yu-wen who is a sailor had just returned from sea and saw the look in Chiu-sheng’s eyes and goes with Chiu-sheng to save Hsiao-chan. 

Uncle Yu-wen is not a blood relative. He is the adopted son of Chiu-sheng’s grandfather. But in a series of coincidences or mishaps, Chiu-sheng is beginning to wonder what kind of man Uncle Yu-Wen really is. 

What really gets Chiu-sheng thinking about Uncle Yu-Wen is when he found an old photograph hidden with his grandfather’s old things. It was a picture of some villagers in Shandong. Chiu-sheng swore that it was his Uncle Yu-Wen, but others told him, the picture was the son of the village headman, Wang Ko-chiang - one of the men his grandfather had killed during the war when Japan occupied Taiwan.

This is a story about family ties, bonds that are tighter than family, and includes a bit of fantasy, action, and romance. The cast of characters may be a bit hard to keep up with at first but once you remember who is who, seemingly unrelated incidents all become intertwined in the end. You can’t help but follow in the steps of Chiu-sheng as he goes to Japan and finally makes the decision to go to his father’s hometown (when Taiwanese were still forbidden to travel to the mainland). But what will he find there? And will he be able to solve the mystery of his grandfather’s murder?