In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami (Kodansha)

In the Miso Soup was first published in Japanese in 1997 under the same title and won the Yomiuri Prize for Fiction in the same year. The English translation was published in 2003 and was translated by Ralph McCarthy. The story centers around two main characters. The protagonist, Kenji, is from Shizuoka. He’s twenty years old and his mother believes he’s taking college prep courses in Tokyo. Frank is a heavy-set American tourist who found Kenji’s name and ad as a guide in a publication called “Tokyo Pink Guide”. 

Kenji works as an unofficial “nightlife guide”. In other words, Kenji helps gaijin (foreign tourists) expore the seedier side of Japan - the sex parlors, cabarets, hostess clubs, S&M bondage clubs, peep shows, “soap lands” and “pink salons”. He has been hired by Frank for three consecutive nights before New Year’s Day. The day Kenji receives a phone call from Frank, he was reading a newspaper article about the death of a young high school girl. The article said, “her corpse had been dumped at a trash collection site in a relatively untraveled area in the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku with arms, legs and head cut off.” 

Kenji meets Frank at his hotel and Frank definitely wants to be taken to Kabuki-cho. After exchanging pleasantries, Kenji gets down to business and asks what Frank wants to do tonight. Frank answers with a grin and says, “Sex!”  Kenji seems to find Frank’s grin unnerving but he can’t pinpoint why it makes him feel that way. Kenji makes small talk with Frank but he suspects that Frank is not telling him the truth and Kenji wonders why. 

Frank tells Kenji that he wants to build up his mood before going to one of the sex parlors. They start out the evening by going to a lingerie pub. A place where women just sit and talk to you while only wearing underwear.  Frank brought out his copy of the “Tokyo Pink Guide” book and begins reading the English-Japanese sex glossary. When Frank pulled out his wallet to pay the bill, Kenji couldn’t help but notice a dark stain on one of the notes. To Kenji, it looked like dried blood. Kenji thought of the newspaper article he read earlier and begins to have his suspicion that Frank is not what he says he is, however, Kenji has promised to be his guide for two more nights.. 

It would be the second day of guiding Frank which would lead to Kenji fearing for his life. Kenji had taken Frank to an omiai pub, a bar where you can meet available single women and negotiate with them if you want something more. When Kenji was handed the bill, it was much more than the quoted price they were given. The manager is given really filthy bills so Frank asks Kenji to translate to see if he can use a credit card. The manager reluctantly agrees. Frank tells the manager and girls at the place to look closely at the card. Kenji senses that he is hypnotizing them. Frank then tells Kenji to leave for a moment and calls his girlfriend that he would handle this. 

When Kenji comes back to the pub, he sees one of the girls  “who looked as though she had another mouth below the jaw. Oozing from this second, smiling mouth was a thick, dark liquid, like tar.” The woman’s throat had been slit from ear to ear and yet she still seemed to be alive. Kenji was paralized with fear and thought Frank might kill him as well. 

Kenji manages to keep his wits about himself but is confused when Frank tells him that he should go to the police and tell them what he has done. Kenji must make a choice. Should he go to the police and report what he has seen? Should he pretend he knows nothing about what happened inside the omiai pub? 

Murakami’s gruesome tale of murder and violence is disturbing and intriguing. The reader will be drawn to the seedier side of Tokyo and will be shown the darker side of the human spirit. Read at your own risk. ~Ernie Hoyt

Three Tigers, One Mountain by Michael Booth (St. Martin's Press, April 2020)

“Two tigers cannot share the same mountain, “ is the Chinese proverb that Michael Booth choose as the epigraph to his latest book. Booth expands the proverb to include three tigers, China, Korea, and Japan. None of the three seem willing to share territory, historically there’s been animosity between them, and Booth wants to know why. When much of the world has put the crimes of war behind them and reconciled with their adversaries, why are these countries still at odds with each other? 

To find answers to this question, Booth sets off on a geopolitical odyssey that takes him through Japan, across the sea to Korea, embarking on another small voyage to China, and traveling from Harbin to Hong Kong.  He begins with a firmly held conviction that any regional trouble began with Matthew Perry’s Black Ships forcing Japan into a diplomatic relationship with the West and upsetting “the Confucian geopolitical hierarchy that had held in the region for most of the last two millennia.” China, with its predominate culture, technology, and education, was the leader, Korea “was the primary tributary land,” and Japan was “the vaguely barbaric little brother.” 

Suddenly Japan was the beneficiary of Western technology and weaponry as America brought its new ally into the modern world. Perry arrived in 1853. By 1876 Japan had defeated Korea and established a protectorate over that country after winning the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, a victory that also forced China to cede Taiwan to Japanese control. In 1905, Japan defeated Russia in a battle for the northern portion of Korea and in 1910 took over the entire country, and then moved onto Manchuria in 1931. Within a little more than half a century, Japan had gone from little brother status to the dominant Asian power, a position that it lost by force only 75 years ago. In countries that measure their existence by thousands of years, 75 years is a heartbeat of time, not long enough to heal wounds, let alone replace scar tissue.

In Japan Booth discovers a strong right wing presence that focuses its prejudice against the Korean residents, Zainichi, who came as laborers before 1945 and never left. Stereotyped as lowclass and unskilled criminals, the Koreans who haven’t assimilated into Japanese culture are easy scapegoats who are attacked with racist slogans, not only by conservative extremists but by mainstream society in general, Booth is told by a Japanese journalist. Meanwhile China overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy ten years ago, which exacerbates old tensions between these two countries. Japanese revisionist history teaches that Japanese expansion into Korea and China was benign and that the Nanjing Massacre and Korean slave labor is nothing more than fake news.

Korea sees its 35-year occupation by Japan as far from benign. It went from being a kingdom to a colony, with its language, culture, and even the names of its people being replaced by that of Japan. Its natural resources were drained for Japanese benefit and  beginning in the early 1930s, thousands of its women were commandered as sex slaves for the Japanese military.

Estimates of their number range from 20,000 to to 100,000, and only forty of them are still alive today. 

Although Japan paid 900 million dollars to Korea in reparations from the war, and a fund set up by private Japanese citizens offered 3.5 million dollars directly to the surviving comfort women in 1995, many of them refused to take the money. What they want, along with many of their compatriots, is a direct apology from the Japanese government, if not the emperor himself.

As for China? They’re held responsible for the division of Korea and are considered the major obstacle to its unification. 

Booth begins his Chinese journey in Harbin, where the Japanese perfected weapons of germ warfare, using prisoners of war and local Chinese as their guinea pigs. More than six hundred people a year died from experiments, including live vivisection and lethal injections of bubonic plague, cholera, and anthrax. Although a museum holds testimony from eyewitnesses to the atrocities committed in Harbin, few residents know about it according to a UNESCO survey. 

Nanjing however is deeply alive in the Chinese consciousness, and is kept that way by the use of television dramas depicting the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and the heroism of China’s defenders. As Booth points out, even the lowest estimate of Nanjing’s civilian deaths between December 1937 and January 1938, which is 50,000, compares horribly with “the 61,000 British civilians and 108,000 French civilians during the entirety of World War Two.” 

But to counteract the horrors of the past, Booth finds hope in the pop culture of the present. The youth of China are attracted to the energy of Japanese manga, anime, cosplay, and pornigraphy. Nanjing, he says, “has more Japanese restaurants here than in any other Chinese city,” and over 8 million Chinese tourists visited Japan in 2018. Korean boy bands, films, and Gangnam Style have captivated young hipsters in Japan and in China. Perhaps, he speculates,  as the aging populations of the three tigers increase, the countries will experience a “geriatric peace,” as old wounds fade within failing memories and the young find no reason to revive them.

His theory is a slick and easy one, bolstered by his slick and easy observations. Even so, his book, written in a breezy travelogue style, will attract the attention and enlarge the focus of readers who are looking for entertainment, served up with a helping of forgotten history.~Janet Brown

The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Janissary Tree is the first book in a new and exciting mystery series. It is set in the city that sits on the cusp of Europe and Asia, it is Constantinople in the nineteenth century. The year is 1836, and the Ottoman Empire is still thriving as one of the world’s greatest powers.

In Topkapi Palace, the Sultan - “Ruler of the Black Sea and the White, ruler of Rumelia and Mingrelia, lord of Anatolia and Ionia, Romania, and Macedonia, protector of the Holy Cities, steely rider through the realms of bliss” is sitting in the Abode of Felicity. The sultan is awaiting one of his slave girls from his Harem to share his bed, however, the person that comes to see him is not a beautiful girl but is one of the eunuchs, the only men allowed in the inner sanctum of the harem. He informs the sultan that one of the slave girls has been strangled to death. The sultan replies, “Send for Yashim.”

Yashim - scholar, chef, confidante to the sultan, a linguist and a thorough investigator. He is also a eunuch. Yashim is also summoned by the sultan’s seraskier, a vizier who commands the Ottoman Empire’s army. He tells Yashim that in less than two weeks time, the sultan will be reviewing the troops in the New Guard and needs to be able to show the people that the troops are as well disciplined as the former Janissary Corp. The Janissaries were an elite military organization. They were a corps of slaves, young Christian boys who were kidnapped and converted to Islam. However, four of his men in the New Guard have gone missing and one of them has been found - dead in an iron pot! The seraskier has given Yashim ten days to investigate the death.

The Janissary Corp was a formidable force to contend with and they had also grown in power, . As Western Europe’s military was modernizing and using technology, the Janissaries became outdated and unwilling to change. They also feared their power was going to be taken away, so the Janissaries rose up in revolt but were suppressed and defeated in what became known as the Auspicious Incident. 

Yashim is helped in his investigation by a Polish ambassador, a transexual dancer, and the Valide Sultan who is the living mother of the Sultan. He is led to the Janissary Tree, a large tree in the city the Janissaries chose as a meeting point. Here, Yashim finds part of a Sufi poem. This in turn, leads him to the Karagozi, a group of mystics in the Sufi sect. Yashim has deduced that the three murders are related to the Janissaries and the poem is giving a clue to the fourth location. 

Will Yashim be in time to stop a fourth murder? Are hidden members of the Janissary Corp getting ready to start a new rebellion?  Can Yashim solve the murder of the slave girl in the harem? As Yashim gets closer to the truth, he finds that his life is also in danger. This tale of murder and intrigue will keep you rivited and you will not want to set this book down. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)

The Foreigner, published in 2008, won the Edgar Award for the Best First Novel by an American Author for 2009. An award given by the Mystery Writers of America. It is written by Francie Lin, a Taiwanese American. The novel is set amidst the seedier side of life in Taiwan. It is a tale of sibling rivalry and coming to terms with one’s roots. A story of family and tradition, but is also the story of crime, murder, and death.

Emerson Chang is a financial analyst living with his mother, a Taiwanese immigrant, who is the owner and proprietor of a motel called the Remada Inn. Emerson was born and raised in the States and can’t speak a word of Chinese. He is forty years old. He’s also single….and a virgin.

Every Friday evening Emerson has dinner with his mother at a local Chinese restaurant called the Jade Palace. Today is Emerson’s birthday. His mother has also invited a single woman to join them. Emerson’s mother is a very traditional Chinese woman and wants Emerson to get married and start a family with a nice Chinese girl.

The last thing on Emerson’s mind is marriage. He was in love once, with a woman twenty years his senior. Of course his mother didn’t approve.  She also wasn’t Chinese. This evening Emerson begins to resents his mother’s meddling and brings up his younger brother, Little P. Little P left the home and went to Taiwan after the death of their father. Emerson hasn’t seen his brother in almost ten years. Bringing up Little P’s name upsets his mother who abruptly leaves the restaurant. 

Once Emerson gets back to the motel where he and his mother live, Emerson decides to confront his mother and tell her that he will not be manipulated by her anymore. Unfortunately, he finds his mother on the floor. She is taken to the hospital where Emerson first learns that she has stage four cancer and doesn’t have long to live. 

The Foreigner gets more complicated after Emerson’s mother’s death. According to his mother’s last will and testament, his mother has left the motel to Little P while Emerson is left some property in Taiwan. His mother also had one additional request - to have her ashes interred in Taiwan. The lawyers have been unable to get into contact with Little P so Emerson decides to kill two birds with one stone by taking his mother’s ashes to Taiwan and visit Little P in person to inform him of their mother’s passing and about his inheritance.

When Emerson visits his younger brother, he is greeted by a knife at his throat by a man that looks pretty up. The man turns out to be Little P! After exchanging a few awkward words, Emerson tells Little P that their mother had left the motel to him after her death. The only thought Little P had was how much money he could make by selling it. After a few more unpleasant exchanges, Emerson realizes that Little P is in trouble and feels it's his sense of duty  to help him. 

The more Emerson tries to help Little P, the further into Taiwan’s criminal underworld he goes. Emerson finds that Little P works at a small karaoke bar run by their uncle where Emerson meets a couple of his cousins, Poison and Big One, who are not the friendliest of relatives. Emerson also spots a woman at the karaoke bar and nobody will tell him who she is. It seems there is more to the karaoke bar that meets the eye and there also seems to be a secret Little P is hiding. The longer Emerson spends time with Little P, the more he feels the need to help save his little brother. But does his little brother really need saving? 

What secret is Little P hiding? Why does Emerson not give the papers for Little P to sign to hand over the motel? And who is that little girl who seemed like a little frightened waif? As Emerson begins putting all the pieces together, what he discovers will shock him and us, the readers as well! ~Ernie Hoyt

The House of the Pain of Others by Julian Herbert (Graywolf Press)

In the Mexican city of Torreon, the football team has a motto written on their locker room wall: In the house of the pain of others. This is appropriate because, as Julian Herbert discloses in his book of the same title, Torreon lives with the history of the pain of others, the massacre of over three hundred Chinese residents in 1911 during the Mexican Revolution.

It was Pancho Villa who killed them, say many Torreon residents. It was the rabble who followed the soldiers who were responsible. It was done by outsiders, not by those who lived here. Manuel Lee Soriano, a descendant of a Chinese family who remained in Torreon after the slaughter, says, “I lived through those anti-Chinese campaigns and that’s how my parents taught me to respond…’If you think you might cause offense, better not speak. Better be quiet’...the story belongs to us...It’s got nothing to do with anyone else.”

Torreon, Mexico’s youngest city, was a boom town at the close of the 19th Century, its explosive growth fueled by cotton, steel, and rubber. It needed workers and Chinese immigrants, facing poverty in their country after years of war and rebellion and drawn to North America by the California Gold Rush, came across the fluid borders between the U.S. and Mexico to seek their fortunes. Finding not only work but the opportunity to establish their own businesses in Torreon, they stayed and prospered, owning large grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, and the city’s gigantic produce market. Wong Foon-Chuck, who got off the train in Torreon with two baskets of Chinese goods, within several years had founded a school and owned hotels. J. Wong Lim arrived with a medical degree from a California university and became a Mexican national with three languages at his disposal.

Drawn by the idea of establishing a shipping line between Mazatlan and Hong Kong, a wealthy politician and Confucian philosopher, Kang Youwei, was attracted to Torreon because its Chinese were residents, not seasonal migratory workers. He soon began speculating in real estate, buying cheap and selling high, and with Foon-Chuck and Lim, founded what was called the Banco Chino which was designed to become the bank used by all the Chinese in Mexico. Torreon’s Chinese business community became an economic force with the capacity for greater growth--and as the Revolution gathered steam, they became a target.

Kang Youwei’s real estate success led to higher rents and housing shortages and demagogues were quick to exploit that, along with the threat that Chinese businessmen were killing off any competing enterprises. When the Mexican Revolution began to gather force, guerrilla forces destabilized the area around Torreon with frequent raids in the city, setting the stage for unrest long before revolutionary troops arrived on May 13th, 1911.

Making their way to the Chinese produce farms, the soldiers demanded food and water at first, then stepped up their demands to include tools, cash, and even the clothing on people’s backs, leaving their victims vulnerable and “the easiest to kill.” From the night of May 13th to the night of May 15th, Chinese businesses were looted, businessmen and their employees were killed in their shops, and those who found hiding places were dragged out from safety and killed in the streets. Corpses were thrown from the windows of the Banco Chino, at least four Chinese children were murdered in plain sight, and Mexican residents carried away whatever bounty they could scavenge from the looted stores and houses. The massacre continued until the revolutionary leader Emilio Maduro finally declared martial law and an immediate end to attacks upon the Chinese. By that time almost half of Torreon’s Chinese residents had been killed within a period of two days. They were buried in mass graves outside of the city. 

The economic loss to the Chinese community was estimated at over 1,300,00 pesos and many of the survivors left Torreon. China demanded financial indemnity for the death of its citizens and Emilio Madero’s brother Francisco, after gaining power as the Mexican president, promised a payment of 3,100,000 pesos, a decision that was highly unpopular with his fellow countrymen. Not long afterward Madero was assassinated and the indemnity was never paid.

Wong Foon-Chuck’s descendants still live in Torreon. J. Wong Lim remained in the city for years after the massacre; his home is now the Museo de la Revolution. But Torreon’s Chinese community is muted in comparison to what it once was and its bloody history is obscured. As Manuel Lee Soriano’s parents told him, “Better keep quiet.”

Julian Herbert, ignoring that advice, has brought these truths out of the house of pain into the awareness of outsiders in the rest of the world. ~Janet Brown

No One's Perfect by Hirotada "Oto" Ototake (Kodansha)

When HIrotada “Oto” Ototake was born, the doctors thought his mother might be given quite a shock if she were to see him. They decided it was best to keep things unsaid for the time being. It would be more than a month later when Oto’s mother finally sees her newborn son for the first time.

Why did the doctors keep Oto’s mother from seeing him? The year was 1976. In Japan, it was the days before the age of “informed consent”. People took what the doctors said at face value. Their word was final. The father said he was just following the doctor’s orders. You see, Oto was born with a very obvious congenital birth defect. He was born with tetra-amelia syndrome. To put it simply, Oto was born without any arms or legs! However, when Oto’s mother finally set sight on her little baby, she said, “He’s adorable.”

Oto’s story is very inspirational. He  writes his autobiography with a flair for humor such as telling us in kindergarten he made friends at once,  “Thanks to my arms and legs, or lack thereof.” Oto shares with us his life during his preschool and elementary years, followed by his middle school, high school, and cram school years and finally about his campus life at Waseda University. 

Oto’s parents decided to enroll him in a regular school but were faced with a grim reality. Back then, It was still taken for granted that disabled children would go to special schools but Oto’s parents were determined that Oto would get a mainstream school education. Fortunately, they found a school willing to take Oto on as a student. Here, Oto meets Takagi Sensei, a man who thinks about Oto’s future. He held the firm belief that, “We can coddle him all we like right now, but he’ll have to fend for himself one day.” 

As a senior in high school, Oto has to start thinking of where he wants to go for university. University entrance exams can be quite difficult so most students in their third year of high go to a juku or cram school. Oto comes face to face with the discriminatory attitudes towards people with disabilities as he is turned down from one cram school to the next. Most of the schools tell him, “the school doesn’t have full facilities for wheelchair users, such as elevators, and accessible toilets, and so it’s not possible for us to accept you.” or “We can’t be responsible if anything should happen.” 

This is the first time when Oto thinks to himself, “Gosh, being in a wheelchair is quite a problem.” but that does not deter him in any way. Oto does find a cram school that accepts him and passes the entrance exam for Waseda University. At Waseda, Oto meets another key person in his life who introduces him to the term “barrier free”. This sets Oto on a path to make the Waseda campus “an environment in which students with disabilities have free access to learning.”

This book was first published in Japanese under the title “Gotai Fumanzoku” meaning having the body and limbs (gotai) all satisfactorily there (manzoku). As Oto didn’t have any limbs to speak of, he made up and used the word fumanzoku.  He chose No One’s Perfect for the English edition because Oto wanted to send a loud and clear message. He says, “You don’t have to be born perfect to be happy.” 

Oto ends his book saying, “Some people are born able-bodied but go through life in dark despair. And some people, in spite of having no arms and legs, go through life without a care in the world. Disability has got nothing to do with it.” ~Ernie Hoyt

All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe (Kodansha)

Miyuki Miyabe is one of Japan’s best known writers. She has won many awards including the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature, the Yamoto Shugoro Prize sponsored by Shinchosha Publishing Company and the Naoki Prize. Many of her novels have been adapted into movies as well including titles such as “Brave Story”, “Solomon’s Perjury” and “Crossfire”. A South Korean production company adapted All She Was Worth and released the film with the title of `Helpless”. 

Miyabe is best known for her mysteries and this book rates as one of her best  All She Was Worth, originally published in 1992 in Japanese as “Kasha” won the Best Mystery and Best Novel in the year of its publication. It follows the story of a police detective named Shunsuke Honma who is on an extended leave since the death of his wife Chizuko three years ago and is also recovering from being shot in the leg on duty. As a favor to his nephew, he takes on a missing persons case. 

Jun Kurisaka, the son of Honma’s wife’s cousin has come to ask for help. Honma hasn’t seen Jun in seven years who also didn’t show up for Chizuko’s funeral. Honma was wondering why Jun was coming to see him. After Jun arrives and exchanges pleasantries, Jun finally tells Honma the reason for his visit. He tells Honma that he’s gotten engaged but his fiancee has disappeared and wants his help to find her. 

This sets in motion the search for a woman named Shoko Sekine. A 28 year old woman with no parents. The trouble all started with a routine application for a credit card. Jun was informed by his friend who works in the banking and credit industry that Shoko Sekine was blacklisted, that she had also filed for personal bankruptcy. Jun thinks the bank made a mistake and gets into an argument with his friend who suggests that Jun should ask Shoko himself. He tells Honma that when he confronted Shoko about it, she went white as a ghost. Jun tells Honma, she didn’t deny it and said, “...there were all kinds of complicated circumstances behind it.” She told Jun, she needed a little time and the next day, she disappeared.

Reluctantly, Honma decides to help Jun and takes on the case of searching for Shoko Sekine. Jun had told Honma where Shoko worked and that is where he starts his unofficial investigation. First he goes to Shoko’s last place of employment and asks to see her resume. He decides to work backwards to see what kind of information he can garner. When he checks with Shoko’s former employers, he discovers that none of them existed. They were all fictitious companies. He also discovers that Shoko Sekine owes a lot of money to loan sharks. 

As Honma delves deeper into Jun’s vanished fiancee, he discovers a truth that surprises him and thinks it will be an even bigger shock to Jun. It appears that Shoko Sekine is not who she says she is, that her identity has been stolen by a complete stranger!  Honma believes the real Shoko Sekine might be dead. What will he tell Jun? Will Honma continue to investigate to find out the truth of the matter? ~Ernie Hoyt

Making the Chinese Mexican by Grace Pena Delgado (Stanford University Press)

When England abolished the slave trade in 1807 and ended slavery within its empire in 1833, the need for cheap labor became an issue everywhere but the United States, until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation thirty years later. Caribbean sugar plantations found a labor solution in coolies imported from China, a practice that spread into South America. 

A Mexican politician, convinced that he could make a fortune from growing coffee in the scorching climate of Chiapas, advocated the importation of Chinese laborers into his country, as they already were in Peru, Brazil, and Cuba. Lack of infrastructure within Mexico to transport workers to the areas where they were needed, as well as the hellish climate of the coastal and jungle work sites, diverted the Chinese labor force to the more amenable areas of the United States. While only 1000 Chinese were part of the Mexican labor force in the mid-1800s, over 100,000 worked in the United States by the end of the 19th century.

With the completion of America’s transcontinental railroad, the need for cheap labor diminished and xenophobia increased. Mining in the Arizona Territory attracted immigrant labor from England, Ireland, and Mexico. Chinese workers trickled down from California and still more arrived from China, increasing the Territory’s Chinese population from 20 to over 1500 in ten year’s time.

But the increasing number of white Americans arriving in Arizona brought the “demonization” of Chinese workers with them. The threat of miscegenation was brandished in lurid fashion, along with the belief that “wily Mongolians” were taking jobs from American citizens. In the mining town of Bisbee, widows of mine workers resorted to taking in laundry to make ends meet and they claimed Chinese laundries were taking bread from the mouths of their fatherless children. Washerwomen in Tombstone added their complaints to the furor and laundering became a forbidden occupation to Chinese “adjunct labor” in mining areas.

Tucson was less restrictive with its diversity of population, with Mexicans making up 64% of the town’s population. One of the leading businessmen, Leopoldo Carrillo, began renting small tracts of land to Chinese truck farmers. As these farmers achieved success, some opened grocery and dry goods stores and even laundries. An economic kinship grew between Tucson’s Mexicans and Chinese, with Mexican families renting rooms to Chinese laborers and leasing land where Chinese families could build homes. Soon the area known as El Barrio where the Mexicans of Tucson lived became inhabited by Chinese workers. Although Tucson never had an officially established Chinatown, by 1883 the Chinese residents of El Barrio had established “four large buildings, two washhouses, three stores, two opium dens, and a block-long adobe structure that ‘lost all its Spanish-American attributes and [became] wholly oriental.”

The relationship that was formed between Chinese and Mexicans, a form of kith that could be as strong as kin, made it an easy matter for Chinese to flow across the porous border into Sonora, Mexico when U.S. immigration policies and racial discrimination made that country an unattractive destination. Chinese labor flooded into Mexico by ship and then were trafficked across the border to U.S. towns.  Others remained in Mexico, “becoming a vital part of Mexico’s economic reality.” By 1910, 13,203 Chinese lived in Sonora and other states of northern Mexico.

After the Mexican Revolution of 1911-1917, a strong anti-Chinese movement failed to discourage Chinese businessmen within Mexico  who understood that crossing the border into the U.S would bring them no relief, only the probability of deportation. By the mid-1920s the Chinese in Sonora owned 40% “of manufacturing firms and small-scale dry-goods shops while controlling 65% of all grocery stores.” Antichinista forces turned to vicious propaganda and violence; Chinese stores were raided and burned. Murders were not uncommon. Eventually the government, swayed by fears of miscegenation and disease, began the expulsion of 3,500 Chinese from Sonora, with the goal of expanding this throughout Mexico. 

Today there are estimated to be no more than 70,000 people of Chinese descent living in the entire country of Mexico.~Janet Brown

So Can You by Mitsuyo Ohira (Kodansha)

One of the major problems still facing Japan today is iijime. This is the Japanese word for “bullying”. Victims of bullying are still ostracized and treated as if the bullying were their fault. Schools often feign ignorance or disclaim deny claims of abuse. A lot of parents seem to be more concerned about appearances and gossip instead of the welfare of their children. Mitsuyo Ohira is one of those victims.

So Can You is based on her own story. She doesn’t hold back any punches and tells us the grim reality of what she went through. She talks about being bullied in junior high school, how it started, how it escalated, ultimately leading to her attempted suicide. The story doesn’t end there. So Can You is also a story of inspiration of how she, a junior high school graduate, was able to overcome impossible odds and become a lawyer.

Mitsuyo tells us up front, the actions in the book had taken place over twenty years ago and that her oppressors probably have no recollection of what they put her through but Ohira says, “But I haven’t forgotten. Even after twenty years, the memories come rushing back as vividly as if it had all taken place yesterday.”

The time was 1978. Due to a family situation, Mitsuyo had to transfer to a new school after the school year had already started. She was looking forward to going there and making new friends.  She enjoys being the center of attention. Her classmates did warn her about a student naemd “A-ko”. A-ko was the leader of the “bad” girls in Mitsuyo’s homeroom. Actually, she was the leader of all the “bad” girls in the first year. 

Mitsuyo thought if she just avoided A-ko and didn’t provoke her in any way, she wouldn’t have any problems. She was enjoying her status as a type of celebrity and with hindsight thinks maybe she was just a bit too pleased with herself. At some point in time, A-ko spoke to her but she didn’t reply. Little did Mitsuyo know that this little act of defiance would have consequences she never imagined.

First, her classmates starting ignoring her. At lunch time, nobody would sit with her or talk to her. Then came the graffiti. Someone had written on Mitsuyo’s desk, “I am a pathetic moron. Everyone hates me. If you want me, you can have me cheap.” It was signed with her name, homeroom and year. The bullying didn’t stop there. Soon, rumors were spread about Mitsuyo being “easy”. 

The second year, Mitsuyo thought she had made some new friends only to be betrayed by them. Their friendship was only a ruse to get Mitsuyo to let her guard down. Once again, Mitsuyo became the subject of a school-wide scandal and thought the only thing left to do is die, ultimately leading to her suicide attempt.

Throughout Mitsuyo’s junior high school years, she experiences being a victim of bullying, attempting suicide, and eventually follows the path into delinquency. Mitsuyo didn’t go to high school and scraped a living by working at a hostess club. A chance meeting with an old friend of her father’s at the hostess club was the turning point in Mitsuyo’s life. 

Ohira-san or “Otchan” as Mitsuyo knew him, becomes her mentor and gives her encouragement to make a new start on life. He is the first person to tell her that it is her fault for not even trying to change. Otchan lights the fire inspiring Mitsuyo to change.

Mitsuyo was not with her life, but with the encouragement of Ohira-san, she starts to set small goals for herself. Once she reaches one goal, Ohira-san encourages her to set an even higher one. This sets the stage for Mitsuyo, a junior high school graduate to attempt to pass the National Bar Exam and become a lawyer!  The story is heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. ~Ernie Hoyt

A Burden of Flowers by Natsuki Ikezawa (Kodansha)

A Burden of Flowers is an English language version of the Japanese book  “Hana wo Hakobu Imouto”, translated by Alfred Birnbaum who has also translated many of Haruki Murakami’s novels into English. It literally translates to “The Sister Who Carries Flowers”. The book won the Mainichi Award for the year 2000, given by Mainichi Publishing, a subsidiary of the Mainichi Shimbun (newspaper). The story was inspired by true events that happened in the eighties. 

The two main characters are a brother and his younger sister, Tetsuro and Kaoru. Tetsuro “Tez” Nishijima is a successful artist and an avid traveler. He is also a recovering drug addict. He currently finds himself sitting in a prison cell in Bali, Indonesia.  Kaoru is five years younger than Tez. She is a Europhile and studied at the Sorbonne in France. Although she never graduated from the Sorbonne, she became fluent at speaking French and for the past five years, she had been living in various cities in Europe. Kaoru has moved back to Japan and her current job often requires her to work in Europe. 

So begins an incredible story of great courage and persistence of a young sister’s journey into the unknown world of international law and politics.With the help of a retired professor and two of his close and well-connected Indonesian friends, they take on the case to keep Kaoru’s brother from receiving the death sentence. 

The story is told through the eyes of Kaoru and Tez in alternating chapters. Kaoru’s story focuses on going through all the hurdles of red tape in Indonesia’s legal system. She is also witness to its corruption, having to deal with a police chief who is totally uncooperative and has already determined that Tez is guilty of heroin trafficking as Tez has already signed a confession admitting to his guilt.

Tetsuro’s story focuses on his reminisces about traveling through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam It is in Thailand where he meets a German woman who leads him into the world of heroin use He thinks about his addiction, his rehabilitation and his relapse into using heroin again. Still, he doesn’t understand why the purchase of two grams of heroin calls for the death penalty. It is with hindsight that Tez realizes he has been framed as he is being charged with possession of 200 grams of heroin with intent to sell. 

Unknown to Tez or Kaoru, good fortune was on their side. The siblings discover the news at a later time after the charge against Tez had been reduced without explanation. They were shown a magazine article which was translated them for them. They were informed that the police chief was being investigated by a detective in the Independent Investigations Division and had been working undercover to investigate misconduct in regional police departments. The detective had been shot and left for dead but survived and managed to get help. 

The actions of the two main characters are excellently interwoven to provide the reader with a peak into a young woman’s uphill battle combating a corrupt system and a man coming to terms with his own actions which led him to his current predicament. The more you learn about Tez and his fall from grace, the more you want Kaoru to succeed. The suspense of the outcome keeps you riveted to the story.  ~Ernie Hoyt

The Dancing Girls of Lahore : Selling Love and Saving Dreams in Pakistan's Pleasure District by Louise Brown (Harper Perennial

In The Dancing Girls of Lahore, Lousie Brown, an academic who works and teaches at Birmingham University in England, spends four years living amongst the women who work in Heera Mandi, a neighborhood and bazaar located in Lahore, Pakistan. It is also Lahore’s red light district. In the day, the bazaar is like any other in Pakistan, full of food stalls, small shops selling musical instruments and khussa, a traditional hand-crafted footwear, but at night, brothels located above the shops open for business.

In the past, Heera Mandi was a place “that trained courtesans who won the hearts of emperors”. These courtesans were known as tawaif, professional women who were taught to sing and dance, but times have changed. The women say that things were different back then, that women like them were respected. “They were artists, not gandi kanjri - not dirty prostitutes.”

The tawaif is similar to Japan’s geisha. They were women who were trained to sing and dance or recite poetry. Their main purpose was to entertain the nobility. Once the British annexed the area, the tawaif’s services declined and they made ends meet by selling their bodies, often serving the British military and thus they were defamed and branded as prostitutes.

We are witness to the life in the Heera Mandi as seen through the eyes of Brown. She introduces us to Maha and her family. A lady in her mid-thirties with five young children. Maha was sold as a bride at the age of twelve. She was a successful dancer in her twenties but after becoming the second wife of a man and having many babies, she has become plump and no longer dances for a living. Her meager existence with her children is poorly supported by her husband Adnon, who comes to Heera Mandi, only to smoke his opium in peace away from his “proper” family, meaning his first wife.

For the next four years, Brown shares the story of Maha’s family. It is very heart-wrenching and sad but is also a grim reality that there are more families such as Maha’s. Women who are born into this life and cannot escape it. The nighttime world of Heera Mandi which Brown describes is very difficult to imagine. In Heera Mandi, we are also introduced to khusras, transgenders who live on the fringe of society. We are taught words in Urdu and Punjabi that are frequently used in the business such as dalal, which translates to promoters, agents, or simply - pimps. We learn the slang for men and women’s private parts, and derogatory terms for prostitutes such as taxi and kanjri.

Brown does admit to feeling a bit of guilt sharing the story of Maha and her children as she is also a mother with children of her own who are about the same age as Maha’s. She tells us while her fourteen year old daughters in her middle class life in Britain go to school and to the cinema, Maha’s daughters “dance for men and have their virginity purchased by the highest bidder.” 

The Dancing Girls will make you laugh and cry and at times will make you angry. The abuse these women endure is unimaginable. What’s even more unimaginable is the vicious cycle in which the mother becomes her own children’s agent soliciting sex with them to potential customers. A tragedy whose story needs to be read by everyone. ~Ernie Hoyt

Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language by Katherine Russell Rich (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

“India will change you forever,” a friend once told Katherine Russell Rich and after recovering from cancer and losing her job, that change was just what Russell wanted. “I no longer had the language to describe my own life,” she explains. “So I decided to borrow someone else’s.” She decides to study Hindi for a year in Rajasthan.

Adult language learning isn’t for the fainthearted. The optimum period for language acquisition begins at eighteen months and peaks at seven. The ability to pick up vocabulary lasts forever but learning intonation and sound patterns becomes progressively harder with age. However Russell is intrigued by the idea that speaking another language opens up another world, wondering if learning Hindi will double the size of the world she was born into.

What she discovers is her new world expands with its new language and her old one begins to vanish. While she learns words that have no equivalent in English, vocabulary she’s used all of her life fades into the back of her mind. “Hindi pollutes my English,” as she absorbs the formal address of her new language and transfers new rules of pronunciation into her native language where they don’t belong. She begins to say “we” instead of “I,” as Hindi blurs the distinction between the individual and the group for her. Even her face begins to change. When she looks in a mirror, she judges her features by the standards that exist in her new culture, described by her new language. She learns that in Hindi yesterday and tomorrow are the same word, that Indian time is circular, not linear. “in India, in Hindi, it’s always right now.”

Russell practices total immersion, living in “the incurably medieval” city of Udaipur with an extended family who ensure that she’s surrounded by Hindi, “a monsoon of words.” She takes long walks alone, looking at unfamiliar sights that she has no names for. Without language, she falls back into the wonder of childhood, where nothing appears ordinary.

Then on a bright day in September, the world shakes when the Twin Towers fall. Language becomes political with words like “terrorism,” “fanaticism,” “war.” The deep and murderous divide between Indian Hindus and Muslims becomes horribly evident to Russell. She learns that Hindi is seen by many as a right-wing nationalistic tool, intended to supplant the nation’s eighteen official languages and to remove all lingering traces of Persian words that came with the former Mughal rulers.

Linking Muslims and Christians as undesirable foreign outsiders, right-wing Hindu terrorists attack and kill an Australian doctor and his two sons because they believe the man has been proselytizing. Russell is attacked three times in public, punched and knocked down. Her host family, one of her teachers tells her, has been spreading rumors about her and, unnerved, she thinks this is true. She leaves the house that’s been her refuge, moves to a hotel, and becomes “lost in India.”

Four hours from Udaipur, Hindu pilgrims burn to death in a train car conflagration. “Muslims had done this thing” is the popular verdict, reinforced by nationalist leaders, and Muslims are killed with impunity as a result. The official death toll is nine hundred. Russell’s friendships are shaken when she hears people she’s close to spew hatred against Muslims. When her year is up, India and Pakistan are “teetering on the edge.” And yet India becomes part of her, her second world, along with her imperfect but passionate grasp on Hindi.

Dreaming in Hindi is more than a memoir. It’s a deep and piercing examination of what’s gained and what’s lost by submitting to another language, another culture. ~Janet Brown

Silence by Shusaku Endo (Kodansha)

After reading Donald Keene’s autobiography, I was moved by his love of classical Japanese literature and was inspired to read another book by a well known Japanese literary author. In the past, my Japanese mother strongly suggested that I read works by Yukio Mishima and Natsume Soseki. She looked down on my love of science-fiction and fantasy. I reluctantly read books by both authors, Yukio Mishima’s “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” and Natsume Soseki’s “Botchan”, mostly to please my mother. Now, I wanted to read some classic Japanese literature by choice but which author’s books should I choose? 

I decided on Silence by Shusaku Endo for a couple of reasons. The first reason is simple. I had seen the movie adaptation of the novel and thought it was a great story. The second is the subject matter which centers around a relatively unknown group of people - the Japanese Christians. Endo presents a conflict between East and West, “especially in its relationship to Christianity.” Endo is quoted as saying, “Christianity must adapt itself radically if it is to take root in the ‘swamp’ of Japan.”

The story is set during a time when Christianity is banned and people who are caught practicing the religion are executed by burning. However, the burnings didn’t produce the desired effect as the condemned became martyrs in the eyes of other believers. The Shogunate realizes this and changes their tactics where death is  “preceded by torture in a tremendous effort to make the martyrs apostatize.” 

News had reached the Church in Rome, “Christovao Ferraira, sent to Japan sent to Japan by the Society of Jesus in Portugal, after undergoing the torture of ‘the pit’ at Nagasaki has apostatized.” Three fathers in the Society of Jesus, Sebastian Rodrigues, Francis Garrpe and Juan de Santa Marta, are currently working in the Dutch colony of Macao. After hearing about the situation in Japan, they are desperate to reach the shores of Japan even though Japan has cut all ties with Portugal. 

Rodrigues writes in a letter and relates Juan de Santa Marta’s words who says, “In that stricken land the Christians have lost their priests and are like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Some one must go to give them courage and to ensure that the tiny flame of faith does not die out.” He also says, it is their duty to seek out their teacher, Father Ferraira, to find out the truth. Did Ferreira really apostatize or was it a lie spread by the Dutch and the English.

The Head Priest in Macao gave permission to Rodrigues and Gaarpe on the condition that they leave Juan de Santa Marta in Macao who was showing signs of catching malaria. In Macao the two Fathers meet their first Japanese, a twenty-nine or thirty-year old, unshaven and drunk man named Kichijiro. 

Two priests accompanied by a Japanese man named Kichijiro manage to reach the shores of Japan during the night so as not to be spotted. Gaarpe does not trust Kichijiro as he would not answer the simple question, “Are you a Christian?”  Father Rodrigues gives Kichijiro the benefit of the doubt and is pleased that Kichijiro has found some hidden Christians. Word spreads quickly and other Christians in hiding come to see the priests. Unfortunately, it isn’t only the Christians that have heard the news that there are foreign Fathers on Japanese soil. The news has reached the local government officials as well. 

Once the searching commences, the two Fathers are separated. Father Rodrigues cannot go back to his original hiding place and wanders the land with Kichijiro as his guide. Father Rodrigues is then betrayed by Kichijiro and is captured. However, the local daimyo doesn’t order Father Rodrigues’s execution but plays psychological games with him to convince the Father to apostatize in front of the other captured Christians. 

The Silence of the title is Father Rodgrigues’s question to God. Why does He remain silent as Christians are persecuted, tortured and killed? However,  the real question is, will Father Rodrigues apostatize to save the suffering of other Christians or will he defend his faith until his own end? ~Ernie Hoyt

Chronicles of My Life : An American in the Heart of Japan by Donald Keene (Columbia University Press)

To long-term expat residents of Japan, the name Donald Keene is synonymous with “Japan expert”. He is an American who found a deep love for Asia and Japan in particular and is also  a Professor Emeritus of Columbia University where he taught Japanese Literature. He has written extensively about Japanese literature and culture and has translated a number of Japanese classics into English. A man who was friends with the Japanese literary luminaries such as Yukio Mishima, Kobo Abe, and Yasunari Kawabata. Unfortunately, he passed away in February of this year. It only seemed appropriate to read his autobiography as my personal tribute to him.

Chronicles of My Life is his autobiography where Keene shares how his love of Asia and Japan got began .I had assumed that he was a permanent resident of Japan long before I became one myself but found to my surprise that he only became a resident in 2011 after the Tohoku Earthquake and after his retirement from Columbia University. 

I was even more surprised when Keene admits that during his childhood, “The word kimono (however I pronounced it) was probably the only word of Japanese I knew.”  He mentions that he was familiar with kanji characters, thanks to his collection of postage stamps. But he goes on to say, “I never saw a Japanese film, never listened to a Japanese piece of music, never heard a word of Japanese spoken.” He didn’t meet his first Japanese until he was in junior high school. 

Keene excelled in his academic studies and was accepted at Columbia University when he was only sixteen. He meets his first Chinese in his humanities class and became good friends. However, Lee was studying to be an engineer, literature did not hold as much interest to Lee as it did to Keene. Keene comes up with the brilliant idea of having Lee teach him Chinese and starts practicing the art of calligraphy. During Keene’s college days, he used to frequent a book shop that specializes in remainders and found “The Tale of Genji” by Murasaki Shibibu for forty-nine cents. It’s this story that opened his path to Japanese literature. 

On December 7, 1942, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Keene’s professor of the history of Japanese thought was interned as an enemy alien. Keene realizes that he would probably have to join the military but had learned of the Navy’s Japanese language school whose main purpose was to train men to be interpreters and translators. Thus, Keene was able to continue his Japanese studies in the navy.

After being discharged from the army, Keene returns to Columbia University to continue his studies in Japanese where he worked on his Master’s Thesis and Doctoral Dissertation. He also studied for a year at Harvard University before transferring to Cambridge University where he received his second Master’s Degree. His hopes of studying in Japan was not possible because it was the time of the Occupation and the only non-military people who were allowed into the country were businessmen and missionaries.

Keene fulfills his wish of going back to Japan by receiving a fellowship from a foundation to study at Kyoto University. During his stay in Kyoto, Keene writes his first articles and reviews in Japanese for academic and literary magazine.

This is a fascinating story of one man’s love affair with Japan written in a style that is entertaining and easy to understand. Keene’s quest to gain a better understanding of Japan’s literary history is so enchanting you may feel the urge to visit your local bookstore or library and starting reading Japanese literature on your own. ~Ernie Hoyt

Empire of Horses by John Man (Pegasus Books)

In the earliest days of humanity, “an ocean of grass” stretched across continents, ignored until horses and bovine animals were domesticated and needed to be fed. Herdsmen traveled across the grasslands, moving their livestock from one spot to the next, becoming “pastoral nomads.” They discovered that horses, which could be tamed, ridden, used to carry heavy burdens, and (when necessary) eaten, were valuable animals that gave rise to a new civilization--one that was dominated by horsemen.

With the advent of the Bronze and Iron Ages, the horsemen became archers, hunting with bows and metal arrowheads. The skill they needed to hunt for food became extraordinarily useful when employed against enemies, aiming deadly arrows while astride swift horses, and the precursor of medieval knights was born.

Within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, the nomadic region of Ordos was born, which became the empire of a mysterious tribe called the Xiongnu. Where these people came from is a matter of speculation but it’s a fact that they were formidable warriors. Soon their territory extended to 350 kilometers from the Han Dynasty’s capital of Chang’an and their leader, Modun, was hungry to expand his borders.

He had been a significant problem for China for years, attacking its northern borders with his “horseback archers,” enough that the Han emperor tried to buy him off, with gifts of silk and Chinese princesses. This bought an uncertain peace for sixty but failed to achieve the underlying goal: to weaken the invaders by giving them a taste for Chinese luxury. The Xiongnu counted their wealth in horses and bows with the strength to turn arrows into armor-piercing bullets.

The Xiongnu never succeeded in conquering China but for centuries they maintained their empire, which was “almost twice the size of Rome’s”  and “took what they wanted,” until at last they fell to the time-honored practice of divide and conquer. The southern Xiongnu succumbed to Chinese influence while the northerners clung to tradition. Still the victories of their empire are legendary, to the point that modern-day Mongolians claim them as their ancestors and Modun as the influence for Genghis Khan.

The Mongol name for the Xiongnu is Hunnu, or, Man says, “simply Huns.” This takes him to the theory that this first nomadic empire was the root of another army of mounted archers, one that would be scorned as barbarians and that would eventually take over the Balkans from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic, “an area half the size of the USA. Attila, leading his people known as the Huns, was a “juggernaut that could live by pillage,” much like the Xiongnu. 

In the mid-eighteenth century, a French Sinologist in a five-volume work called A General History of the Huns, Turks and Mongols made the astounding and unsubstantiated claim that “Attila’s Huns were descendants of the ‘Hiong-nou.” This theory was given credence by Edward Gibbon, the 1911 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica, and historians of the 1930s. However, as Man says, the one conclusive similarity is both the Xiongnu  (or Hunnu) and the Huns came out of nowhere, established their empires by conquest, and then completely vanished. With enigmas like that, especially when they bear almost the same name, who can possibly keep from romantic speculation? ~Janet Brown

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (John Murray)

Sea of Poppies by Amitov Ghosh is truly a story of epic proportions. It is the first volume in the Ibis trilogy and was published in 2008. The story continues in River of Smoke, published in 2011 and concludes in Flood of Fire published in 2015. The initial story is set prior to the First Opium War between the Great Britain and China in a time when Britain’s East India Company was trading opium made in Bengal, a part of the Indian sub continent (currently Bangladesh),  to China.

The trilogy is named after a ship called the Ibis. A former slave-ship which was being refitted in Calcutta to accommodate the coolies who were to be transported to Mauritius, coolies being indentured laborers.  The ship’s new owner is Benjamin Burnham, an evangelist and a prominent player in the opium trade. Aside from Burnham, he main characters who wind up on the Ibis are an ordinary Indian woman and the man who saves her from certain death, an american sailor with a secret, a disgraced Rajah, and a Chinese opium addict.

Deeti is a housewife and mother. She is married to a crippled husband who works at the local opium factory. Deeti discovers that she was drugged with opium by her mother-in-law on her wedding night and was raped by her husband’s brother. She never tells her daughter, Kabutri, the truth about who her real father is. Deeti’s husband dies and fearing what her husband’s family will do to her daughter, she sends Kabutri to live with her relatives. The brother who raped her says demands Deeti to marry him but she refuses and chooses sati (ritual of self immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre) before succumbing to her brother-in-law’s wishes. On the day she is to perform the sati, she is saved by a lower caste man named Kulua. They both escape and find passage on the Ibis.

Zachary Reid is an American who is the son of a white father and a quadroon mother. He had joined the crew of the Ibis on its first journey from Baltimore to Calcutta. In a series of mishaps on the sea, many of the senior crew are lost and Reid finds himself quickly rising in rank. Once he sets foot in Calcutta, he is treated as gentry and is offered the job of second mate on the Ibis’s next voyage, transporting coolies to Mauritius!

Neel Rattan Halder is the rajah of Raskhali and also the ruler of the zamindars (Indian property owners). Halder has run up a huge debt and is unable to pay it back. Burnham says he can settle his debts by giving up his zamindary (property owned and governed by the rajah) but Halder refuses. Halder is then accused of forgery and is sent to trial, loses his case and is sentenced to spend seven years in Mauritius.

Paulette is a French orphan who grew up with her unconventional father and feels more comfortable in a sari than western clothes. Mr. Burnham had taken Paulette in after the death of her father and frowns on her love Indian culture. As Paulette gets older, Burnham is pressuring her to marry his friend, an older man named Kendalbushe. We also discover that Burnham has a perversion of his own which he as Paulette satisfy.  Fearing for her future, Paulette decides to run away and manages to gain passage on the Ibis. 

Finally, we meet Nob Kissin Baboo, a man who is the catalyst that will set many actions in motion aboard the Ibis. He works for Mr. Burnham as an overseer and believes that Zachary Reid is the incarnation of Krishna.

The prose flows smoothly although you may have to look up some terms which may be unfamiliar if your knowledge of colonial British India is limited. You will be exposed to words such as zamindar, zamindary, rajahs, sepoys, and lascars which you may have to look up on your own, but it does not effect the story. This book has everything you can hope for in an epic - high adventure, love, romance, and betrayal, loyalty and trust and the pursuit of a happier life. ~Ernie Hoyt

Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe (Haikasoru)

Miyuki Miyabe is mostly known for her suspense and mystery novels. This is her first fantasy novel published in 2003 in Japanese. The English version was translated by Alexander O. Smith and published in 2007. It is a coming of age story set in the fantasy world of Vision.

The story starts off right after the beginning of the new school year. A rumor has spread about a house located near the Mihashi Shrine called the Daimatsu Building. This is how our hero, Wataru Mitani, heard about it. He was told by his friend, Katchan whose real name is Katsumi. They are both in the fifth grade and go to Joto Elementary School. However, no one knows how or who started the rumors. Wataru is not prone to believe in rumors and wants to get facts to satisfy his scientific and logical mind. He makes a promise with his friend Katchan to sneak out at night “to see if there really is a ghost.” “And if one shows up, I wanna see whose ghost it is.” 

At night, as Wataru was debating about going to the alleged haunted house or not and not wanting to break his promise with his friend when he hears a voice in his room. A young girl’s voice even though he is alone. He almost puts it out of his mind when she speaks to him again. He now believes he has to investigate. 

The two boys manage to go to the Daimatsu Building near midnight, only to be discovered by Mr. Daimatsu himself, along with his son Noriyuki and his daughter Kaori, who was sitting in a wheelchair. Wataru thought she was beautiful but appeared to be despondent. She didn’t smile, she didn’t show any reaction to what was happening around her. Wataru began to think that her condition might be related to this house which is said to be haunted in some way. Wataru also thought it was strange that the Mr. Daimatsu would be taking his daughter out for fresh air at this time of night. 

The strange happenings coincides with the admission of a new transfer student at Wataru’s school named Mitsuru Ashikawa. A boy whose popular with the girls, gets good grades, and his good at sports as well. More rumors were spread throughout the school saying that Mitsuru had taken a picture of the ghost at the Daimatsu building. Wataru was hoping to meet him at school to ask about it, but Mitsuru was assigned to another class. Mitsuru seems to be drawn to the Daimatsu Building and this time when he goes, he gets a glimpse of someone dressed as a wizard walking up the staircase. After he gets home, he finds that there seems to be trouble brewing between his mother and father.  He learns that his parents are getting a divorce and Wataru’s world is shattering around him. 

Wataru doesn’t know who he could talk to about what he saw but decides it would be best to tell his uncle who feels quite at ease with. Uncle Lou, as Wataru calls him, takes Wataru back to the Daimatsu Building and checks the stairs again. Although, he doesn’t see a wizard, he sees bright lights emanating from what looks like a gate. This is where the real adventure begins. 

Wataru finds himself in another world. A world called Vision. He is told that in this world, he can change his destiny. He is told that he must collect five gemstones before going to the Tower of Destiny and will earn a chance to talk to the Goddess of Vision who can grant him his one true wish. What will Wataru wish for. Will his family become as one again? What of the friends he has made in Vision? Brave Story has also won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for the publisher in 2008. The Batchelder Award being an award given to publishers for children’s literature translated into the English language. ~Ernie Hoyt

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)

Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Rawalpindi - currently these cities in Pakistan have been described as strongholds of the Taliban and also as havens for terrorists. However, the short stories collected in this book take place long before the Taliban came to power. The stories are about tradition, class struggle and social change in Pakistani life. Most of the stories are set in the towns of Lahore or Islamabad. The writer himself was brought up in Lahore and currently lives on a farm in the southern Punjab region.

This is a collection of previously published short stories compiled into one book. They are drawn from a vast array of literary journals and magazines such as the New Yorker, Granta and Zoetrope: All Story. One of stories, “Nawabdin Electrician” was included in “Best American Short Stories 2008”. There are a total of eight stories starting with the previously mentioned “Nawabdin Electrician”. Also included are “Saleema”, “Provide, Provide”, “About a Burning Girl”, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”, “Our Lady of Paris”, “Lily”, and “A Spoiled Man”.

In “Nawabdin Electrician”, a lower class man with twelve daughters and one son is a mechanic and an electrician who works for a wealthy landowner named K.K. Harouni. Nawab takes care of the man’s seventeen tube wells located on his property. He goes from one well to another by bicycle. He talks his patron into providing him with a motorcycle to do his job more efficiently. Once Nawab is in possession of the motorcycle, it also raises his status in the eyes of his peers. However, it also leads to his near death as he is nearly robbed of his prized possession, even getting shot in the process.

In “Saleema”, we find that she works as a maid, is married, but is also sleeping with Hassan the cookSaleema and the cook, Hassan work for K.K. Harouni. She uses sex to advance her station in life and unexpectedly falls in love with one of the other servants, the driver, Rafik. Saleema gets pregnant by Rafik, although he is married as well. But the fountain of wealth, K.K. Harouni passes. As Hassan and Rafik had been in service to Harouni for a number of years, they would be sent to a different house in Islamabad. Saleema finds a job at another house, friends of Harouni, who took her in just because she worked at his house. But in the end, she loses her job, she starts taking drugs she once despised, leaves her husband, and ends up on the street begging with her son. Soon enough she dies and her son is left begging in the streets becoming what is known as “one of the sparrows of Lahore.”

Onto “Provide, Provide”, we learn about K.K. Harouni and how he was born into a rich family. As he tries to keep up appearances to compete with the new breed of Pakistani industrialist, he would sell vast amounts of land he owns and sink the money into factories; however, the more he sinks into the factories, the more they seemed to decline until his bankers advised him to close. While Harouni was spending less time at his family home in the southern area of Punjab, he left that up to his manager, one Chaudrey Nabi Baksh Jaglani who has ideas of his own.

The characters in the five remaining stories are related to the central character of K.K. Harouni as if part of one long and continuing soap opera. The stories provide us with a detailed look into the social strata of Pakistani life with the caste system derived from India, ever strong and present. Once you’ve completed the book, you find yourself wanting more. To see what has become of some of the newer characters and to see what has happened to the ones you have already become familiar with. The book provides everything you can hope for - love, romance, betrayal, loyalty, and the interrelationships between all the characters. It’s a book you won’t want to put down.

The Mindful Moment by Tim Page (Thames & Hudson)

British photographer Tim Page was still in his teens when he arrived in Southeast Asia and was only twenty when United Press International sent him to Saigon as a war photographer in 1965. He remained in Vietnam for four years, leaving only after shrapnel from an exploded land mine “had taken away the right side of my skull.” as Page casually puts it. “On the chopper to the field hospital at Long Bin, my heart had been jump-started three times.”

Page didn’t go back to Vietnam until 1980, when the Observer hired him to accompany the first British tour group to make a post-war excursion,  landing in Hanoi and moving through the south. He returned throughout the ‘80s, traveling through Vietnam and into Cambodia, taking photos for two books, Nam and Ten Years After. With photographer Horst Faas, he created Requiem: By the Photographers who Died in Vietnam and Indochina, which is both a book and a photography exhibit that now hangs in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, and includes the work of North Vietnamese combat photographers. 

The Mindful Moment is a collage of words and photographs that tumble into sight the way memories emerge in the mind,  without regard for chronology or theme. Moving through this gives the feeling of sitting in a room with Page as he pulls out random photographs and tells stories. The disjointed quality of the book adds to its power; past and present exist side by side with no artificial divisions. 

At the outset Page honors the “two-thousand year struggle to maintain a homogeneous national identity” that culminated in the Vietnam War, then mourns the changes brought to that country by consumerism, “which has done more to despoil the country’s social harmony than the decade-long war.” If The Mindful Moment has a theme, this would be it. Teenagers wearing jeans on shining new motorcycles and smiling market vendors in 1990’s Hanoi clash against the calm faces of captured Viet Cong suspects in 1969 and the stark portrait of a woman’s face of quiet rage, watching with her children as a hovercraft destroys their home in 1966. Children in Saigon, poor but whole, all of their limbs intact, contrast savagely with babies who were born with cruel defects, physical and mental, caused by Agent Orange.

Page captures the spirituality that runs through Vietnamese life with photographs of funerals, during wartime and in peace. He pays homage to the leader of the “Coconut Daoists,” who led his followers in prayers for peace “around the clock and thoroughout the year,” on Peace Island, while five hundred meters away gunships and bombers did their fatal work. When Page returned to this place after the war, it had become a tourist attraction, “stripped of any dignity.”

“The war,” Page says, “is hard to remember...it was fun, it was a thrill, it was simply terrifying.” Included in the 136 photographs of The Mindful Moment is one taken by another photographer in 1965 during the battle of Chu Phong Mountain. A young man stares from the frame, his face inscrutable, his eyes focused beyond the photographer upon something invisible. It’s Tim Page at twenty during his first year in Vietnam, interrupted for a minute or two while doing his work. As The Mindful Moment shows, he’s never stopped working. ~Janet Brown

Burial in the Clouds by Hiroyuki Agawa (Tuttle Publishing)

This original title of this book is Kumo no Bohyo and was first published in Japanese in 1956 by Shinchosha. It was translated into English by Teruyo Shimizu in 2006. The story is set at the height of World War II during Japan’s military expansion. Although the story is fiction, it is written in a diary-form by a young Japanese college student, Jiro Yoshino, who was inducted into the Japanese Imperial Navy. 

Jiro starts writing his diary from the first Sunday after joining the Navy. He is sent to the Otake Naval Barracks in Hiroshima Prefecture. We follow his progress from being labeled as flight-worthy for pilot training before his official enlistment which will determine the course of his military career. He knows that he will be chosen as a member of the tokko-tai which is the shortened form of tokubetsu kougeki tai and translates into English as the “Special Attack Force”. They are more commonly known to Americans as kamikaze which translates to “Divine Wind”.

Jiro writes and lets us know that the Student Reserves are separated by the schools they attended such as Waseda Division and the Tokyo University Division. He also notices that there are divisions from Chuo University, Hiroshima Higher Normal School, and of course his own school, Kyoto University. Jiro also finds that three of his good friends are here which gives him a sense of calmness. 

Jiro gives us a first-hand account of his training. Starting off with his taking of the Student Reserve Officer Examination. We follow his progress from those humble beginnings to choosing to become a pilot. He writes about the many hardships throughout his training, including getting accustomed to Navy life, flight training on planes that use a highly volatile alcohol mixed fuel and he also voices his doubts about Japan winning the war.

However, I get a sense of Jiro’s change of attitude after a few months in the navy. Some of his first entries are about his lack of courage and his questioning of the righteousness of the war. But in his later entries, he begins to believe in the ideology that he must be willing to die to protect his country. He even writes, “I must sink all impertinent thoughts to the bottom of my mind and try to become a man.” 

As the war progresses and fuel becomes a valuable commodity, the Student Reserves are grounded and must practice maneuvers on the ground simulating flying in the air, while the Naval Academy graduates continue to be able to practice in the air. But when it's time to set out against the enemies, the Student Reserves are the first to be called upon while Academy graduates “..stay behind on the pretext that they have to conserve their crews and aircraft.” 

This is a powerful novel about war and sacrifice. I couldn’t help feeling sadness as I read Jiro’s last two entries - his “farewell notes” knowing full well he would not be returning from this last sortie. Sometimes I forget the book is fiction as Jiro’s last letters are dated July, 1945 - just one month before the end of the war. This books spawned mixed feelings in me as quite a few years ago, I went to the War Memorial Museum at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The shrine that is at the heart of controversy whenever a sitting Prime Minister visits it because this is the shrine where fourteen Class “A” war criminals are enshrined. On the day I went, there was a special exhibition of the Tokko-tai. Real final letters to family, friends, and loved one from young kamikaze pilots. I was able to read a few with my still limited knowledge of kanji characters. Trying to put myself in their place, thinking what would my final words be if I knew I was flying to my death, never to return. ~Ernie Hoyt