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Fiction. Historical Fiction. HTML: The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for this extraordinary story. A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy..… (more)
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It is a story filled with personal growth, love and acceptance.
Stephen arrives an immature college student yearning for company. He longs for company and conversation and is disconcerted by the isolation and the retic ence of the cottage caretaker, Matsuko. Eventually, they become friends who share a long-time secret that brings another important friend into Stephen's life. And Stephen also finds romance on the beach.
But the Japanese invasion of China affects this idyllic recovery period and brings Stephen maturity and insight as more is revealed to him than he ever expected to find in a sleepy vacation place on the shore.
The story revolves around a Chinese boy visiting his father's beach house in Japan during the Japanese invasion of China. He meets other characters who teach him the
I found the history and differences between the chinese and japanese cultures very interesting.
A wonderful piece of prose, this haunting story of the simple people and their tragic lives is a page turner.
Stephen doesn’t make an interesting character. His dialogue and actions fall flat, but it’s the supporting cast that eventually hooked me. Matsu is an older man now, but in his youth leprosy swept through their small town. He lost his sister to the disease and has watched a sweet friend, Sachi, suffer from it for years. Matsu and Sachi were lovely characters and the book is well worth reading for their plots.
BOTTOM LINE: Despite an incredibly slow start, the supporting cast makes the story an interesting read.