I was surprisingly drawn in by this story. I haven't been that into fiction lately so the fact that I wasn't pushing myself through this book, at least the first half of it anyway, was great!
The story is narrated through journal entries and letters the protagonist writes to her mother in Scotland. We're talking about turn of the century (1900) but the book actually ends up narrating almost her entire adult life but the first half of the book conveys her early adult years and the events that lead her to becoming a permanent expat in Japan.
As a young girl, she becomes engaged to a British military guy and although she has met him at least once, it feels like a mail order bride situation as she is on a boat bound for China accompanied by a strict chaperone. You already see her chafing under the bridle of British customs and expectations as she ventures out on her first independent journey away from the sheltered and very Victorian world of her mother's home.
She undergoes a series of adventures on her voyage including the death of her reluctant chaperone. She finally arrives in China and wades through troubled waters (already emerging) into marriage with a man who the reader can sense may not be entirely compatible. Her life in China is isolating and boring. She isn't able to do housework as the servants don't like it and her only interaction is with a few other expat women. She does make friends with an influential French couple who take her under their wing.
She has a baby and along the way meets a seemingly impassive Japanese military guy named Count Kurihama. Turns out he has a sense of humor and they make a connection. During a military siege when her husband is away, she encounters him at his mountain temple whilst on a summer retreat with her French friends. One thing leads to another and she comes home only to discover that she is carrying his child. When her husband returns and finds out, he turns her out and she is denied access to her daughter Jane. As she waits for "deportation" in a hotel, she receives a surprise visitor. Turns out "Kentaro" had been keeping an eye on her in case of such an event. He arranges passage for her to Japan where he houses her with several servants in a cottage. She becomes a "kept" woman, only being visited by him well after her son is born. Her son looks very Japanese. She and Kentaro still have a strong connection, although he has a wife and kids.
One day her son and maid disappear. She soon realizes that Kentaro has arranged this in order to legitimize his son amongst the hierarchy. He was sent to an adopted aristocratic family to take his place amongst the nobility.
She is devastated but feels powerless. She rejects his further financial support and goes out in business on her own, establishing herself as a financial consultant for "western" dress becoming fairly successful. The rest of the book, sort of sums up her mature adult years as she settles herself into society and becomes an independent woman. She never quite ties herself to another man, and comes to understand that Count Kurihama is always looking out for her one way or another. She has several romantic liaisons but never anything that is powerful enough for her to surrender her independence. Her mother never responds to her letters again and her "husband' eventually dies. She has no contact with her daughter until in her later years during World War II writes to her and asks her to come stay with her.
She sees a tennis champion eventually who she suspects is her son. (I find it hard to believe that she was never able to track him down over all the years.)
She purchases a dream property that is eventually devastated by a typhoon but recovers it and expands. Kentaro makes a surprise appearance after the death of his wife and they pick up their romantic attachment for a short time. He proposes, but, when he refuses to allow her to make contact with her son, she turns his proposal down, but implies that he may still visit her.
The final scene shows her being evacuated from Japan on a ship during WWII. Suddenly a Japanese military commander appears and requests audience. We come to understand that Kentaro has arranged this and it is her son. Finally a reunion! The reunion is shrouded in formality and no outright show of emotion, nonetheless the reader feels a sense of satisfaction and resolution to the separation.
I felt like I wanted to hate Count Kurihama for the patriarchal nonsense. But I could not. He is portrayed as an honorable man trying to do his duty as best he saw it. He relaxed his views on the role of women in many ways in his relationship to the emancipated protagonist Mary Mclaren. It's almost as if a samurai warrior from the middle ages stepped into a time and place where he didn't belong. I felt the attraction and so did Mary. She never hated him. She understood that he had a role to fill that superseded his own emotions and proclivities. She was attracted by his fierceness as much as she realized it wouldn't work for her as a permanent arrangement. He was drawn to her independence for the same reason.
There are a lot of themes around the topic of feminism that could be explored in this book. Her lack of parental rights - another friend flees Japan because she feels it is the only way she can assert reproductive rights... There is a Japanese woman who is an activist for women but suffers persecution and imprisonment, however Mary feels that since she is wealthy, she has a safety net that allows her take risks and refuse the protection of a man.
All in all, it was an interesting read and definitely not predictable.
