The Japan Society Review 75
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 75 Volume 13 Number 3 (June 2018)

The summer season is always a promising time to enjoy
reading in a relaxed atmosphere. Part of the ritual of
preparing for the holidays, whether at home or travellingsomewhere around the world, often includes preparing
our “summer reading list” and choosing the books that willaccompany us in our well-deserved free time. In the June
issue of The Japan Society Review we would like to offer
you five extra choices for your summer reading, a selectionof books dealing with different topics and formats, fromrobotics to gardens, from fiction to historical essays.
Georges Bigot and Japan, 1882-1899 is the firstcomprehensive study in English of French artist andcaricaturist, Georges Ferdinand Bigot (1860-1927). As ourreviewer Peter Kornicki points out, this lavishly-illustrated
and beautifully-produced book makes the output of thistalented artist presenting high-quality reproductions ofmany of Bigot’s sketches, watercolours and engravings.
Following the transnational approach to Japan andJapanese culture, Spaces in Translation – Japanese
Gardens and the West discusses how Japanese gardensin places such as New York, Berlin, London, are often
considered representative of the essence of Japaneseculture and how this idea has less do to with Japan’s
history and traditions, and more to do with its interactions
with the West. Issues of sociocultural history are also at theheart of Robo sapiens japanicus, an ethnographic studyof the relationship between robot visions and politics,
society and culture in Japan. As it emerges from the bookand our review, the discourse on robots is far more thanjust a high-tech vision of the future.
This issue also includes two reviews of fictional works
by female writers Zelda Rhiando and Una Rose. Both ofthem deal with the trauma and dramatic consequences of
the triple disaster which occurred in Japan on March 11,2011 intertwined with the personal and family stories of theprotagonists. Fukushima Dreams and The Tokyo Express
offer another example of the global impact and influenceof contemporary Japan in English language literature.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

Georges Bigot and Japan, 1882-1899: satirist, illustrator
and artist extraordinaire by Christian Polak with HughCortazzi

EditorAlejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

2)

Spaces in Translation – Japanese Gardens and the West by
Christian Tagsold

Reviewers

3)

Robo Sapiens Japanicus. Robots, Gender, Family, and theJapanese Nation by Jennifer Robertsonand Paul Tebble.

4)

Fukushima Dreams by Zelda Rhiando

5)

The Tokyo Express by Una Rose

Ian Chrystie, Poppy Cosyns, Peter Kornicki, Harry Martin, Riyoko ShibeGeorges Bigot and Japan,
1882-1899: satirist, illustrator
and artist extraordinaireby Christian Polak with HughCortazzi
Renaissance Books (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1898823759
Review by Peter Kornicki
The French artist Georges Bigot (1860-1927) is nota household name in France or in England, but hecertainly is in Japan, for Japanese schoolchildren see
some of his caricatures in their textbooks. No wonder,
then, that I had never heard of him until I chanced
upon an exhibition devoted to his works at theSuntory Museum in 1972 during my first year in Japanas a foreign student. Since then there have been manyother exhibitions, but it is only since 1981, when his
archive was discovered still in the possession of his
descendants, that it has become possible to draw
upon the full range of his work. This lavishly-illustrated
and beautifully-produced book by Christian Polak with
Hugh Cortazzi makes the output of this talented artist
and engraver easily accessible for the first time.
How did it come about that Bigot travelled toJapan and then became famous there? His widowed
mother gave him an artistic upbringing and his talents
eventually took him to the School of Fine Arts in Paris.
There he became acquainted with Félix Régamey, who
had returned to France in 1877 after a lengthy stay inJapan, and with others who were intrigued by Japan
like Edmond de Goncourt. He had his first chance to
see Japanese arts and crafts in the Japanese pavilion at
the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1878. Unlike
many who were inspired by what was on display, Bigot
decided to make the long voyage to Japan to see forhimself, and this proved to be the beginning of a stay inJapan that was to last for nearly two decades.
He arrived in January 1882 and, to keep body andsoul together, initially taught watercolour and drawing
to officer cadets at the Army Academy in Ichigaya. Laterhe was to rely on his ability to teach French or Western
art to provide an income. He seems from his delightfully
illustrated letters to his mother, many of which are
reproduced in this volume, to have thrown himself into
his new Japanese life in a way that suggests a longterm commitment. He began to learn the language andtook lessons in calligraphy and Japanese music; he lived
in a Japanese house with Japanese furniture and wentaround in Japanese dress and geta.
2

His first artistic responses to Japan were embodied
in his letters home to his mother, but he also began
producing paintings and engravings that captured thelives of foreigners living in Yokohama or the lives ofJapanese, and as early as 1883, the year of his arrival,
he published two volumes of engravings. He was byno means the only artist working in Japan at the time.
A much earlier arrival was the Englishman Charles
Wirgman (1832-1891), who was a correspondent for
the Illustrated London News and who was the founderand editor of the Japan Punch from 1862 to 1887; HughCortazzi has provided a useful account of Wirgman’s life
and activities for this volume. Once Wirgman brought
the Japan Punch to an end in 1887 Bigot launched his
own satirical illustrated magazine, Tôbaé, which lasted
for several years. His talents were also beginning tobe appreciated in Europe, for he was engaged first by
Le monde illustré and then by The Graphic to supply
sketches of Japan. For The Graphic he travelled to thefront in the Sino-Japanese War and provided a numberof sketches which were published as engravings.

In 1899, however, he abruptly divorced his
Japanese wife and returned to France with their son. The
reason for his departure was the end of extraterritoriality
in that year: as a consequence, he would have become
subject to Japanese law and therefore censorship. Given
Issue 75, Volume 13, Number 3 (June 2018)

that he had been unafraid of poking fun at figures ofimportance or of political commentary in his cartoonsand that, under the influence of Nakae Chomin, he had
become sympathetic to the liberal movement, he wasprobably right to suspect that his creativity would be
stifled if he remained. Indeed, one of his sketches, titled‘The revised treaties have been signed and foreigners
are under Japanese jurisdiction’, shows a foreignerbeing led away under arrest, so the possibility oftrouble was very much on his mind. Although he neverreturned to Japan, he did continue to depict Japan in
his subsequent work, for example in a set of dinnerplates showing scenes of Japanese life.
The bulk of this volume consists of highquality reproductions of many of Bigot’s sketches,watercolours, oil paintings and engravings, and nosummary, however elegant, can do justice to them.
Amongst them are engravings from his first two albums
which capture scenes of everyday life, such as a familyriding in a rickshaw, porters carrying night-soil out of
the city and children at a singing lesson. His oil andgouache paintings of similar scenes are arresting fortheir sympathetic portraits of ordinary Japanese, suchas that of a heavily wrapped woman crossing the palacesquare. But there are many with an edge to them: someof them poke fun at the antics of the elite of Japanesesociety in Western dress, but others satirise thebehaviour of members of the expatriate communities,
such as a lecherous foreigner with a prostitute or an
over-paid advisor to the Meiji government. Someagain are overtly political and doubtless offended thegovernment, such as one that showed Prime Minister
Ito Hirobumi and Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru killing
off an old man who was a personification of the Popular
Rights Movement.
This splendid and very welcome book gives Bigot
his due, and for that we are much in the debt of theauthors for the conception and the contents. But weare also in the debt of Paul Norbury, the publisher,
who saw the value and appeal of Bigot’s output andin response has produced a volume that is worthy of
Bigot’s talents.§

Spaces in Translation –Japanese Gardens and theWest

Japan’, after rambling through the Royal Botanic Gardens
at Kew, London, describes how the development oftrade relationships with China fostered a fascination
with all things Chinese: ceramics; art; philosophy; and, ofcourse, gardens. That some designers of such gardens
attempted to follow the then available knowledge ofChinese garden design whereas others merely added
an occasional Chinese-style building I found intriguing.
Equally fascinating (if, on reflection, unsurprising) isthat ‘...visitors probably did not see much difference
between the two ways...’. In this chapter we also learnof the importance of Nature and Religion (especially, I
was intrigued to learn, the Jesuit School).
The interest in Chinese gardens waned towards
the end of the eighteenth century with, as we all know,
the allure of Japanese gardens becoming evident
from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This isdiscussed in Chapter 2, ‘Discourses of Spaces’, which
first leads us through the lovely Japanese-style garden
at Clingendael, near The Hague. We then examine theplethora of literature that Western authors generated
on Japanese gardens. Such authors included: Edward
Morse, Josiah Conder, and Lafcadio Hearn (latter partof the nineteenth century) and, later, Lorraine Kuck
(1930s) – who many consider to have been a key figure
in proposing the idea of the zen garden.
The third Chapter ‘Spreading the Japanese
Garden Worldwide’ begins with a stroll around theby Christian Tagsold
University of Pennsylvania Press(2017)
ISBN-13: 978-0812246742
Review by Ian Chrystie [1]Professor Dr Christian Tagsold is an anthropologist
who is currently an associate professor at the Institutefor Modern Japanese Studies at the University ofDusseldorf. His research covers: Japanese gardens andJapanese communities outwith Japan, aging society
and welfare in Japan, and sports “mega-events”.
Spaces of Translation: Japanese Garden in the Westwas the title of his habilitation thesis several years ago
and this has now been developed into this new book.
In the Introduction, Tagsold notes that ‘No other
Asian type of garden is as ubiquitous as the Japanese...’but that the explanation for this is ‘...more mystifying
than explainable’. And it is the science of anthropologythat is, in effect, going some way to explaining themystery.
The book comprises nine chapters with eachchapter starting with a ‘stroll through a garden’ – atechnique I find delightful. Chapter 1, ‘From China toLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

3

Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia. We then look in
great depth at the Japanese gardens which became
an almost required element of the World Fairs – withthe first being at Vienna, in 1873 and subsequentones including Philadelphia (1876), Paris (1878), and,of course, London in 1910. I found it amusing to read
that, at the RHS Summer Fair in 1911 a comment wasrecorded that ‘again there were Japanese gardens,
which we admire, because we do not understand them.
I do not think they will ever get popular with us’. Ah
well! These fairs did, of course, encourage the buildingof Japanese gardens in the West – although these seemto have been based either on designs found in some of
the books mentioned in the previous chapter or were
designed and built by Japanese gardeners.
In Chapter 4 ‘Between Essence and Invention’, andfollowing our visit to the UNESCO Gardens in Paris, we
now move into the more academic realm of this bookwith a discussion as to how one defines a Japanesegarden – whether it has a fixed meaning, that is, built bya Japanese individual and, in essence, non-transferable
to the West (essentialism) or whether such gardens in
the West are, in fact, Western constructions and a subcategory of Western gardens in general (inventionism).
One essentialist author cited in this chapter, the late
Irmtraud Schaarschmidt-Richter, pointed out that we‘...cannot understand Japanese gardens fully because[they] are unintelligible to most foreigners’. This lady
also asserted that ‘she [was] the rare being capableof bridging the gap between the illegible Japanesegarden and her Western readers’. I must search out
some of her writings!
A visit to the Japanese garden in Portland, Oregon
is our lead-in to Chapter 5, ‘Zen and the Art of Gardens’
in which we examine the dramatic change in Japanesegardens built in the West after WW2: the move fromgardens in which plants were the dominant feature
to those comprising gravel and rocks (kare-sansui)
together with the dramatic increase in the number ofsuch gardens that were constructed. The importanceof Lorraine Kuck’s publication (One Hundred Kyoto
Gardens) in 1935, together with Bruno Taut’s venerationof such gardens at Katsura and, especially, Ryoanji, is wellknown, as is the Japanese governmental recognition of
the diplomatic advantages of promoting the buildingof such gardens. What I had not considered, though,was the relevance of a growing worldwide interest ina more modern interpretation of Zen Buddhism itself.
This is examined in great detail in this chapter and is
one of many elements I found most interesting.
4

A stroll through the Japanese garden in Bonn,
Germany, forms our introduction to Chapter 6 ‘Elementsof Japanese Gardens’ in which we learn what elementsof a garden are essential for it to qualify as “Japanese”.
Mind you, one of the first things we read is Tagsold’s
thesis that ‘[t]here is no essential “Japanese Garden”
only many versions and interpretations of the idea ofa Japanese garden’. We first look, though, at garden
designers and have our ideas that a Japanese Masteris an essential element somewhat challenged withsome examples of how all we are told is not what it
seems (for example a Japanese garden designer whose
main training was building over 700 golf courses!). The
chapter then continues with sections on Plants, Stones,
Lanterns and Bridges, and the increasing role of women(for example, nowadays rarely does a man officiate overa tea ceremony).
Our next trip takes us through the Botanic Gardenin Brooklyn as we look at Chapter 7 ‘Authoritarian
Gardens’ and discuss the “rules” that seem to set
Japanese gardens in the West somewhat apart fromother public spaces. These edicts include enclosing
the garden such that it can only be viewed from theoutside, defining routes within the garden, not allowing
unaccompanied children access, and insisting that
visitors ‘respect the area as one set aside for quiet andcontemplation’.
In Chapter 8 ‘Connecting Spaces, Disconnecting
Spaces’ we divert a little from our normal garden strollby visiting an imaginary Japanese garden in a novel by
László Krasznahorkai, a Hungarian novelist. Sadly, thisnovel has not yet been translated into English and so
we have to rely on Tagsold’s interpretation of a Germantranslation. The discussion starts with the conceptof the “cultural container” – that is that we all live insuch a “container” with our compatriots. In addition,
as Japanese gardens represent Japan in miniature,they take on the same mantle. It therefore follows
that these gardens must be authentically Japaneseas ‘only Japanese people have the correct cultural
programming to build a Japanese garden’. We also
discuss the anthropological idea of “places” and “nonplaces” – with Japanese gardens, it is suggested, being“places” only within Japan.
In the final chapter, Chapter 9 ‘Postmodernising
Japanese Gardens’ our initial visit is to a luxury
condominium in the centre of Berlin, Marthashof, witha description of the apparent use of “zen-like” structuresto persuade potential buyers that the area had been ‘...
created for wholesome living’. This use, it is suggested,demonstrates that Japanese gardens have managed
Issue 75, Volume 13, Number 3 (June 2018)

to “escape” – as is evident from their appearance as
miniature Zen gardens sold for interior design, thepotential to rake virtual gardens on the Internet, a
computer game requiring one to rake a garden without
touching areas already raked, et cetera. In a way, we in
the West are no longer confined to walking throughsuch gardens but may now ‘...acquire them whole,for [our] homes, workplaces, or computer screens’.
Following some additional discussions along theselines we end up at a garden that will be familiar to manyof us – the Japanese garden at the Albert Kahn Museumon the outskirts of Paris. Those who visit cannot fail tonotice that it is undoubtedly very traditional but witha few unconventional additions that makes visitors
wonder whether it is truly Japanese. The conclusion, it
seems, is that this garden ‘...brings the meta-narrations
that have so long undergirded the idea of Japanesegardens to an end’.
Following a short conclusion, there areseveral pages of supplementary notes, an extensive
bibliography, and an excellent index. So what are MY
conclusions? Well, firstly, I probably need to apologise
to those reading this, and perhaps more so to Professor
Tagsold, for what I’m certain is a most inadequate

review by someone who is not a suitably qualified
academic. That said, perhaps a review by someone who
is wholly ignorant of the science of Anthropology may
have some merit simply because most readers will besimilarly new to the subject.
I have found this book to be almost unbelievably
fascinating, enthralling, and (most importantly for an
academic text) relatively easy to read. It is also, as far
as I am aware, the only book currently available thatexamines this subject and so is of great significance.
I do have one warning, though. I found it impossible
not to look deeper into the subject – to search terms
I didn’t understand and to delve into the excellent
bibliography. What reading some of the “academic”
articles that I could access, though, emphasised how
much work Tagsold must have put into the text tomake it so readable and comprehensible.
To my mind, an essential acquisition for anyone
remotely interested in Japanese gardens.

Robo Sapiens Japanicus.
Robots, Gender, Family,
and the Japanese Nation

Abe’s conservative ideologies – as well as Japan’s
attitude more broadly – towards national membership,
race, gender, and disability.
Robertson begins by examining Innovation 25,
Abe’s 2007 proposal envisioning Japan in 2025, where
humanoid robots, integrated into families, are key tothe stability of the nation. In Abe’s blueprint, Japan’ssocial issues – the ageing population, low birth-rates
and labour shortages – have been solved through theprovision of caregiving and companionship robots. By
analysing historical and current government documents,
Robertson uncovers similarities between the proposal
and wartime right-wing propaganda. She concludes
that rather than “innovating”, Abe’s proposal uses arhetoric of advanced and sophisticated technologies
to couch and reinforce traditional, patriarchal andconservative values. This proposal, as we see throughout
the book, represents the Japanese robotics industry
more broadly, and exemplifies ‘advanced technology inthe service of traditionalism’(p.79) – an imagined future
constructed to legitimise socio-political ideologies,
ultimately advancing Abe’s nationalistic agenda.
Innovation 25 centres around visions of the future
where robots are integrated into families, undertaking
domestic and caregiving chores. Robertson is quickby Jennifer Robertson
University of California Press(2018)
ISBN-13: 978-0520283206
Review by Riyoko Shibeand Paul Tebble
In the mid-1920s, the word “robot” (robotto) wascoined as Japan began to embrace the possibilities andpotential of human-robot coexistence. Robo SapiensJapanicus by Jennifer Robertson is an ethnography
and sociohistorical analysis that discusses these
possibilities and their implications, exploring theintertwined relationship between robot visions andpolitics, society and culture.
Robot technologies, dependent on state support
because of their complexity, tend to ‘mirror andembody state and corporate ideologies and priorities’(p.82). This idea forms the crux of Robertson’s argument,
which focuses especially on Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s
extensive support of the robotics industry. By using
robotics as a sociocultural prism, Robertson uncovers
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/[1] This review was originally published in thejournal Shakkei Vol. 24 No. 3. Winter 2017-2018. We
thank the Japanese Garden Society for allowing us to
publish this review.§5to point to the ‘sexist logic’ (p.25) embedded in the
proposal: the administration, while supporting the
production of humanoid robots as the solution to low
marriage and birth-rates, overlooks the provision andupkeep of day-care centres, which would be a proactive
solution enabling women to work outside of the home.
By drawing attention to some of the incisive Japanese
voices raised in opposition to the government rhetoric,
Robertson, non-Japanese, is careful not to speak in placeof Japanese women, and brings balance to her discussion.
Robertson moves on to explore what constitutes
a “normal” body within Japan, shedding fascinating– and disturbing – light onto the narrow and hostileconceptions of normalcy reproduced by the robotics
industry. She firstly analyses the development of service
robots gendered to suit the role they are designed toperform, essentialising the gendering of both labourand bodies. She then extends normalcy to nationality,
and we see the exclusion of the “other” through perverse
rules of national membership that grant robots morecivil rights than actual humans.
From robots like Paro, Astro Boy and Doraemon
being given their own family registry and special
residency permits, to being adopted into actual families,
Robertson paints a lucid picture of how robots areconstructed as integral to the stability of the family – andby extension, the Japanese nation, serving to reify cultural
norms regarding gender, race and nationhood. NonJapanese people, by contrast threated this stability andthese norms; foreigners, ethnic minorities and Korean
zainichi born and raised in Japan, whose family have
lived there for generations, are refused these privileges.
Robertson shows how the rhetoric of robotics andtechnology diverts our attention from the conservativeand xenophobic ideologies embedded within thisdeeply problematic system of national membership.
Finally, Robertson explores disability, an
underrepresented but vitally important area of
discussion, to which this chapter is a fantastic addition.
Analysing the development of mobile technologies

designed to make people walk upright on two legs, she
uncovers their incompatibility with the nuanced needs
and diverse bodies of disabled people. Robertson
argues that such technologies, promoting the fully
limbed body as a vision of normalcy, exclude those who
cannot and do not fit into this ideal, and so reproduce
discriminatory, hostile attitudes towards disability. She
heavily critiques the government’s perverse, ableist
logic that supports this technology while overlooking
the development of accessible spaces, eliding fromview disability as a social and cultural phenomenon.
While an excellent, rigorous and articulate
ethnography,
Robertson,
althoughstridently
contesting the essentialisation of identity, at times
herself essentialises Japanese society by making broad
generalisations of “the Japanese” and how “they”
perceive the world. In this sense, it would have been
apt to include more actors in her discussion, andRobertson’s focus on the government in leading thedominant discourses on gender, race and disability
was in this sense limited. The political, social andeconomic position of countries is defined be a plethoraof actors, and in the case of Robertson’s book, I wasleft wondering which other voices were involved incontesting or echoing these discourses, internal andexternal to Japan.
Despite this, throughout the book, Robertson’s
message sings clear: the discourse on robots is far
more than just a high-tech vision of the future. Rather,it serves to reproduce hegemonic power structuresand narrow, hostile conceptions of normalcy, elidingfrom view the range of bodies that should be allowed
to exist in the world: it is ‘as much, if not more, aboutsocial engineering than nuts-and-bolts robotics’ (p.62).
Robertson succeeds in following the anthropologicaltradition of rendering the normal strange, offering
refreshing – although not ground-breaking – insight
into how gender, family, nationality, race and disability
are navigated within Japan.§

Fukushima Dreams

unsettling novel, set in the aftermath of the 2011
triple disaster. The book came into being after it
was successfully crowdfunded through Unbound, apublishing house which allows writers to pitch theirwork to potential backers. On hearing of the disasterat Fukushima, Rhiando became compelled to write,having had what she calls, ‘a very personal reaction
to it’. She found herself trying to empathise with the
60,000 people of North-Eastern Japan, whose lives

by Zelda Rhiando
Unbound (2018)
ISBN-13: 978-1911586883
Review by Poppy Cosyns
Irish writer Zelda Rhiando follows up her selfpublished debut Caposcripti with this deeply
6

Issue 75, Volume 13, Number 3 (June 2018)

were upturned by this catastrophic event. This led toher wanting to bring the stories of those affected toan audience outside Japan, in a way that they could
meaningfully connect with.
Cultural responses to the 3.11 disaster were
initially few and far between, as those both inside andoutside of Japan struggled to absorb and confront
the enormity of such an event. As Barbara Geilhorn
and Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt write in their book
Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster,‘What sort of language in the wider sense could
adequately express grief and trauma, and capture theprofound socio-political implications of the disaster?’
The events of that day presented what theycall, ‘an artistic crisis’, as a fitting reaction seemed
impossible to distil into a creative project. In the period
following the initial aftermath however, a huge varietyof cultural responses began to emerge. Over the past
few years a steady stream of filmmakers, visual artists,
novelists, poets and mangaka have created works
inspired by the disaster and its ongoing repercussions.
Fukushima Dreams tells the story of Sachikoand her English husband Harry, a couple who haverecently relocated from Tokyo to the fictional village
of Taro in Fukushima Prefecture. In the run-up to thedisaster, we discover that their relationship has comeunder increasing strain, particularly following the birthof their son Tashi.
The novel begins by plunging its reader into the
midst of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami;
the disorientating reality of the characters’ rapidly
disintegrating surroundings described in gutwrenching detail. There is ‘a colossal grinding andrumbling, and beneath it, the sound of human screams’
before Sachiko becomes ‘blind and breathless’ as she
is ‘engulfed in cold black water’.
In the confusion of the earthquake, the family
become separated from one another, as Sachiko is
swept along by the mighty force of the tsunami andHarry runs into the nearby hills. The whereabouts of
their small baby Tashi remains unknown. From the
beginning, the narrative is divided between Sachiko’s
experiences, told in the third-person and Harry’s firstperson account.
Rhiando’s use of these two different perspectives
cleverly aids in defining each of the main characters.
Sachiko – dazed and aloof – is viewed from theoutside, allowing the reader to experience her as
the other characters do, while self-absorbed writer

Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/resources/reviews/

Harry’s increasingly delusional state is communicatedthrough a fevered inner-monologue.
The novel centres on the themes of collapse
and estrangement. The destruction of the couple’s
environment, followed by their physical separation,
seeming to mirror the process of their marriage
breakdown. It is the birth of their son which proves
the catalyst for this process and Rhiando describes thezombie-like state of new parenthood in a way that will
strike a chord with many readers.
In flash-backs to the period before theearthquake, day and night merge into one, as thecouple struggle to cope with their new arrival. Tashi– who appears perpetually beetroot-faced andbawling – is abstracted into something terrifying anduncontrollable, an obstacle too great for this fragile
partnership to overcome.
We learn that Harry and Sachiko are both out ofcontact with their respective families, leaving themwith little in the way of a support network. When
therefore, they go on to become emotionally detachedfrom one another, they find themselves entirely
isolated. This island-like state, combined with thetrauma of the natural disaster combine to loosen thecharacters’ grips on reality and as the novel progresses
it becomes increasingly dark and frequently surreal.
For the most part, Rhiando’s prose is brisk andeconomic but often she makes way for little passages
that bring the Japan she describes to life. Given thecontext of the novel, there is usually an inherent
poignancy to the images she conjures – the plastic
sandals arranged on the porch of the makeshift rescue
centre or the ‘delicately perfumed’ wagashi, bought
as a gift by Sachiko, that are ‘coloured like shells’.
Despite her being an outsider, Rhiando has managed
to successfully convey a landscape and a society thatanyone who has spent time in Japan will recognise.
The strength of her research comes out in these small
details and works to honour the highly sensitive
subject matter of her writing.
This book will be of interest to those who wantto understand more about the collective trauma of anevent as cataclysmic as 3.11. Above all however, this isa page-turning drama that centres on a relationship in
ruins; a haunting read in every sense.§

7

The Tokyo Expressby Una Rose
Estuary Publishing (2013)
ISBN-13: 978-0957063525
Review by Harry Martin

The Tokyo Express is the self-published debut novelof Anglo-Irish writer Una Rose. Taking inspirationfrom her time in Japan and her Irish heritage, Una has
encased her story within these distant and distinct
cultures, focusing on two international relationships intwo very different periods of history. She explores how
the cultural differences and similarities between theseisland nations can affect those committed to this everincreasing scenario in our multinational society.
In the present day, protagonist Conner is atroubled and acrimonious 20-something Irishman
living and working in Tokyo with his Japanese wife
Mimi. Following the news of his father’s passing,Conner is bound for an unplanned and unwanted
return to his native Ireland, encumbered with theburden of taking up the family business and agonising
about the possible treatment his wife might receive insmall-town rural Ireland.
Following their return, Mimi is initially enthralledby the bucolic charms and quaint furnishings ofConner’s hometown, but is soon challenged by the
introduction of Conner’s overbearing and colourful
family, commandeered by his formidable mother who
immediately shows lack of interest in and disapprovalof the Japanese culture from which Mimi has come.
From here the story takes us through alternately
humorous and painful accounts of Mimi’s gradual,
laboured integration into Conner’s family, confronted
with a montage of cultural and linguistic barriers whichcause clashes and pressure in their marriage.
Mimi’s initial isolation is alleviated by the
introduction of Conner’s grandfather Owen, who spent ahighly significant part of his life in Japan following WorldWar II. This, in the form of his well-kept and extensive
wartime diaries, introduces the secondary story line
to the novel, which follows his experience of war-torn
Tokyo and the love he found in the carnage there.

Una’s depiction of post-war Tokyo is recreatedwith honest brutality as she evokes a sympathetic
but candid portrayal of the starvation, death anddestruction that affected much of the populace
in greater Tokyo and wider Japan at the time. She
manages to capture the exhaustion that the post-war
generation felt, and their movement away from thetraditions of imperial Japan towards the more modern
society we see today. Owen was there to experience
all this first hand, guided by his lover Mariko who, as amodern-day feminist, was paving the way for women’s
rights in the emerging Japan of the modern age.
The context of destruction and rebuilding
around Mariko’s and Owen’s wartime relationshipis immediately drawn into parallel with Conner andMimi’s story following the devastating effects of the2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami – with Mimi’s
hometown decimated, Conner is forced to relive theapocalypse to which his grandfather was exposed
sixty years earlier.
Una has woven the bilinear storylines withexpert artistry; navigating this often challenging taskwith precision, she has allowed both Conner’s andOwen’s stories to flow in a harmonious parallel whilst
complementing but not distracting from each other.
Both stories carry weight and relevance in their own
right but the way in which Una has brought them
together in this familial saga creates an ambitious andprofound work, resulting in a more lasting impression
than either story on its own.
Despite the very specific Japanese-Irish confinesof this particular love story, the theme is universal
as the challenges, discomforts and complications
experienced by both Conner and Mimi and Owen
and Mariko are those to which many readers will
be able to relate. Una has shone a spotlight on the
struggles that can occur when trying to forge crosscultural relationships against the sometimes resistantcurrent of cultural norms and national identity. This isa pertinent contemporary subject for our modern age
and one that is likely to be appreciated by a wide andvaried audience.§

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