Story: 7.0 / 10
Characters: 7.0
Setting: 7.0
Prose: 7.0

Tags: Japan, love, obligation, other, race, ethnicity, war, tradition, career ( )

There was a time around 20 years ago when I read several of Michener's epic historical novels, but none since I finished The Source in January 2004. So after a gap of 18 and a half years, I am reading this shorter novel, inspired by seeing the musical South Pacific last weekend. And yes I know that musical is based on a different Michener book, but this one has similar themes, specifically racial tension between US military forces and the native populations of, in the case of this book, Japan in the early 1950s.

Major Ace Gruver is the son of a four star general, engaged to Eileen Webster, daughter of a slightly less highly ranked US general. He is posted to Kobe in Japan to help to dissuade an acquaintance and former member of his unit in the war in Korea, Joe Kelly, from marrying a Japanese woman, Katsumi. This argument is advanced partly on simple racist grounds, but also on not embarrassing the US and its armed forced by fraternising with "the enemy" (though the war is in the past and Japan and the US are allies in the war against the communists in Korea). But as he gets to know them better as a married couple, he comes to recognise the quality of their union, which he contrasts favourably with his relationship with Eileen, who he sees as becoming like her battle-axe of a mother, a woman whose overriding concern is to promote her husband's military career and to preserve the proprieties of military life, including not "consorting" with Japanese women.

Gruver in turn falls in love with a beautiful classical dancer, Hana-ogi and wishes to marry her, even at the cost of abandoning his military career and not returning to the States. Eventually Kelly's and Gruver's relationships with their Japanese partners reach a tragic crisis point due to the pressures they are placed under (the film version, as so often, ends in a more upbeat way). This novel explores racial and cultural tensions very movingly and effectively, with Gruver coming to appreciate what he sees as the simple and honest life of the ordinary Japanese people compared to the complex and manipulative lives of his American compatriots, combined with anger at the naked racism of many of his military superiors. At the end, when he is parted from Hana-ogi seemingly permanently, he presciently remarks that "All this should have happened fifty years from now. Then maybe there would have been a chance. In my day there was no chance for such a marriage.” A moving and powerful novel about love across racial and cultural boundaries. ( )

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Here's what I wrote about this after reading in 1981: "Good. American stationed in Japan post-WWII falls in love with local girl." ( )

Really enjoyed this. Reminds me a little of Madame Butterfly, tragic love between an American military man and a Japanese woman.

Very good. ( )