Book Review: Miss Nume of Japan

[osprey_archer]

Last Wednesday Reading Meme, I wondered if the four crazy kids in Onoto Watanna (Winnifred Eaton)’s Miss Nume of Japan could work out their love quadrangle. Would the betrothed pairings of Sinclair/Cleo and Takahashi/Nume swap partners so everyone could be with the one they truly loved? It turns out the answer is:

No! Or more accurately, kind of sort of, but only for one couple, while the other suffers great tragedy. Takahashi goes to Cleo for her final answer to his marriage proposal; Cleo is forced to tell him that she is engaged to Sinclair; Takahashi kills himself, and then so do Takahashi’s father (!) AND Nume’s father (!!!!), thus leaving Nume an orphan without a betrothed.

However, the incident frees Sinclair of his engagement to Cleo, I guess because in flirting with Takahashi she was unfaithful to him? In any case, Sinclair never loved Cleo, and if he had been honest about this earlier maybe Cleo could have married Takahashi (she realizes after his death that Takahashi was the one she loved all along! Because of course she does), but no.

Repeatedly in this book, the Japanese characters are honest and straightforward about their feelings - the very first time Nume meets Sinclair she tells him “I like you,” and Takahashi is nearly as blatant about his love for Cleo - while the American characters lie to everyone about how they feel, like Sinclair’s determination to go through with his engagement to Cleo even though he’s not in love with her, or Cleo’s determination to marry Sinclair even though she’s beginning to suspect he doesn’t love her, or Cleo’s friend Mrs. Davis telling Nume to tell Sinclair that she doesn’t love him so Sinclair will remain true to Cleo…

Everything would have gone better for anyone if they had all just been honest from the start, like Nume’s maid Koto, a former geisha girl who is the true hero of this story, because when Nume is on the verge of dying of grief (in between her sorrow over losing Sinclair and also the whole triple suicide), Koto goes to Sinclair and tells him Nume has always loved him. So Sinclair rushes to Nume’s side and they are wed.

Oh, and a few years later Cleo ends up marrying her cousin Tom.

Comments

[asakiyume]

This really got me wondering about the author--and I'm guessing you must have looked her up by the fact that you put her actual name in parens. Did you read her Wikipedia entry? Fascinating!

Having the Japanese characters be honest and straightforward/declarative with their feelings is an interesting subversion of the stereotype--a stereotype that's got some basis in reality, as the many many Japanese stories of people suffering for duty and mashing down their own desires, or else acting on them and having it turn out dreadfully show. It seems like a smart choice for a book for a North American audience because it gives the Japanese characters the qualities that a North American audience will accept as heroic/"good." So much to think about with that.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! There's apparently a biography of her, which I may or may not end up reading, but it sounds like she had a fascinating life.

And yeah, I thought it was an interesting reversal to have the Japanese characters be the open, sincere ones while the American characters mess everything up by suffering for duty and mashing down their own desires. It occurs to me as I type this that LOTS of American books from this time period involve American characters suffering for duty and mashing their desires till the plot sorts them out, so maybe this book is pointing out that the idea that Americans are straightforward is basically bunkum? Americans just think they're straightforward because we know our own obfuscatory cultural scripts so well that they seem straightforward to us.

I'm thinking particularly of a scene where Cleo is procrastinating about answering Takahashi's proposal, and the narrator comments that an American would have known this procrastination meant no, but Takahashi isn't familiar with that cultural script so he has no idea.

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, this is reminding me of how in Japan, if you ask someone if they can do something and they answer, "Hmmmmmmmm.... that would be very difficult," that's really a hard no.

Yeah: we do need to know the hidden scripts. This is also reminding me of those memes that translate American set phrases for English people, e.g., "Oh Tim? He's a friend from work," means "Oh Tim? I work with him and feel no animosity toward him."

[osprey_archer]

It's weird how much communication has nothing to do with what the words literally mean! It's like there's a whole second layer of language learning: first you learn the dictionary definition of the words, and then you learn how this specific cultural group deploys the words in order to say "No" without having to say no or indicate that they don't wish to pursue a further acquaintance without being forced to gauchely say it out loud with words.

[asakiyume]

YEAH! ... And this is the thing apps like Duolingo can't help you with. You literally can't learn it without close observation of native speakers.

[lokifan]

Yeah - as someone who teaches English as a foreign language, cultural education is a BIG aspect of what we do.

[evelyn_b]

That's so much more dramatic and suicide-filled than I was expecting! I hope the surviving crazy kids have a nice life together, at least.

[osprey_archer]

The book doesn't say otherwise, so I am going to assume that yes, they are all deliriously happy forever after! As they should be after going through such suffering to get there.

[lokifan]

Seconded!!