“If only human beings were not
masks behind masks behind masks.
If only this world was
a clean board of lines and intersections.
If only time was
a sequence of considered moves
and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.”
masks behind masks behind masks.
If only this world was
a clean board of lines and intersections.
If only time was
a sequence of considered moves
and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.”
Plot: A young employee of the Dutch East India Company comes to 9th century Japan to inspect the financial records of the company there. Foreigners are restricted to a small man made island, but Jacob de Zoet is interested in what lies beyond. He becomes infatuated with a Japanese woman he briefly observes while she makes a visit to the island. Determined to meet her, de Zoet eventually does get to go to the mainland for a short time. The woman, Orito, is sold off by her father to a strange cult in the distant mountains. de Zoet devises a plan to rescue her while relations between the Dutch and Japanese falter and the threat of war develops.
Why read it: Mitchell is meticulous in his detail and is a master at exploring the mind and though processes of his characters. This book is impressionistic and reads at times almost like poetry. The characters are having to communicate in languages they have only a basic grasp of, yet they often have an ability to communicate on what seems to be a completely different plane of thought.
David Mitchell can write some fairly challenging stuff. The majority of his novels shift around it time and space and it takes a lot of work sometimes to figure out what is going on. Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas and No 9 Dream were that way. I enjoyed all of them, particularly Ghostwritten, but none would rank as a personal favorite. I'll eventually get around to writing about Black Swan Green, which is a personal favorite, and a big departure for Mitchell - I think you could easily classify it as YA.
Jacob de Zoet is a historical novel set in Japan of the 19th century, a time when it was still closed off almost completely to outside influence. The Dutch East India Company is allowed to trade with the Japanese, but are restricted to a small island, Dejima, from which to conduct all their business. Interactions with most Japanese, other than those who work on the island, is prohibited. This applies especially to women. However, one Japanese woman, Orito, a midwife, is allowed to come to Dejima as the student of the Company's doctor. Jacob de Zoet, a clerk for the company, who has been sent to Japan to investigate the financial books (which no one there really wants him to do), is infatuated with her despite her partially disfigured face. Jacob, honest to a fault, and Orito are soon entangled in a complicated web of personal and international relations. Orito disappears, and ends up in a strange mountain temple, sold into a strange cult. At the same time, political events are leading to a potential battle in Dejima.
While this all the elements of a fairly straightforward novel, with Mitchell that is not going to happen. He is a superb writer, able to focus on all that is not readily apparent until he points it out. Maybe what made this book work for me was that Mitchell stays with a fairly straightforward story here, as opposed to his more freeform other works, but still uses his remarkable ability to write in an almost surrealistic manner; the two work together to give the characters remarkable depth, but I didn't get lost like I sometimes do in his work. Here, while Mitchell describes the Japan of that period very well, it still remains a mystery, much like it does to de Zoet, who despite being in Japan, is not ever really there, or able to decipher what is going on.
