Book Review
May. 20th, 2004 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Strangeness of Beauty
by Lydia Minatoya
The story, set in the 1920s and 1930s concerns three generations of Japanese women: Etsuko Sone, who raises her niece after her sister dies in childbirth; Hanae Shinoda, the aforementioned niece; and Chie Fuji, Hanae's grandmother. Chie is the matriarch of the Fuji samurai family. Although she is Etsuko's mother, Chie gave up Etsuko to another family (an arrangement that is a mixture of both adoption and fostering). Etsuko and her sister had both emigrated to America with their husbands. However, when Hanae is a small child, her father decides to send her, accompanied by Etsuko, back to Japan for a Japanese-style education. Etsuko thus must learn to live in a rapidly changing Japan and in Chie's samurai household.
This book was a very quiet book in many ways, but thoroughly engaging. Not only did it deliver an intimate portrait of these three women and their lives together, it also provided an illuminating portrait of Japanese culture between the world wars. Given the current situation in the world, I also found a lot fo resonance in the way Etsuko reacts to the increasing militarization of Japan. (The book was published in 1999, so I doubt the author was trying to make a deliberate parallel between the past and the present.)
by Lydia Minatoya
The story, set in the 1920s and 1930s concerns three generations of Japanese women: Etsuko Sone, who raises her niece after her sister dies in childbirth; Hanae Shinoda, the aforementioned niece; and Chie Fuji, Hanae's grandmother. Chie is the matriarch of the Fuji samurai family. Although she is Etsuko's mother, Chie gave up Etsuko to another family (an arrangement that is a mixture of both adoption and fostering). Etsuko and her sister had both emigrated to America with their husbands. However, when Hanae is a small child, her father decides to send her, accompanied by Etsuko, back to Japan for a Japanese-style education. Etsuko thus must learn to live in a rapidly changing Japan and in Chie's samurai household.
This book was a very quiet book in many ways, but thoroughly engaging. Not only did it deliver an intimate portrait of these three women and their lives together, it also provided an illuminating portrait of Japanese culture between the world wars. Given the current situation in the world, I also found a lot fo resonance in the way Etsuko reacts to the increasing militarization of Japan. (The book was published in 1999, so I doubt the author was trying to make a deliberate parallel between the past and the present.)
