Where the Wild Ladies Are

I almost gave up on this book, which is described on Amazon as a "witty and exuberant collection of feminist retellings of traditional Japanese folktales." Both the wit and the exuberance build as the folktales progress, gradually linking together. Which is to say that I didn't get it at all for probably the first one-third, and then enjoyed the remainder of it well enough, though it won't be making any "best of" lists that I compile this year. That said, Aoko Matsuda's work is certainly interesting in what it represents, and there were a number of instances where I found myself laughing despite myself. (I also learned that Japanese pillows are stuffed with azuki beans - at least some of them - which is obviously why they're so amazing. I may add pillowmaking to my 2021 goals.) 

Matsuda should be lauded for the insights, too, as to the role of role of women, particularly in Japan. Most poignantly, she writes "Male employees had to pretend to be capable of doing things they couldn't do, while female employees had to pretend to be incapable of doing things they actually could do. Over the years, how many women had seen their talents magically disappear in that way?" In that sense, Where the Wild Ladies Are offers a modern-day corollary to Stranger in the Shogun's City, in which Japanese women struggle to find their place and controls their lives in the Edo era. Or, as Matsuda so succinctly puts it: how restrictive life as a functional adult is!

I am a sucker for all things Japanese, and the icing on the cake, if you will, was the late appearance of Himeji Castle, the sight of which first awed me - like so many others - from the window for the Shinkansen on my first visit to Japan. The castle tales, as well as stories of other quiet rhythms of life in Japan, was worth the wait.

Three stars. 

This Is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience

 Disappointing. 

Having read and loved several other books by Alan Watts, I pushed through this one hoping that it would improve, that the humor or grace or joy which so imbue his other works would appear, to say nothing of the golden words. How could it be that the man who penned "by all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another" (Wisdom of Insecurity) or mused that one might swim to experience the water rippling past and for the shifting net of sunlight underneath (Still the Mind) managed essay after essay of long-winded sentences such as "the apparent multiplication of psychological disorders in our technological culture is perhaps due to the fact that more and more individuals find themselves caught in these snarls - in situations which the psychiatric anthropologist Gregory Bateson has called the "double-bind" type, where the individual is required to make a decision which at the same time he cannot or must not make." Sweet mercy. (The great irony is that Watts details his experiences with LSD in this book, so one would think if anything this little volume would be as given to fun as any others: no dice.)

Oh sure, there are still bits and pieces of sage advice and insights, my favorite of which centers on the Japanese and the "compulsion which turns every craft and skill into a marathon of self-discipline." Truer words... More poignantly, Watts notes that in gazing at the night sky "we make no comparison between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations" and that "there would be no bright stars without dim stars, and, without the surrounding darkness, no stars at all." Likewise, in the final pages, Watts leaves readers with the observation, proven so true to me in this interminable year that has been 2020 that "life organized so as to be completely foolproof and secure is simply not worth living." Still, these paltry lines feel like minor compensation for the slog through This Is It.

One star.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is as its title proclaims: a brief history of humankind. It's also a brief - and disturbing - history of humankind's impact on the planet and the other species, including those that were arguably human, that call it home. Spoiler alert: Harari minces no words in labeling Homo sapiens "ecological serial killers." It's hard to disagree. In any event, Harari manages to combine not only a general history, in which he effectively makes the case that our hunter-gatherer forebears of 10,000 years ago were happier and healthier than much of humankind today - with economic history (the origins of money and credit, the early trade routes, globalization in all its glory) and even aspects of philosophy. 

In regards to the latter, Harari in fact takes a sharp turn late in the book and goes as far as to pose the question of whether happiness depends on deluding oneself. (In case you can't tell, yes, I liked the book, and the writing, very much.) In fact, Harari's dry humor is on display from the first chapter when he declares, "Sapiens...is more like a banana republic dictator." I shouldn't have been surprised when a few dozen pages later, as he explains that the average sapien brain has actually decreased in size since we stopped having to hunt or forage our daily bread and that, in fact, the transition away from the survival lifestyle opened up "niches for imbeciles," which allowed the less....worthy?...to survive and pass on their unremarkable genes.

Time and again, Harari drives home the point that humans, excuse me, Homo sapiens, have lied, stolen, killed, and otherwise ruined things every opportunity they've had, literally from time immemorial. In the time of Hammurabi, "Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained." Cortes described the Spanish obsession with gold to the Aztecs succinctly as a "disease of the heart;" the Soviet experiment with the central barter system meant that "Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs," became "everyone would work as little as they can get away with and receive as much as they could grab." And let's not get into the scourge of religion where, for example, "over the course of...1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion." (I told you, Harari's good.)

The miracle, it seems, is that we've survived to this point. Whether the species will continue to evolve for millenia more, though, is an open question. As Harari concludes, "is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?" 

Four stars.

...and the Rain my Drink

...and the Rain my Drink is Han Suyin's 1956 novel set during the Malayan Emergency (i.e., the Malaysian fight for independence from British rule following the centuries of colonialism). The title derives from an old Chinese ballad that the fighters sang, "I will go to the forest for justice. The wind for my garment I wear. ... and the rain my drink."

I'll dispense with the negatives first: there are simply so many characters here, and many of them with two or more names, that I sometimes found it difficult to keep up with who was who (as well as various plot points involving different characters).

In the plus column, the book is beautifully written, and provides an excellent history and context for those who wish to know more of the this time and place. Reading through those lenses, rather than reading this as a typical novel, allowed me to appreciate it ... and the Rain my Drink even when I was a bit lost in the weeds of the story itself.

Suyin's sympathies clearly lie with the jungle fighters, and how could it be otherwise when "there was no door to the future for them, save through the green mouth of the jungle." (Much later in the book, the other side of the coin is articulated clear as day: " All over South East Asia there were white men pointing out, loud and long, how bad freedom was for anyone but themselves.") For that reason alone this is a great read for anyone who wants to understand more of Southeast Asia, particularly without the distortion of European perspective.

This particular book may be fiction, but the events that underpin each page are grounded in the very real history of Malaya. Anyone seeking to understand the tensions between Malays and Chinese within Malaysia (whom Suyin describes as wielding wealth, but not power, a description which is still apt in parts of the region), where even today each ethnicity's roles and functions in society are codified into law, would do well to read this book, which provides historic background with fictional drama. (Likewise, although it was published before Singapore and Malaysia had separated, the coming chasm is well foreshadowed.)

And yet, while Suyin sympathizes with the fighters, she also recognizes the hardships for the majority who were caught in the middle: "...endured, as so many things were endured in these days between two terrors, that of the Police, and that of the People Inside." Suyin doesn't only capture the tensions of the Emergency, of those between Malay and Chinese, or between those who would fight and those who prefer to exist quietly. She also captures Malaysia - and all of Southeast Asia - in the unrelenting heat and the frequently demoralizing rains. British officers are frequently described as having "whiteskin fury," which explodes most commonly in the heat of the day, not only in Malaya, but in all the places of the Empire where "January is as July will ever be." Hot. Wet. Hotter.  

Likewise, Suyin captures a key difference between Europe and Asia, one which holds as much today as it did 65 years ago when she first penned it, and that is the notional of Europe as "staid, stay-behind and unimaginative behind the surging exaltation of Asia." (That, right there, is why 100 times out of 100 I will bet on Asia over Europe, but I digress.)

There is also quiet wisdom between these pages, the idea, for example, that "there is knowledge that is not knowledge, not in words and yet inhabits the mind, informs it with facts and events." At the time Suyin wrote ...and the Rain my Drink, Malay's future was still very much in flux and Suyin is grappling not only with the British but with questions of the changing world more broadly. Through the voice of her characters, she questions the price extracted by "that other jungle, the ravenous, stupid, loud brash jungle of money-making" and how the price life in that jungle compares to the damage inflicted on the soul by life in the literal jungle. The answers are as elusive as the People Inside.

A last piece of advice: "Remember....there is no such thing as defeat. There is only change of tactics."

Mambo in Chinatown

At 22, Charlie Wong knows little of life outside of Chinatown. The daughter of a Beijing ballerina - who never danced again after moving to America - and a noodle maker - who has raised Charlie and her younger sister, Lisa, alone following the death of his wife when Charlie was 14 - Charlie was never a stellar student and now finds herself at a bit of a deadend, working as a dishwasher in the same noodle restaurant where her father makes the noodles.

This insular world is upended when she accepts a job as the receptionist at a ballroom dance studio and slowly discovers the world beyond Chinatown, a world whose existence was largely a mystery to her. Gradually, Charlie's world separates into two parts - the life in Chinatown with her sister and father, from whom she must hide all aspects of her new life, and the new, Western life which she increasingly embraces. As her sister becomes sicker and sicker, though, and her uncle's Eastern medicine cannot restore her health, Charlie must find a way to bring together these two selves - the two ways of living and being - to help heal her sister. 

This is the first book by Jean Kwok that I've read, and I loved her voice. The settings - Chinatown and a professional dance studio - are both so particular, with such nuance, that it's clear Kwok knows of what she writes. Likewise, the infusion of eastern philosophy interspersed in otherwise very snappy (i.e., young and modern) prose, provides a unique voice - and offers sustenance such that Mambo in Chinatown moves out of the mind candy realm and feels a bit more like literature. Such food for thought, if you will, takes the form of lines like "The hardest part of making a sacrifice isn't the moment when you do it. That's the easiest. You're too busy being proud of yourself for being so noble. What's hard is the day after that and the following one and all of those days to come. It's needing to make that sacrifice over and over again, the rest of your life, while in your mind, you can still taste that which you lost. or what you think you lost." Indeed.

Four stars.

The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

What do we know that we do not know we know? Patrik Svensson comes as near to an answer as I have found: "maybe we subconsciously read our surroundings and come to conclusions we don't even understand ourselves."

From the first page, Svensson hooks the reader with his writing, that evocative imagery that whispers that one will learn of more than eels in these pages: "the Sargasso Sea is like a dream: you can rarely pinpoint the moment you enter or exit; all you know is that you've been there." Like the adept fisherman the reader will learn him to be, Svensson reels the line in slowly, the reader ever more gradually falling under his spell, realizing that the subject of the book is not eels at all, but life itself and the origins of life and the ever-elusive knowing that so many seek, so often without, well, knowing. 

The Book of Eels is, in fact, a treatise to make any philosopher proud. Early and often Svensson reminds the reader that life is often first and foremost about waiting; yet "time is unreliable company and no matter how slowly the seconds tick by, life is over in the blink of an eye." Also unreliable: the mind and memory; what we think we know of who we are and where we come from, our whims. How else to explain the fact that humans will go to great lengths to free ourselves from fate, sometimes even succeed, only to realize "we have no choice but to travel back to where we came from." 

Svensson is taken with the eel not only for sentimental reasons, but for the mysteries it offers; in that sense, the eel becomes a metaphor for life itself. The eel, even today, is widely accepted as one of science's last mysteries. As much as that may niggle, Svensson revels in the fact - the belief - that "even people who trust in science and an orderly natural world sometimes want to leave a small, small opening for the unknowable." It is the ambiguities that Svensson probes repeatedly, the question, for example, of where to draw the line between life and death, of needing to juxtapose the idea that "the person with patience is always awarded eventually" with the caution that "suddenly, one day, it's too late."

A friend likes to ask how much of our lives are the products of hard work, effort, and self-determination and how much is the product of pre-determination, of fate and destiny. I'm not foolish enough to attempt an answer to such a question, though I have long believed that what we need in life - whether books or ideas or people - comes to us when we need them. I heard an eerie echo of that sentiment in Svensson's own belief that "you find what you want to believe in when you need it."

My money, though, is that Svensson leans heavily toward pre-determination. Certainly, the eel's course, from the currents that will carry it to rivers and streams of Europe to the inexorable pull to return to the Sargasso, exists far beyond the eel's control. And of his father, whose work as a road paver offered a sense of fulfillment "from knowing there's a certain permanence to what you make and that other people value it," Svensson wrote, "he was a worker because something bigger and stronger than him had chosen that life for him. The course of his life was pre-determined."

Like the eel, and pre-determined or otherwise, we all must find our way in the world. We are, metaphorically speaking, each of us bound for the Sargasso Sea, each to encounter so many diversions, so many potential pitfalls, and as for the eel, time is shorter than we think. The sand must not course through the hourglass before we've embarked toward the sea. But must we go there, to this metaphorical, almost mystical, sea? Svensson argues persuasively for this outcome: "the origin of the eel and its long journey are, despite their strangeness, things we might relate to, even recognize: its protracted drifting on the ocean currents in an effort to leave home, and its even longer and more difficult way back - the things we are prepared to go through to return home."

As Svensson thinks of the scientists whose life's work was the eel - who undertook to find the needle in the haystack, even when the haystack was an entire ocean - he concludes: "Perhaps there are people who simply don't give up once they've set their minds to answering a question that arouses their curiosity, who forge ahead until they find what they seek, no matter how long it takes, how alone they are, or how hopeless things seem." It is easy to forgot whether he is speaking of scientists, for whom the search was their Sargasso, or the eels themselves. In either case, the sentiment is equal parts melancholy and hopeful, like an eel passing a century at the bottom of a well, persevering to see a thing through. 

And why would an eel spend a century in a well? Because it cannot - will not - undergo its final metamorphosis to full maturity until it is ready and able to undertake the long and arduous journey back to the Sargasso. Which begs the question Svensson asks again and again: how does the eel knows when it's time? When is the eel ready - when are we ready - for the metamorphosis from which there can be no turning back? What kind of voices tells the eel when to forsake the comforts of its muddy home for the uncertain, and often unsuccessful, journey to the sea? What kind of voice tells us when it's time for a similar departure? When life doesn't turn out the way it was supposed to, an eel can put everything on hold, and postpone dying almost indefinitely. What are our options when life looks so very different from what we had imagined?

Through the power of Svensson's pen, the eels of The Book of Eels change shape as regularly as those that ply the earth's waters. In the Basque country and Northern Ireland, in the fish shanties that dot the coast of Sweden, the eel is a cultural heritage. Later it is an endangered species, an exemplar of man's meddling with nature, a canary in the coal mine of global warming. It is a centerpiece in regional cuisines and the holy grail of scientific knowledge; the object of literature, and the center of political disputes. 

Always, though the eel is the representative of the great unknown and, by proxy, faith. No mature silver eel has ever been seen in the Sargasso, Svensson is keen to remind, but we take it as an article of faith that those waters are the spawning grounds. "When it comes to eels," Svensson writes, "not only are science and the eel itself suspect, you can't trust God either. Or God's interpreters. Or words." Svensson leaves it to the reader to infer the follow-up question: if God and words are not to be trusted in relation to the humble eel, in what other, larger circumstances can we not trust that which we think we understand?

We are, Svensson implies, more like the eel than we realize. Every eel seeks its place in the world without a guide, existentially alone. The eels may all aim for the same destination, but each journey is singularly unique. "And seeking a place in the world on one's own: Surely that is, at the end of the day, the most universal of all human experiences." On our own. We are borne into the world alone, and we are borne out of it alone and no matter how surrounded we are while we are here, our journey is also alone. 

Just as we carry in our veins the "salty stream in which the elements sodium, potassium, and calcium are combined in almost the same proportions as in sea water," though generally without knowing it is thus, or giving the fact much thought, so we are, each of us, bound for our own Sargasso Sea, wittingly or otherwise. Perhaps it is just chance that tells us when it is time to stay or to leave, or perhaps it is part of what we know that we do not know we know. Like the eel, most of us may not make it, but that some do is evidenced by the quiet beauty of works such as this. Svensson has found the Sargasso Sea; The Book of Eels is his spawn. Were that I should find mine and the outcome should be half as magnificent.

Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids

The mood meter inside the book jacket sucked me in immediately because of my (visceral, negative) reaction to the emotions in the "green" quadrant, which I (correctly) assumed would be presented as the emotional ideal for much of life. 

Honestly, much of the green quadrant fills me with dread. Restful? Blessed? Peaceful? Serene? Are people who regularly feel this way even fully, you know, alive? My home turf, the spot I think of as my resting pulse, is somewhere between Restless and Energized, Annoyed and Pleased. If I'm not totally red, I'm at least a shade orange.... And whatever it may say about me - as a person or a parent - kindness, sense of purpose, and the wisdom to build healthy, lasting relationships are not the skills I'm most desirous of my son possessing as he grows up. Confidence, yes, but from there Brackett and I diverge. Oh, I'm not most focused on math skills, scientific knowledge, or athletic ability, but a sense of justice; resilience, grit, and determination; and a quick wit and silver tongue take precedence over Brackett's trifecta any day of the week.

That said, once I moved beyond our philosophical differences, I quite like Brackett's methodology. The idea of using an emotional RULER (Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating) is undoubtedly valuable, and although many of the emotions that I want G to be able to articulate do not appear on the mood meter, even using those that do is good practice. And what doesn't appear? The absence of the cerebral emotions feels like a loss to me, or a missed opportunity at a minimum. Where do skepticism or ambivalence fit? Feeling conflicted? Regretful? Exasperated? Aroused? Stifled? Amused? Objectified? Vindicated? The ever-popular feeling of schadenfreude? Indebted....which does also always render one grateful. 

You get the idea. Although the Mood Meters captures some 100 "moods" too much overlaps for my taste (tired and fatigued or blissful and fulfilled), particularly given that the more nuanced emotions are missing. Are despairing and despondent not the same side of the same coin? This wouldn't bother me so much if Brackett didn't regularly make the point that the richer a child's emotional vocabulary, the more successful they will be in applying the precepts of RULER and, ultimately, in regulating their emotions. Or, as the neuroscientists say, and Brackett quotes, "If you can name it, you can tame it."

I appreciate Brackett's acknowledgment of the fallacy of happiness, and specifically that the pursuit of happiness can be self-defeating. With my son I discuss the obligation all of us has to make the world somewhat better - not to litter, not to lie, to vote against bad ideas and worse policies, to consume less and appreciate more, but I'm careful never to suggest any of this should be done with an eye toward the ever-ephemeral "happiness." And, though I can't exactly put my finger on why, the cynic in me may have laughed a bit at the idea of devoting time and thought to our positive moments so that we may discover ways to extend them.

I've read enough neuroscience books the past few years to discern who can write well enough to be enjoyed by the masses, versus who I'm going to need a medical dictionary to decipher, and happily Brackett falls into the former category. I particularly enjoyed his anecdote on cultural difference in Croatia as well as the many tales out of academia. Ah, students.

In terms of Emotions at Work: I enjoyed the contrast between this and Robert Greene and would be interested in what each of them would think of the other.

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

Barbara Demick's Eat the Buddha is a clear-eyed look at how the situation in Tibet evolved from the early twentieth century, when Tibet was largely independent until today when 'Free Tibet' is the first thing many of us, especially in the West, think of when he hear mention of this place. (Full disclosure: the first thing I think of is that the Tibetan plateau is widely regarded as the most remote place on earth, requiring a journey of 21 days - one by car and 20 by foot - from the nearest city, Lhasa. True story, and one that I include in my urbanization lecture each semester, but I digress.) 

Like so many geopolitical issues facing the world today, we can thank the British Empire for meddling where they shouldn't have, and setting in motion the chain of events that has led to the current situation. As Demick notes, it was the euphemistically labeled "expedition" into Tibet by British colonel Francis Younghusband in 1903 which turned Chinese attention toward the strategic importance of this vast but lightly people plateau. And it's not just me blaming the British; as Demick writes, "many Tibet scholars blame Britain for the subsequent calamities that befell Tibet" (p. 20). Clearly, then, we can put this up there was the Opium Wars and the Sykes-Picot agreement. 

Brits aside, the challenge for the Tibetans, once China turned its full attention in that direction is that it lacked a major "sponsor" (such as the US or USSR) and was ruled by a teenager - the Dalai Lama. Although one can argue the damage has been done, Demick does state the obvious, lest the reader miss it: picking a successor [to the Dalai Lama, ruler of Tibet] be reincarnation is admittedly a dysfunctional system" (p. 258). Likewise, she can't help but pounce on the absurdity of the Chinese Communist Party declaring that it alone will control the selection of the next Dalai Lama, writing "the idea of these Communist technocrats weighing in on matters of reincarnation prompts much hilarity."

Although Demick's sympathies are clearly with the Tibetan people, her account comes across as balanced (she was a staff writer for the LA Times, after all), and provides a fascinating look at a little known corner of the world, particularly as she focuses her attention on the area around Ngaba, which is located in China proper, not, frankly, all that far from Sichuan and other better-known regions of that vast country. At a time when journalism frequently comes under attack, Eat the Buddha also serves as a reminder of the importance of the craft - and the run of the mill hazards journalists face under the best of circumstances (i.e., when they're not evading hostile security forces). For example, in the course of writing this book, Demick fell into an open sewage ditch. Good naturedly, she remarks that it wouldn't have been so bad, except that the water at the hotel was not working and she was unable to bathe. Journalism in Tibet is clearly not for the faint of heart for oh-so-many reasons.

In any event, Ngaba drew Demick's attention originally for the frequency of the acts of self-immolation that occurred there. (These Demick describes in detail, including the shocking, and horrifying, fact that many of those who committed the act would first consume petrol in order to burn from both the inside and the outside. On the plus side, this preparation virtually guaranteed death; as Demick explains, the only thing worse than self-immolating might be to survive such an attempt.) 

As a result of these regular acts of defiance, China cracked down on the region, and cracked down hard, such that from 2011 to 2013, it was nearly impossible to do so much as place a phone call from Ngaba to Beijing.You could forget about Internet, which was entirely unplugged, and heaven help you if you've spared so much as a thought for obtaining a passport. (Even leaving the immediate area to travel elsewhere in China can be daunting, requiring significant paperwork in a place where, not surprisingly given that much of the population still herds goats and yaks, "bureaucratic requirements were challenging for Tibetans raised in a nomadic culture that wasn't strong on paperwork." Strong on paperwork, me thinks is a euphamism about on par with Younghusband's "expedition" that left several thousand dead.)

No wonder, then, that so many Tibetans, especially young Tibetans, sought to flee, typically to India by way of Nepal. Demick follows this harrowing journey, including the necessary zip line across the roaring Sun Kosi River, whose rushing rapids comprise the border from Tibet proper to Nepal. The cost of this one way trip is $10,000 per head. Mercy. 

Eat the Buddha, whose title derives from the starving Red Army soldiers who resorted to looting the monasteries and eating the flour-and-butter religious statues, which to Tibetans, made it seem as though they were eating the Buddha, should be required reading for anyone who wants to better understand the tensions in Tibet, the history between China and Tibet, and the role outside powers, including Britain and the U.S. have played in the region over the years. More than that, though, this is an intimate look at lives lived much as they were centuries ago - men and women who herd yak and burn butter lamps, collect yak dung and caterpillar fungus, who generally want little more than to be left in peace, albeit with the same conveniences - cell phones and electricity, say - that are elevating the quality of life the world over. 

Demick's story ends on the cusp of today - the coronavirus makes an appearance in the closing pages, with Demick speculating how societal changes as a result of the public health emergency may lead to longer lasting measure even after the epidemic has passed. As she poignantly notes of those who have left Tibet - but which one could reasonably assume also applies to those who remain, "they were regular people who hoped to live normal, happy lives...without having to make impossible choices between their faith, family, and their country" (p. 273). Were that it were so simple, in Tibet and everywhere.

Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World

I am, of course, a sucker for all things Japanese. Even so, Amy Stanley's Stranger in the Shogun's City, the biographical account of a thrice-divorced, provincial Japanese woman who leaves her snowbound village for the big city of Edo, is a particular treat. 

By all odds, Tsuneno should have remained unknown, her life and times, loves and losses relegated to the dustbin of history, the years only deepening her anonymity. She was born in 1801, the oldest daughter of a Buddhist priest in the small village of Ishigami, destined to live a life like that of all the women before her: sweeping floors, tending the brazier, comforting the parishioners of a small temple, and above all, raising a large and numerous family. This was the lot of women in Japan - and around the world, let's face it - in 1801 (and while we're facing the music, we need to acknowledge that in much of the world, it still is today). 

Tsuneno never could reconcile herself to such a life though, cycling through husbands the way other women of her era may have cycled through kimonos. Unlikely though her story is, it is surely not singular. Perhaps most unique is the level of literacy Tsuneno attained. As the daughter of a priest, and thus in preparation for being able to provide support and assistance to a future husband in the running of another temple, such literacy was deemed critical; the letters she would later exchange with her increasingly exasperated family are the fruit of that education.

Stanley is a professor of history; that she stumbled upon Tsuneno's story is a great good fortune. As she notes early, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about the collection of correspondence assembled and maintained first by Tsuneno's father, Emon, and then her oldest brother, Giyu.The tax bills, the loan statements, the memoranda from samurai and planting records were no different than those of any other temple family. What set them apart were the letters. Letters to, from, and about Tsuneno. Ultimately, the entire archive, "rather than telling the orderly story of a family, would begin to tell a different story: hers." 

And what a story! Married off at 12 for the first time, by her mid-30s, Tsuneno had been married and divorced three times, all to men of her father's choosing. Desperate not to be married off yet again, she made a decision - the first independent and consequential decision of her life - to run off to Edo, even then one of the largest cities on earth. As Stanley writes, using Tsuneno's own penetrating, heartbreaking words, "When I wasn't brave, I got caught up in unpleasantness no matter what I did." (An echo from the past reminding all of us today of what happens when we aren't brave: reader, take note.) In Edo she marries again, her fourth husband, but the first of her choosing. Their life - her life - would not be easy, but for the first time, it would be her own.

Tsuneno is endearing; it is one of her letters (available online through the Niigata public archive) that first captured Stanley's imagination, and with which Stanley hooked me in her prologue: To mother, from Tsuneno (confidential). I'm writing with spring greetings. I went to Kanda Minagawa-cho in Edo -- quite unexpectedly -- and I ended up in so much trouble! A confidential letter from daughter to mother detailing so much trouble? Indeed. It is Stanley, though, who brings Tsuneno - and Edo - alive.

Oh Edo! Stanley's descriptions of the Shogun's city with its bannermen and maidservants, the vendors and carpenters, Nihonbashi and Shinjuku and the kabuki theaters! The fire towers, the noodle stalls, the slap of sandals and the cicadas, the temples and their festivals and sea of umbrellas to fend off the summer rains. All of this jumps from the page; it is the Edo-Tokyo museum come to life, and if Stanley's descriptions don't make you want to march backwards in time and experience Edo for yourself, well you just never quite loved Tokyo as much as I did. 

And then Stanley does the most remarkable thing. This book, which I believed wholeheartedly to be a biography of one of the masses, and an ode to Edo before Perry's ships heralded irrevocable change, becomes instead a treatise on the role of women. In hindsight, Stanley has sprinkled the clues  throughout, as when she writes bluntly, "the only goal was to move toward a life that held some hope of change, where she wouldn't be buried alive under a dying old man, in a lonely little village." That sentence took my breath away. When I think of how suffocating life in 21st century America can sometimes be, well, I'll leave it at that.

So while she could have written an engaging biography of Tsuneno and a marvelous history of Edo, Stanley goes one step further. This book becomes a record of the contributions of the countless Tsunenos. This remarkable passage appears in the closing pages:

"...if women like her hadn't come in from the countryside, Edo wouldn't have grown. If they hadn't washed floors, sold charcoal, kept the books, done laundry, and served food, its economy could not have functioned. And if they hadn't bought theater tickets, hairpins, bolts of cloth, and bowls of noodles, the shogun's great city wouldn't have been a city at all. It would have been a dusty military outpost full of men, one of a thousand, not worth all the effort. Tsuneno's legacy was the great city of Edo: her ambition, her life's work...she might have said that the experience of Edo changed her. But she also shaped the city" (p. 236, 237).

That paragraph is a testament to work and lives of women on down through time, their contributions so seldom recorded in the way that the fates captured Tsuneno's. Stranger in the Shogun's City is a phenomenal work of Japanese history, but it is an equally important work on women's history.

 

The Silence

Don DeLillo's The Silence is one of the more disappointing books I've read in recent memory. It was billed as a very "2020" read: The year is 2022 and on Super Bowl Sunday, the grid - the whole grid - internet, electric, phone, etc., etc., etc. - goes out. The book jacket says that what follows is "a dazzling and profoundly moving conversation about what makes us human." I disagree. I think what follows is, frankly, a lot of inactivity and, based on what we've all lived this past almost-year (though through a different crisis) unrealistic.

If the book had been longer, if DeLillo had explored his characters for more than, I don't know, 24 hours after the digital connections are severed, if he had explored how local and state and national politicians reacted - how they even reached people given the loss of cable and internet and with it, God forbid, Twitter, that would have added depth and interest. If they'd discussed more than Einstein's Theory of Relativity and German philosophy it would have added relatability.

There are a handful of lines with particular resonance: Are we living in a makeshift reality? Is it natural at a time like this to be thinking and talking in philosophical terms....or should we be practical? 

Ultimately, though, this was a book without a point, either one committed to paper, or one for the reader to imagine after finishing the last page. The idea is intriguing, but the execution is lacking.