Julie Otsuka: When the Emperor Was Divine

****
Captivating 9th June, 2008

This is Julie Otsuka's first novel, and it draws on her heritage as an American of Japanese descent, exploring the experience of a Japanese family during the Second World War, when thousands of Americans with connections to Japan were internet, and families separated from one another. There is no suggestion that this work is autobiographical, and there is a long list of credits at the back citing other works of reference from which Otsuka has drawn her material. However, that should not be taken as to imply that the novel is merely derivative: it is a beautiful and deeply engaging narrative, told with imagination.

The story is told by four different voices, one for each of the chapters of the novel, and one for each of the members of the family. The opening chapter, in which the mother takes her leave of the family home, and must dispose of its contents as best she can, is deeply moving and tenderly evoked. Similarly effective is the depiction of the train journey, told by the daughter. The bulk of the novel, at least in terms of pages, is given to the son, who relates the family's stay in an internment camp in the middle of the desert, where dust coats every surface and people are shot for reaching through the barbed wire to touch a beautiful flower. The final chapter, and the briefest of the (already slim) novel, is allocated to the father, and is a striking, even strident piece of writing, whose tone shatters the peace of the rest of the book. Technically it is a demanding challenge, and I am not sure Otsuka quite achieves it fully, but it is memorable in many ways.

Where this novel shines is in its material and its sense of distance. On the one hand it reminds us that the War, which so often is depicted as a simple struggle between good and evil, required moral compromises on the part of the Allies that cannot simply be put down to expediency, but might perhaps reflect a darker undertone to the societies which committed them. Moreover, it is interesting to reflect on this as a counterpart to the fascinating "Letters from Iwo Jima", which again goes some way to redressing the balance in terms of who narrates and controls our memory of this extraordinary period.

So why four, and not five stars? The books qualities are many, and the technical device of four different narrators is hugely impressive. The writing is often first-rate, and avoids sentimentality with admirable success. However, I was left feeling a little short-changed at the end, given the book's enormous promise in the first chapter. It is certain that the balance is not quite right: I have never entirely been convinced by wide-eyed children as narrators of novels, as I feel a little pressured to make an implied moral judgement, which I do not like at all.

However, I would gladly press this book into anyone's hand and recommend that they read it, not because it is the greatest novel they will ever read, but because it does give great pleasure to read and later to reflect on, and that, I suppose, is why we pick up books in the first place.