
The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama explores the lives of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo–three old friends sharing a tragic past–through the eyes of a young Chinese man named Stephen.
I’m back, bitches! Two-month reading hiatus, be damned. Thank God for book club for keeping me honest and keeping me reading, because I was going to a dark, book-less place that consisted only of mind-numbing white collar work and mind-numbing Skyriming. Needless to say, I won’t be making my goal of reading 70 books this year (unless I decide to start working my way through the 52-book Magic Tree House series), but I will be finishing the year on a strong note, starting with Gail Tsukiyama’s brief but impactful novel The Samurai’s Garden.
The Samurai’s Garden is told from the diary of a young man from Hong Kong in the late 1930s. Stephen returns home from school to recuperate from tuberculosis, only to find the dense Chinese city of his childhood suffocating and alien. He leaves for his family’s summer home in the Japanese coastal city of Tarumi, and in the solitude and peacefulness of the village, Stephen begins to heal in more ways than one. He sets out to bond with the summer home’s long time groundskeeper, Matsu, and begins a journey of discovering the heartbreaking and mysterious past of the gardener and his two childhood friends. As Stephen pieces together the story of Matsu, Sachi, and Kenzo, the Japanese Imperial Army marches its way through China, leaving in its wake havoc and death. Tsukiyama’s characters all find solace in their elaborate gardens of blossoms and stone–extensions of life beyond the tragedies that shape their lives.

Matsu spends all his time in the summer home garden. Stephen quickly learns that Matsu is devoted to something greater than just cultivating his flowers and fish pond.
As Stephen regains his vigor for life under Matsu’s quiet, unassuming care, he returns also to his true passion: painting. Stephen speaks and writes like a painter–describing the garden and Tarumi life in a palette of colors and reflected light and subtle lines. Tsukiyama’s prose is a lovely portrayal of both Stephen’s painterly observations and the delicate tranquility of the characters’ lives. Hidden in that same prose, though, is the deep sadness of Matsu’s and Sachi’s stories, and the volatile elements of war and pestilence. Side by side with the growing garden and peace of Tarumi are the lingering illness Stephen battles, the growing unrest in Japan, and the affliction that Sachi and her fellow villagers endure.

In Yamaguchi, the hidden mountain village above Tarumi, Stephen slowly unveils Matsu’s hidden second life and learns why the elderly gardener never left town to follow greater dreams.
In a story about uncovering mysteries, TSG certainly presented some heartbreaking revelations. Tsukiyama’s understated style helps deliver the blows of Matsu’s tragic past in what feels like a distinctly Japanese way. I couldn’t help but think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s prose: a steady wash of waves that carries with it torrents of emotion. But as the book drew to a close, the shocking revelations kept coming, one after another. The blows felt tedious, and because they were tedious, they felt contrived. Other than this slight bit of melodrama, it’s difficult to find fault with Tsukiyama’s obvious knack for storytelling and her evil gift for making me want to cry-read for 100+ pages.
Read this book if … you enjoy gut-wrenching, World War II-era fiction. The Imperial Army’s invasion of China is a mere backdrop to the story unfolding in Tarumi, but the historical context is firmly set, adding to the beautiful but tenuous peace of Stephen’s retreat.
Don’t read this book if … your version of tragic romance requires Atonement-style sexy times and beautiful young people. TSG is a story of lost opportunity and youth, but tragic and romantic all the same.
This book is like … Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, a similar story of lives full of regret, of youth and opportunity lost, of the intense sorrow of unrequited love. TSG also strongly reminded me of the film (I haven’t read the book yet) The Painted Veil because of the era, the quasi-romance fraught with regret, and element of tragic illness.

Gail Tsukiyama has written several successful novels, all within a similar context as TSG, which is considered her finest work.