Forbidden
love blossoms between a Japanese seventeen-year-old girl from a privileged family
and an American sailor in 1957 Japan. Naoko
Nakamura’s marriage has been planned for her to the son of her father’s
business associate, Satoshi. Naoko has other plans and has met and fallen in
love with American sailor Hajime. She
tries to introduce Hajime to her family at tea, but they are horrified that she
has brought home an American sailor. Marriage with the “occupiers” and the
thought of a mixed-race grandchild is not something that Naoko’s family wants. It is too late for their horror as Naoko is
expecting Hajime’s child. Will Naoko be able to convince her family that she should
marry her true love Hajime?
In
the modern-day United States, Tori is with her father for his last days. He mysteriously leaves her a letter that was
returned to him from Japan where she learns that he had a woman he loved before
her mother and he may have had a daughter.
Using her investigative journalism background, Tori travels to Japan to
look for the woman her father loved. Will she find her, her sister, and what separated
the two lovers in the 1950s?
I
was fascinated by this novel. The
beautiful description of the outdoor wedding with the woman in the white kimono
was lyrical and vivid. It was the backdrop
for the entire story as Tori struggles with her father’s story of the wedding
and her realization that her father was married before meeting her mother, and
with Naoko living it out in the past. I
always love learning something new with a novel. I did not know much about post-WWII Japan and
this gave me a vivid picture of what it was like to live in Japan during that
time, and also gave me a picture of the bitter racism that was alive in both
Japan and the United States for mixed race marriages between Americans and Japanese. More horrifying was learning the fate of the children
of such marriages or relationships.
I
enjoy stories with alternating narratives and liked how this one switched from
the past to the present and tied the story together at the end. Both narratives
are told from a first-person perspective.
I also really enjoyed the author’s note at the end which went over what
was the real history of the novel and how it was put together. The cover is beautiful. Even my eight -year old daughter upon seeing
it told me it looked “romantic” and she wanted to read it.
Favorite
Quotes:
“What
is truth but a story we tell ourselves.”
“There
is only love. Only truth. And this is mine.”
Overall,
The Woman in the White Kimono is an excellent historical fiction story with a
compelling mystery. I highly recommend
it!
Book
Source: Review Copy for being a part of
the TLC Book Tour. Thank-you! For more stops on this tour, check out this link.
GIVEAWAY
Each stop on the TLC Book Tour will be giving away one copy of The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns. If
you would like to win this book, please leave a comment on what
interests you
about this book. Have you read any books or watched any movies about Japan after WWII? If so, what was your favorite?
As part of your comment, you must include an email address. If I can't find a
way to contact you I will draw another winner.
For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway or post it on your sidebar.
Provide a link to this post in your comment.
I will be using random.org (or a Monte Carlo simulation in excel) to pick the
winners from the comments.
This contest is only open to addresses in the United States.
The deadline for entry is midnight on Monday June 24th!
Please make sure to check the week of June 24th to see if you are a winner. I
send emails to the winner, but lately I've been put in their "junk
mail" folder instead of their inbox.
Good luck!
