The Garden of Evening Mists
Tan Twan Eng
This is a complex and
interesting story, provoking questions on some interesting themes. It is set in Malaya during the Japanese
Occupation of World War II and the later communist rebel uprisings, and in Malaysia
34 years later. The two main characters
are Aritomo, an esteemed Japanese gardener previously employed by the Emperor,
who had moved to Malaya before the war, and Yun Ling, an Anglophile
"Straits Chinese" woman, the sole survivor of a Japanese POW
camp. A third major character is Magnus,
the owner of a tea estate, Majuba, in the Cameron Highlands, and a survivor of
the British concentration camps of the Boer War.
The main theme is how survivors
of the brutality and treachery of war can live out the rest of their lives in a
multi-cultural world. I found it an
interesting and original problem.
The characters of both Yun
Ling and Aritomo provoke questions and their mysterious pasts propel the
narrative. How did Yun Ling manage to
survive the notorious internment camp system, and why did Aritomo stay aloof
from the Japanese rape of Malaya? (Another
question is raised about Yun Ling's father and brother, businessmen who
prospered during the war at a time when those who were not against the Japanese
were abetting them. Yun Ling's mother
seems to know the answer and has collapsed into mental illness.)
Aritomo is clearly a man of
influence; during the war, he intervened with the Japanese invaders on behalf of
Magnus and the workers on his estate.
After the war, he paid off the Communist rebels to ensure the safety of
Majuba and his own garden, Yugiri. Is he
protecting his friends or subsidizing the rebels? Is he an accommodator or a pragmatist or a
Japanese agent? What are his motives?
Yun Ling's life is brought
together with Aritomo's when she apprentices herself to him in order to learn
the art of Japanese gardening so she can make a garden to commemorate her sister
who perished in the camp.
The two develop a complicated
relationship and eventually become lovers.
She learns gardening and archery from him and the serenity of the garden
helps in her healing. He learns about
the atrocities committed by the Japanese and in a sado-masochist exchange
creates a personalized "horimono" or tattoo over her entire back. Then he mysteriously disappears forever into
the jungle whose many trails he knows by heart.
There are many tangled
threads in this plot and the switching of time frames does not make it easy to
unravel them. This is part of the mood -
the misty garden edging the jungle, and the clouded, complicated past of
Aritomo and Yun Ling.
The character of Aritomo is
particularly enigmatic. I could not even
establish his sexual preference. He is
passionless and controlled; his Japanese men friends have been gay. His wartime relationship with Tominaga, the
leader of Yun Ling's internment camp is suspicious. My conclusion is that he had been embedded in
Malaya by the Emperor of Japan and that the story of his falling-out with his employer
was false. He has to face his past when
he hears Yun Ling's accounts of the suffering in the camp. His suicide says that some actions are
unforgiveable.
Unfortunately, in his effort
to create a mood of mystery and secrecy around his main characters, the author
fails to create empathy for them. The
complexity and culpability of both Aritomo and Yun Ling make their dilemmas
intellectual rather than emotional. The
story of the wartime love affair between Tatsuji, the kamikaze pilot, and
Teruzen who flew in his place, is more moving than the love affair between the
two main characters.
Tan Twan Eng has set himself a
difficult task: how to sustain sympathy
for unlikeable main characters. Aritomo
is a man who would show his love and contrition by creating a work of art and
also lie to his lover that he had never done one before. Likewise we learn that Yun Ling survived the
prison camp because she was an informer on her fellow captives and countrymen. After the war she became a judge who was
merciless with Japanese militants and their collaborators, partly to appease
her own conscience. She is not an easy
person to like; she does not like herself and her medical diagnosis leaves us
unmoved.
Both characters are trying to
become, "straight-shooters" with their archery practice and their
search for the centre of the target, but these are not Cupid's arrows, and the
characters remain passionless in their romance and appeal to readers.
This novel interested me especially
because of the accounts of the Japanese labour camps during the war. Having had an uncle who barely survived
working on the Burma Railroad, I was appalled to learn recently that although
the horrors of the Holocaust are well publicized, the Japanese atrocities and
the Rape of Nanking have been subsumed by the horror of Hiroshima, and are not
taught to today's students. Jewish
people have rightly taken steps to ensure that their loss will never be
forgotten, but there is no lasting support group for the victims of the Japanese,
and their suffering seems in vain. A
novel such as this keeps the historical record of Japanese atrocities in World
War II on the public conscience.
However, I was disappointed
to have these historical events lumped together with the activities of The
Golden Lily, an organization that exists in the realm of conspiracy theorists. The Golden Lily is supposed to have been a
cadre trusted by the Emperor of Japan to loot the treasures of conquered
countries and hide them until after the war when they could be put into the
Emperor's coffers. The remarkable
resurgence of the Japanese economy after the war is said to have been financed
by this plunder. The answer to the
riddle of Aritomo is that he was part of The Golden Lily. Although this plot resolution is clever, I
resent that it is coupled with the facts of the Japanese labour camps, putting
the historical camps in the same category as the conjectured Golden Lily
organization. The strong message about
the horrors of the camps is diluted by association.
