Orphaned at thirteen, Hikotaro makes his way from Japan to San Francisco, where he soon dreams of returning home, but after being denied passage on Commodore Perry's ship, he returns to the U.S., and then back to his own troubled country. 25,000 first printing.
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Set in the midâ€"19th century, this fourth of Yoshimura's novels to be translated into English tells the astonishing story of a 13-year-old Japanese boy who becomes a castaway, is rescued by an American ship and brought to San Francisco, and finally returns years later to his native land. Unfortunately, while the circumstances the narrative coversâ€"storms at sea, unspeakable privations, violent rebellions on several continents, amazing coincidences and ironic reversalsâ€"are dramatic and surprising, the novel itself is written (or perhaps translated) in dry circumstantial detail, wooden in affect. Born in a small village on an island on the Inland Sea, Hikotaro, aka Hikozo and Joseph Hiko, traverses more than oceans in a lifelong voyage. He faces the cultural dislocations of an alien in American society and the violent enmity of his countrymen when he returns to Japan as a Westernized employee of the U.S. consulate. His life spans the Taiping Rebellion in China, the U.S. Civil War and the turbulent period before the Meiji Restoration in Japan. Along the way he meets three U.S. Presidentsâ€"Pierce, Buchanan and Lincolnâ€"travels with Commodore Perry's fleet, is promised a job by Secretary of State William Seward and crosses paths with many other notable people. After returning to his homeland, he founds Japan's first newspaper and uses his skill in English to succeed in several businesses. But beneath his achievements lies the sadness of a man without a country. Readers can't fail to find the novel's historical details fascinating, but its protagonist and his shipmates, whose exhaustively detailed experiences are also interpolated into the narrative, lack emotional depth, and Yoshimura's matter-of-fact prose fails to sustain dramatic tension.
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One of Japan's most distinguished novelists appears in English for the fourth time, in a tale of nineteenth-century transpacific life. A Japanese boy is saved at sea by an American ship and taken to San Francisco, which, under the shogun's rule, means that he cannot return to Japan. He tries, sailing with Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan and giving readers a Japanese perspective on that historic mission. But he finds no welcome and must return to an America on the verge of civil war, where he is adopted by a wealthy American. In time the overthrow of the shogunate allows him to return to Japan to play a part in the Meiji Restoration, which most Americans know only from samurai flicks. They deserve the closer encounter Yoshimura's book provides, despite its rather slow pacing and slightly stiff prose, which may be attributable to the translation. As much a work of scholarship as of fiction, it may find its most dedicated readers in the audience for serious historical fiction. Roland Green
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