Every time I am confronted with the reality of Japanese relationships, and dating in general, I am baffled. Although I am used with a kind of dating which is mostly oriented to marriage and family, in the Japanese case the practicalities are so bizarre that sometimes it is not my undestanding which lacks, but the acceptance of this kind of relationships.
Mitsuba by the Canada-based Japanese author Aki Shimazaki is the story of a young successful business man, Takashi Aoki. Shortly before being sent abroad by his company, while improving his French language skills, he meets Yuko Tanase, apparently an independent woman, in her early 20s, single, and which may look as a good match. The courtship lasts a couple of weeks at the end of which he is convinced that they should get engaged to be married. However, she will leave him for the rich son of the bank with whom the company has a long lasting business relationship. Instead of being sent to France, where Yuko Tanase was supposed to relocate with her new husband, he is assigned the mission of creating an affiliate in Canada, at Montréal.
Actually, it is more to the story than this failed love story, as it reveals the complex business/work loyalties and the everyday social pressures in the post-war Japan, when the WWII defeat was lucratively changed into the ambition of becoming a victor on ´peaceful´ domains, business being one of them.
It´s a short novel, with a remarkable sociological value, about Japanese society and the relationship stories where love is the last element who really count - yes, I know that love is a very modern invention, but still, the brutality of the interest-based relationship is too transactional even for the less romantic humans like the one writing those lines. Therefore, I´ve read it more with the curiosity of the sociologist/anthropologist than with the excitement of the literary critic. Not that the writing is bad, it´s just clean, using properly the words for telling a story with a journalistic accuracy.
Aki Shimazaki has herself a business background and started to learn French in her 40s. She currently lives in Canada and writes in French.
Rating: 3 stars
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