Roberts, John G., Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, Weatherhill, 1973
Steele, M. William, ‘Against the Restoration: Katsu Kaishu’s Attempt to Reinstate the Tokugawa Family’, in Monumenta Nipponica, xxxvi, 3, pp. 300–16
Steele, M. William, ‘Edo in 1868: The View from Below’, in Monumenta Nipponica, 45:2, pp. 127–55
Totman, Conrad, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1600–1843, Harvard University Press, 1967
Totman, Conrad, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868, University Press of Hawaii, 1980
Yokota-Murakami, Takayuki, Don Juan East/West: On the Problematics of Comparative Literature, State University of New York Press, 1998
The best book on the women’s palace:
Takayanagi Kaneyoshi, Edojo ooku no seikatsu (Life in the Women’s Palace at Edo Castle), Tokyo Yuzankaku Shuppan, 1969
And a fantastic website on the Nakasendo, the Inner Mountain
Road:
http://www.hku.hk/history/nakasendo/
ABOUT THE BOOK
Lesley Downer’s first novel, The Last Concubine, is an enthralling narrative that is equal part historical drama, epic romance, and coming-of-age story.
Growing up in rural Japan in the 1860s, Sachi has often felt different; her pale skin, aristocratic features, and slight size make her unlike the other girls in the village. However, Sachi lives a normal life until her eleventh year, when Princess Kazu and her royal procession come through her village on their way to Edo Castle, where the princess is to marry the young shogun, Lord Iemochi. The princess immediately notices Sachi, selects her to be one of her ladies-in-waiting and Sachi is swept off to Edo Castle.
Lined with gold-leaf walls, the women’s palace is lavish and beautiful, rich with the scent of incense and acres of gardens, and filled with exquisite silk brocade, tea, and cosmetics. It is here that three thousand women live bound by tradition and duty in a strictly hierarchical system that is mired in gossip, secrets, and malevolence. Ladies-in-waiting, with their maids and their maids-of-maids, spend their days writing poetry and practising calligraphy, tea ceremony, incense guessing – and the halberd, so they can defend the shogun from intruders if necessary.
When Sachi turns fifteen, the princess offers Sachi to her husband as a concubine. Sachi is in awe of the attractive young shogun, but he leaves the castle after their night together, and Sachi finds herself at the mercy of the jealous and powerful women of the castle.
Then almost overnight, everything changes. The shogun never returns, and the heartbreaking news of his death signals the end of life as they know it. As war breaks out and southern armies invade the north, Sachi and her loyal friend Taki are shuttled from the castle as a decoy for the princess. Alone, unprotected, and outside the castle walls, they must decide whether they trust the band of ronin who offer to lead them to safety. And what will Sachi do now that the shogun is dead and the beautiful life they led at Edo Castle is no more?
Against the tumultuous backdrop of civil war, Sachi begins a quest for freedom, happiness, and her true self. Time and again, she finds herself in the path of a rough samurai named Shinzaemon, and together they overcome age-old class prejudices, endure the upheavals of civil war, and eventually discover the unexpected truth about Sachi’s father and mother.
Based on careful research and meticulous details, The Last Concubine brings to life the grandeur of Edo-period Japan and the timeless beauty of a young woman’s quest for self-discovery.
AN INTERVIEW WITH LESLEY DOWNER
Q: Many reviewers of the book are fascinated by the breadth of historical detail. How important was historical accuracy to you? Did the research take longer than the writing of the story itself?
I was determined to make my story as authentic as possible, so I spent a lot of time looking into the clothes, buildings, food, perfumes, and modes of transport. But it was even more important to try to imagine the way people of Sachi’s era might have thought and behaved. I immersed myself in books written in and about the period, in movies and kabuki theatre set in the period, and in woodblock prints and old photographs.
In fact my research really began many years ago, the very first time I went to Japan. I became utterly engrossed in Japanese culture and history, and was able to explore different aspects as I researched the various non-fiction books I’ve written. Writing The Last Concubine was a wonderful opportunity for me to immerse myself in nineteenthcentury Japan and to make use of some of the store of knowledge I’ve accumulated. So, yes, the research took much longer than the writing of the book!
Q: How long did you live with these characters before writing the story? Where did they come from?
Many of my characters – the shogun, Princess Kazu, even Sachi’s mother and father – really existed. I read about Sachi’s mother in a book about the women’s palace, written in Japanese in the 1920s, and found her story moving and inspiring. Here was a woman beautiful enough to be chosen as a concubine of the shogun, but – rash though it was – she fell in love with a handsome carpenter and had an illicit affair with him. I began to wonder what would have happened if these two had had a child. What would that child have been like, and what might have happened to her?
And so Sachi was born. She’s of aristocratic blood and dazzlingly beautiful, and takes from her mother her feisty, wilful personality. Yet she grows up hidden in the countryside among farmers, who in those days were far freer in some ways than samurai and other higher class people because no one cared what they did or how they led their lives. So this gives her a unique upbringing. But then she goes to the women’s palace, where she has to learn airs and graces, and is exposed to the deadly rivalries there.
As for Shinzaemon, he’s the ultimate Japanese samurai, rash and impetuous, driven by his sense of honour and by what is right. But the power struggles going on in his day make him question everything he’s been brought up to believe. He’s the offspring of the samurai heroes of Japanese movies and also of romantic heroes I’ve fallen in love with – Heathcliff crossed with Mr. Rochester, gruff and wild, which is very much the essence of the Japanese samurai. Of course I created a hero I could fall in love with myself!
Q: Where does your interest in 1800s Japan stem from? What is the most appealing part of that time for you?
Japan in the 1800s is one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in Japanese history, when Japan leapt in an extraordinarily short time from a feudal society into the modern age. Before that time, pre-modern Japan had developed largely in isolation, without reference to the outside world. It evolved a wonderful jewel-like culture – the culture of the floating world, of courtesans and merchants, which is portrayed in woodblock prints, Japanese novels of the time, and in kabuki plays. Alongside this was the world of the samurai, as portrayed in Japanese movies set in the period. What particularly tantalized me was the discovery that the shogun had a harem – something which no one ever seemed to mention and about which very little seemed to be known.
The Victorians who went to Japan in the mid nineteenth century were aware that this was a society that few Westerners had ever seen and was on the brink of disappearing forever. Many wrote books describing it in detail. I relished the chance of immersing myself in this period and taking my reader there with me.
Q: Did you find it difficult to immerse yourself in a time when women enjoyed such few freedoms? As a woman, did you find the subordination of women difficult to write about?
Even in modern Japan, women enjoy fooling men into thinking that they are the bosses when actually the women are twisting them around their little fingers, in the same way that the famous “steel magnolias” of the southern states of America exercise power by manipulating men. There’s a Japanese saying that “a clever woman never lets a man know how clever she is.” But in pre-modern Japan, women were the property of their menfolk. Men were obliged by law to execute an unfaithful wife and were punished if they did not. It was fascinating for me to imagine how women might have found ways to surv
ive and express themselves, and even have fun, in a culture such as this.
Q: In your Acknowledgments, you thank many people who shared their knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan with you. Does this era still fascinate you? What more do you wish to learn?
As I said, this is one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in all of Japanese history. In my next novel I’m still deep in the period, but I look at it through the lens of a very different part of society. It’s set in the floating world of courtesans, prostitutes, geisha, and their clients, a very different society from that of The Last Concubine. I’m currently absorbing myself in this colourful, rakish world.
Q: Poetry figures prominently in the book. What is the significance of the book’s epigraphical poem by Ki no Tomonori?
In old Japan, educated people were expected to be able to turn out a witty poem at the drop of a hat. Seventeen-syllable haiku and thirty-One-syllable waka evoke a feeling or mood in a few well-chosen words. The poem by Ki no Tomonori (who was writing around 890) is a waka.
There’s something very poignant about the plum tree flower. It’s not a brilliant spring flower like the cherry blossom (which also has its poignant aspect), but quiet and rather melancholy. It’s dark purple, the colour of aubergines, and it flowers in February, when there’s still snow on the ground. In Ki no Tomonori’s time, there were many aesthetes who boasted of their sensitivity. But the person to whom he wrote the poem was of an altogether higher level of discernment. Only he, says Tomonori, can truly appreciate the colour and the scent of the plum flower.
Perhaps – being a little whimsical – my story is akin to the plum tree’s flower. You, dear reader, have a profound appreciation of colour and scent – in other words, of beauty. I present my story to you in all modesty, in the hope that you will enjoy it.
Q: At the end of the book, “civilization and enlightenment” is en vogue in the new Tokyo. Do you see the influence of Western ideas and ideals in Japan as positive?
Japan was one of very few countries in the world which escaped being colonized, and as a result, it managed to retain its unique culture. The Japanese borrowed ideas and techniques from the West, which they played with and subtly changed. The coming of westernization gave birth to an extraordinary renaissance in Japan in both arts and sciences. It is only now that the Japanese are once again becoming proud of their Edo heritage.
Q: Are there any lessons that twenty-first-century readers can take from Sachi’s time?
In Sachi’s time, there was no word for love and no one expected or wanted to experience such a feeling. But she still followed her heart, which shows what a fundamental and real experience love is. That’s one lesson we could learn. We could also learn from the ability of people in her day to appreciate the beauty of small things – flowers, insects, tiny jewel-like poems, and small moments of time.
Q: Will we meet these characters again in a future novel?
We will certainly meet some of them in my next novel.
Q: Your previous non-fiction books – Geisha, Madame Sadayakko, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, The Brothers, and Women of the Pleasure Quarters – have also centred on Japanese culture. Have you considered a book that takes place in a different country?
I’m half Chinese and love China and have often considered writing a book set there. But after thirty years of engaging with Japan, I know it incredibly well. I haven’t yet written everything I want to write about Japan and have a few more books on Japan still in me, I think.
Q: Was it your time living in Japan that really sparked your interest in its culture?
Japan is the most fascinating and extraordinary place. It was my interest in its culture that took me there in the first place, but I’ve been deepening my fascination with the country ever since.
I spent my first years in Japan in Gifu, a large, very traditional city near Kyoto, where life went on much as it had for centuries and geisha were still part of the landscape. There were few tourists and almost no Westerners. I had been there three months before I was introduced to the only two other non-Japanese in the entire city.
When I lived there, I was single. They all took me under their wing, most particularly the women, who welcomed me into their homes, supposedly eternally closed to outsiders. We used to cook together and went to temples to dine on Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. I studied the womanly arts of tea ceremony, flower arrangement, calligraphy, and brush painting, as well as making pottery and doing aikido, a martial art. Along the way, I learned to carry myself demurely, glide gracefully across tatami mats, slide open a door with straight fingers, and speak in the proper modest tones.
In the years I spent in Japan, I travelled from Shiretoko Peninsula in the far north of Hokkaido to the tropical islands of Okinawa and was privileged to meet many wonderful people – from farmers and geisha to Noh actors, incense ceremony masters, artists, architects, and many others. Japan has been a part of my life ever since I became an adult. I am not at all the person I would have been if I had never gone there.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. When Sachi is being prepared to visit the shogun’s bed for the first time, her dress is described as “a ceremonial kimono of white silk like a wedding kimono – or a shroud.” Discuss the “death” of Sachi’s innocence as she leaves the village, becomes a concubine, and later, flees the castle.
2. The women’s palace is described as an opulent prison. Do you think the princess and other women of the palace, some of whom have never left its walls, feel confined? How do notions of imprisonment and freedom affect the story?
3. “Her own life, she knew, was of no importance. Women were in this world to obey without questioning or thinking.” Discuss the subordination of women within the book.
4. Shinzaemon’s roughness is painted in sharp contrast to Sachi’s refined persona. Is this a classic beauty-andthe-beast attraction? Or are they kindred spirits?
5. Most of Sachi’s life is defined by duty and obligation. What role can destiny play in this society?
6. The backdrop to Sachi’s personal journey is one of hardship and war. Do you feel war is portrayed as futile or necessary? Or both?
7. For a twenty-first-century reader, there are many instances in the story of racism, classism, and misogyny. How was your experience as a reader affected by this? Which of these injustices do you feel exists the most today?
8. When she returns to her village, Sachi says, “I am not the person I was when I left. In the end I know I have to go back to Edo Castle. That’s where I belong.” How do notions of family and loyalty affect Sachi’s personal journey, as well as that of others in the story?
9. Sachi comes to understand her mother’s feeling of “spiritual starvation” when faced with the idea of not seeing Shinzaemon again, as her mother did with Daisuké. How do you interpret the concept of spiritual starvation?
10. As the new world encroaches upon Japan, foreigners bring with them elements of so-called advancement. Do you feel these instruments of progress have a positive or negative effect on 1800s Japan?
11. Guns are linked to the end of the samurai way and paralleled to cowardice. Do you feel it was cowardly of Shinzaemon to shoot Lord Mizuno?
12. Did Sachi’s feelings for Edwards take away from the reunion with Shinzaemon and how you interpreted their connection?
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Lesley Downer, The Last Concubine
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