Gai-Jin

Gai-Jin – by James Clavell

The last book written of James Clavell’s six-part ‘Asian Saga’, yet the third story when told chronologically. I would highly recommend reading parts 1 (‘Shogun’) and 2 (‘Tai-Pan’) prior to tackling this one. There weren’t many similarities at all between the first two other than the fact that they both took place in Asia (Japan and Hong Kong respectively), yet this book manages to use elements of both as it tells a very long yarn of the Western traders residing in Japan during the Winter of 1862. ‘Gai-Jin’ is a term used by the Japanese when describing western foreigners, and it’s definitely not a term of endearment. More on that later.

I mentioned this is a ‘long’ book. In paperback form, it goes on for 1,234 pages. The entire story takes place over four months. I imagine that most people who read this book took longer than that to finish it. Not only is this book long, but it’s extremely thick and tremendously detailed.  For someone such as myself who can read a John Grisham or a Dean Koontz novel over a weekend, this book was a much different experience as it took me close to a month to finish and required extreme focus.  I can’t imagine any author going through such great lengths to achieve such an undertaking of telling such a meticulously detailed long story. True, Clavell only wrote six novels during his lifetime, but this book seemed the equivalent to about ten ‘regular’ novels. That’s no exaggeration. 

I would also caution that if one prefers a straight-forward ‘story’, this book might not be your cup of tea. Clavell is more interested in immersing his reader deep into the Japanese culture of the nineteenth century. This culture is definitely a hostile environment for a European or an American. The Asians and Europeans tolerate each other yet remain racially disgusted with each other. The Westerners are there solely as traders; plain and simple. There’s an awful lot of money to be made with Asian silks and raw opium, so the hostile environments that they find themselves in can be tolerated a bit more easily. It also helps when both cultures think themselves vastly superior.

There IS a story here. A few of them actually.  Essentially none of the Japanese factions trust each other and their entire existence seems to revolve around deception and treachery.  The factions are constantly trying to better themselves by knocking those out that are currently in power.  When the renegade group known as the ‘Shishi’ wants to destroy the powerful ‘Shogunate’, they use the Europeans as pawns. They randomly attempt to murder four of the main Europeans early in the story so the Westerners will be enraged and strike against the ‘Shogunate’. The Shishi would welcome this as it would weaken the ‘Shogunate’.

There’s more here though. Oh so much more. Lot’s of romance, love, lust, competition amongst the traders, murder, rape, cross-culture learning, and on and on and on. When the story focuses on the Europeans, it’s not too hard to follow, but when the story shifts to the daily lives of the Japanese characters, it’s very easy to get a bit lost. Not only are there a plethora of people to keep track of, but it seems as though the Japanese (as I’ve mentioned) are inherently distrustful of each other so there’s a lot of deception and switching allegiances throughout the story. There were times when I wished I would have taken notes while reading. Fortunately, the back of the book contains a ‘cast of characters’ section, but it’s not quite as inclusive as one would hope. There are also many times while reading the book that it seems as though the author got too distracted and spent too many pages describing events that were largely irrelevant to the big picture.  Again, though, the author’s gift seems more inclined towards the day to day interactions of the characters, so such distractions weren’t necessarily unwelcome. It’s just that 1200 pages can be a bit laborious even if Clavell really excels in this area.

In fact, the very ending of the book is basically a two-page summary of ‘what happened next’.  After reading the final summary, it’s easy to see where the author could have easily stretched out this summary to another 400 pages or so.  As a reader, I would have enjoyed those 400 pages, but let’s just say I was quite happy reading the summary instead. Sometimes Clavell simply doesn’t know when to stop.

On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a trend in modern culture to demean the white males of North America and they get a lot of flak from the sins of their great-great-great-great-great parents who arrived on the shores of the new world and managed to essentially wipe out the indigenous people as well as tolerate slavery for the first 75 years of the existence of the USA. What this book teaches us is that such attitudes are not unique to any one race of people.  Historically, people have always been tribal and looked at other cultures with mistrust and hostility simply because they looked and/or acted different. These Asian Saga books show us this in horrific detail.  The amounts of barbaric treatment and tortures make the sins of early Americans quite pale in comparison. Such treatment existed in Japan until Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the nation to change its behaviors.  If you don’t believe me, talk to any U.S. POW who was interned by Japan during World War II.

Anyway, this was a great book, but it’s definitely not for the easily distracted nor the impatient. Give yourself a fair amount of time with this, and the author’s other works.