Myrmidon, 2007, 508 p, including 2 p maps of Penang and Malaya.

Fifty years after the end of the Second World War a Japanese woman, Michiko Murakami, comes to visit Philip Hutton at his home in Penang, bringing with her the katana which his sensei, Hayato Endo, a follower of Morihei Ueshiba, had had made for him. Endo is buried on a small island just off Hutton’s land and Michiko was once his inamorata before circumstances meant they could not be together. Over a few nights Hutton relates the course of his relationship with Endo-san, being taught the martial art of aikijujutsu, and his unwitting participation in the preparations for the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1941.

Philip was the last child of Noel Hutton, owner of a large trading company. Philip’s mother was his father’s second wife, a Chinese woman, but who died. He grew up a misfit, not quite belonging to the British set but yet not Chinese either. He is doubly estranged since his mother’s family did not approve of the match and he has had little contact with them. In a weak moment his father does let slip that the pair had been very much in love.

The rest of his family, father and half-siblings William, Edward and Isabel, are away on a visit to England in 1941 when Endo-san, to whom the small island had been let, befriends Philip and decides to induct him in the way of aikijujutsu. This not only involves combat training – even though the emphasis is on defence and never killing – but requires that they trust each other fully. This trust will, of course, be stretched to breaking point by world events.

In the course of their friendship Endo-san asks Philip to take him on trips round the island.  It is here the reader gets somewhat ahead of the narrative with the suspicion that Endo-san is a Japanese spy. He does admit that he is serving the Japanese government because his father had implicitly criticised the Emperor and his service is to prevent harm coming to his father.

The invasion when it comes still seems sudden and shocking, the British response shamefully inadequate. In its aftermath Philip is plunged into a quandary: loyalty to Endo-san or to his family (and its prospects) and to his friend who has joined the British resistance movement, Force 136. His acquiescence to the Japanese authorities, his acceptance of a translating job with them is seen as a betrayal by some but in other respects allows him to soften some of its harshness; albeit only in a small way.

There is much more nuance to this novel than the above might imply. Philip makes a relationship with his Chinese grandfather, colludes with the resistance while maintaining cooperation with the Japanese authorities but in the end, despite Endo-san’s shielding, is unable to safeguard everything that he would wish. The brutality of some Japanese actions contrasts vividly with the non-violent aspects of Endo-san’s instruction.

One thing that struck me as odd was that there seemed to be a large Japanese presence in pre-war Penang; not just Endo-san but also consular officials – and soldiers, who still seemed to roam free unarrested after the invasion of Malaya had begun but before the invading forces had reached Penang itself. Eng is more likely to be on top of these details than I am though.

This is a very good novel indeed, aspects of the writing are exemplary, the characters agreeably shaded (apart from the out and out cruelty of some Japanese soldiers; which is of course a matter of historical fact) the examination of aikijujutsu philosophy illuminating, but it fell from the absolute highest drawer of literature when it tumbled over into the spying aspect. Moreover, it was unreasonable for Philip to have provided (even if unwittingly) just about all the information about the Malayan peninsula which informed the tactical elements of the Japanese invasion. Yet without that Eng’s story would have been different.

Its core is the relationship between Philip and Endo-san. But is this a meeting of minds or an example of a kind of grooming? Endo-san is older and (apparently) wiser but there is a strand – which is not overly stressed – where the relationship between Philip and Endo-san apparently goes much deeper than mere friendship as their fates have seemingly been entwined through various incarnations in history.

Pedant’s corner:- “was roused out his stupor” (out of his stupor,) “and and” (only one ‘and’ was needed,) “gave smile” (gave a smile,) whiskey (whisky?) a missing end quote mark, “Kon make a move” (made a move,) “round the bend was hidden spot” (was a hidden spot.)

Canongate, 2012, 349 p.

Tan Twan Eng is the first Malaysian author whom I have read, though The Garden of Evening Mists is not a translation, being written in English and on the Booker Prize short list in 2012.

Narrator Teoh Yun Ling is a prominent Malaysian judge planning to retire as she is beginning to show the first signs of memory loss. During the Japanese occupation in the Second World War she – along with her sister, Yun Hong – had been imprisoned in an internment camp where Yun Ling suffered the loss of two fingers in a punishment (and Yun Hong was forced into being one of the jugun ianfu (military comfort women.) Yun Ling was the only survivor (“I was lucky.”) Post-war she made her name in legal circles by taking part in the War Crimes Tribunal as a prosecutor.

The novel is Yun Ling’s account of her life especially during the Malayan ‘Emergency’ of the 1950s when she briefly abandoned her legal career to try to fulfil her sister’s dream – following a visit to Japan in 1938 – of building her own Japanese garden. Despite her hatred of Japanese people she agreed to become a pupil of Nakimura Aritomo, a Japanese man living locally, who had once been the Emperor’s gardener but had come to Malaya – apparently in disgrace – before the war began, built a garden called Yugiri (the garden of evening mists of the title which, among others, utilises the principle of ‘borrowed scenery’) and several times during the war interceded with the occupiers to ease the lot of local Malays. Another principle character is Magnus, a Boer, who recounts the iniquities of the British treatment of Boer civilians during the Second Boer War in the original concentration camps as if to point out the lack of difference between Japanese and British. Nevertheless the war caused a frosting of the relationship between Magnus and Aritomo. (I note here that Asian names in the book are given in the Oriental style, family name first.)

Aritomo’s designs for the garden are rendered in the style of ukiyo-e prints (think Hokusai’s “Great Wave”) and he is also skilled in the art of horimono – whole body tattoos – both of which are not incidental to the unfolding secret of the book.

Tan weaves all these ingredients together into a compelling narrative, holding back information till just the right point, introducing complicating characters to build intrigue (for example the group of Japanese saying they wish to identify graves of the fallen but clearly with a different agenda,) illustrating the exigencies of life during the Emergency (which another author might have used as the book’s focus but Tan does not) and blending them all – including Yun Ling’s internment experiences – into the plot.

A slight clumsiness with information dumping early on and the speed with which Yun Ling comes to terms with Aritomo mean the novel doesn’t quite scale the absolute highest literary peaks but it is at times exquisitely written. It was certainly worth a place on that Booker prize short list. No surprise it didn’t win though. It was up against Bring up the Bodies.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘five week’s time’” (five weeks’ time,) “‘For goodness’ sake’” (if the apostrophe is there ‘for goodness’s sake, better to leave it out.) “‘My mother died when I was a four’” (when I was four,) snuck (sneaked,) in a list of Japanese gardening tools – named in italics – their translations are given immediately after, but the first translation ‘mallet’ is still in italics. “‘Less chances of an ambush’” (‘Less chance’, or, ‘Fewer chances’, but it was in dialogue.) “‘He’s works in Bangkok’” (He works in Bangkok,) miniscule (minuscule,) “sharing them with Yun Ling and the other women in my hut” (it is Yun Ling narrating this, so ‘sharing them with Yun Hong’.) “A line of cars were parked” (strictly; a line …. was parked.) “The two men looked at each another” (‘at each other’; or, ‘at one another’,) tealeaves (tea-leaves.)