Three Tigers, One Mountain by Michael Booth (St. Martin's Press, April 2020)

“Two tigers cannot share the same mountain, “ is the Chinese proverb that Michael Booth choose as the epigraph to his latest book. Booth expands the proverb to include three tigers, China, Korea, and Japan. None of the three seem willing to share territory, historically there’s been animosity between them, and Booth wants to know why. When much of the world has put the crimes of war behind them and reconciled with their adversaries, why are these countries still at odds with each other? 

To find answers to this question, Booth sets off on a geopolitical odyssey that takes him through Japan, across the sea to Korea, embarking on another small voyage to China, and traveling from Harbin to Hong Kong.  He begins with a firmly held conviction that any regional trouble began with Matthew Perry’s Black Ships forcing Japan into a diplomatic relationship with the West and upsetting “the Confucian geopolitical hierarchy that had held in the region for most of the last two millennia.” China, with its predominate culture, technology, and education, was the leader, Korea “was the primary tributary land,” and Japan was “the vaguely barbaric little brother.” 

Suddenly Japan was the beneficiary of Western technology and weaponry as America brought its new ally into the modern world. Perry arrived in 1853. By 1876 Japan had defeated Korea and established a protectorate over that country after winning the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, a victory that also forced China to cede Taiwan to Japanese control. In 1905, Japan defeated Russia in a battle for the northern portion of Korea and in 1910 took over the entire country, and then moved onto Manchuria in 1931. Within a little more than half a century, Japan had gone from little brother status to the dominant Asian power, a position that it lost by force only 75 years ago. In countries that measure their existence by thousands of years, 75 years is a heartbeat of time, not long enough to heal wounds, let alone replace scar tissue.

In Japan Booth discovers a strong right wing presence that focuses its prejudice against the Korean residents, Zainichi, who came as laborers before 1945 and never left. Stereotyped as lowclass and unskilled criminals, the Koreans who haven’t assimilated into Japanese culture are easy scapegoats who are attacked with racist slogans, not only by conservative extremists but by mainstream society in general, Booth is told by a Japanese journalist. Meanwhile China overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy ten years ago, which exacerbates old tensions between these two countries. Japanese revisionist history teaches that Japanese expansion into Korea and China was benign and that the Nanjing Massacre and Korean slave labor is nothing more than fake news.

Korea sees its 35-year occupation by Japan as far from benign. It went from being a kingdom to a colony, with its language, culture, and even the names of its people being replaced by that of Japan. Its natural resources were drained for Japanese benefit and  beginning in the early 1930s, thousands of its women were commandered as sex slaves for the Japanese military.

Estimates of their number range from 20,000 to to 100,000, and only forty of them are still alive today. 

Although Japan paid 900 million dollars to Korea in reparations from the war, and a fund set up by private Japanese citizens offered 3.5 million dollars directly to the surviving comfort women in 1995, many of them refused to take the money. What they want, along with many of their compatriots, is a direct apology from the Japanese government, if not the emperor himself.

As for China? They’re held responsible for the division of Korea and are considered the major obstacle to its unification. 

Booth begins his Chinese journey in Harbin, where the Japanese perfected weapons of germ warfare, using prisoners of war and local Chinese as their guinea pigs. More than six hundred people a year died from experiments, including live vivisection and lethal injections of bubonic plague, cholera, and anthrax. Although a museum holds testimony from eyewitnesses to the atrocities committed in Harbin, few residents know about it according to a UNESCO survey. 

Nanjing however is deeply alive in the Chinese consciousness, and is kept that way by the use of television dramas depicting the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and the heroism of China’s defenders. As Booth points out, even the lowest estimate of Nanjing’s civilian deaths between December 1937 and January 1938, which is 50,000, compares horribly with “the 61,000 British civilians and 108,000 French civilians during the entirety of World War Two.” 

But to counteract the horrors of the past, Booth finds hope in the pop culture of the present. The youth of China are attracted to the energy of Japanese manga, anime, cosplay, and pornigraphy. Nanjing, he says, “has more Japanese restaurants here than in any other Chinese city,” and over 8 million Chinese tourists visited Japan in 2018. Korean boy bands, films, and Gangnam Style have captivated young hipsters in Japan and in China. Perhaps, he speculates,  as the aging populations of the three tigers increase, the countries will experience a “geriatric peace,” as old wounds fade within failing memories and the young find no reason to revive them.

His theory is a slick and easy one, bolstered by his slick and easy observations. Even so, his book, written in a breezy travelogue style, will attract the attention and enlarge the focus of readers who are looking for entertainment, served up with a helping of forgotten history.~Janet Brown

The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Janissary Tree is the first book in a new and exciting mystery series. It is set in the city that sits on the cusp of Europe and Asia, it is Constantinople in the nineteenth century. The year is 1836, and the Ottoman Empire is still thriving as one of the world’s greatest powers.

In Topkapi Palace, the Sultan - “Ruler of the Black Sea and the White, ruler of Rumelia and Mingrelia, lord of Anatolia and Ionia, Romania, and Macedonia, protector of the Holy Cities, steely rider through the realms of bliss” is sitting in the Abode of Felicity. The sultan is awaiting one of his slave girls from his Harem to share his bed, however, the person that comes to see him is not a beautiful girl but is one of the eunuchs, the only men allowed in the inner sanctum of the harem. He informs the sultan that one of the slave girls has been strangled to death. The sultan replies, “Send for Yashim.”

Yashim - scholar, chef, confidante to the sultan, a linguist and a thorough investigator. He is also a eunuch. Yashim is also summoned by the sultan’s seraskier, a vizier who commands the Ottoman Empire’s army. He tells Yashim that in less than two weeks time, the sultan will be reviewing the troops in the New Guard and needs to be able to show the people that the troops are as well disciplined as the former Janissary Corp. The Janissaries were an elite military organization. They were a corps of slaves, young Christian boys who were kidnapped and converted to Islam. However, four of his men in the New Guard have gone missing and one of them has been found - dead in an iron pot! The seraskier has given Yashim ten days to investigate the death.

The Janissary Corp was a formidable force to contend with and they had also grown in power, . As Western Europe’s military was modernizing and using technology, the Janissaries became outdated and unwilling to change. They also feared their power was going to be taken away, so the Janissaries rose up in revolt but were suppressed and defeated in what became known as the Auspicious Incident. 

Yashim is helped in his investigation by a Polish ambassador, a transexual dancer, and the Valide Sultan who is the living mother of the Sultan. He is led to the Janissary Tree, a large tree in the city the Janissaries chose as a meeting point. Here, Yashim finds part of a Sufi poem. This in turn, leads him to the Karagozi, a group of mystics in the Sufi sect. Yashim has deduced that the three murders are related to the Janissaries and the poem is giving a clue to the fourth location. 

Will Yashim be in time to stop a fourth murder? Are hidden members of the Janissary Corp getting ready to start a new rebellion?  Can Yashim solve the murder of the slave girl in the harem? As Yashim gets closer to the truth, he finds that his life is also in danger. This tale of murder and intrigue will keep you rivited and you will not want to set this book down. ~Ernie Hoyt

The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)

The Foreigner, published in 2008, won the Edgar Award for the Best First Novel by an American Author for 2009. An award given by the Mystery Writers of America. It is written by Francie Lin, a Taiwanese American. The novel is set amidst the seedier side of life in Taiwan. It is a tale of sibling rivalry and coming to terms with one’s roots. A story of family and tradition, but is also the story of crime, murder, and death.

Emerson Chang is a financial analyst living with his mother, a Taiwanese immigrant, who is the owner and proprietor of a motel called the Remada Inn. Emerson was born and raised in the States and can’t speak a word of Chinese. He is forty years old. He’s also single….and a virgin.

Every Friday evening Emerson has dinner with his mother at a local Chinese restaurant called the Jade Palace. Today is Emerson’s birthday. His mother has also invited a single woman to join them. Emerson’s mother is a very traditional Chinese woman and wants Emerson to get married and start a family with a nice Chinese girl.

The last thing on Emerson’s mind is marriage. He was in love once, with a woman twenty years his senior. Of course his mother didn’t approve.  She also wasn’t Chinese. This evening Emerson begins to resents his mother’s meddling and brings up his younger brother, Little P. Little P left the home and went to Taiwan after the death of their father. Emerson hasn’t seen his brother in almost ten years. Bringing up Little P’s name upsets his mother who abruptly leaves the restaurant. 

Once Emerson gets back to the motel where he and his mother live, Emerson decides to confront his mother and tell her that he will not be manipulated by her anymore. Unfortunately, he finds his mother on the floor. She is taken to the hospital where Emerson first learns that she has stage four cancer and doesn’t have long to live. 

The Foreigner gets more complicated after Emerson’s mother’s death. According to his mother’s last will and testament, his mother has left the motel to Little P while Emerson is left some property in Taiwan. His mother also had one additional request - to have her ashes interred in Taiwan. The lawyers have been unable to get into contact with Little P so Emerson decides to kill two birds with one stone by taking his mother’s ashes to Taiwan and visit Little P in person to inform him of their mother’s passing and about his inheritance.

When Emerson visits his younger brother, he is greeted by a knife at his throat by a man that looks pretty up. The man turns out to be Little P! After exchanging a few awkward words, Emerson tells Little P that their mother had left the motel to him after her death. The only thought Little P had was how much money he could make by selling it. After a few more unpleasant exchanges, Emerson realizes that Little P is in trouble and feels it's his sense of duty  to help him. 

The more Emerson tries to help Little P, the further into Taiwan’s criminal underworld he goes. Emerson finds that Little P works at a small karaoke bar run by their uncle where Emerson meets a couple of his cousins, Poison and Big One, who are not the friendliest of relatives. Emerson also spots a woman at the karaoke bar and nobody will tell him who she is. It seems there is more to the karaoke bar that meets the eye and there also seems to be a secret Little P is hiding. The longer Emerson spends time with Little P, the more he feels the need to help save his little brother. But does his little brother really need saving? 

What secret is Little P hiding? Why does Emerson not give the papers for Little P to sign to hand over the motel? And who is that little girl who seemed like a little frightened waif? As Emerson begins putting all the pieces together, what he discovers will shock him and us, the readers as well! ~Ernie Hoyt

The House of the Pain of Others by Julian Herbert (Graywolf Press)

In the Mexican city of Torreon, the football team has a motto written on their locker room wall: In the house of the pain of others. This is appropriate because, as Julian Herbert discloses in his book of the same title, Torreon lives with the history of the pain of others, the massacre of over three hundred Chinese residents in 1911 during the Mexican Revolution.

It was Pancho Villa who killed them, say many Torreon residents. It was the rabble who followed the soldiers who were responsible. It was done by outsiders, not by those who lived here. Manuel Lee Soriano, a descendant of a Chinese family who remained in Torreon after the slaughter, says, “I lived through those anti-Chinese campaigns and that’s how my parents taught me to respond…’If you think you might cause offense, better not speak. Better be quiet’...the story belongs to us...It’s got nothing to do with anyone else.”

Torreon, Mexico’s youngest city, was a boom town at the close of the 19th Century, its explosive growth fueled by cotton, steel, and rubber. It needed workers and Chinese immigrants, facing poverty in their country after years of war and rebellion and drawn to North America by the California Gold Rush, came across the fluid borders between the U.S. and Mexico to seek their fortunes. Finding not only work but the opportunity to establish their own businesses in Torreon, they stayed and prospered, owning large grocery stores, hotels, restaurants, and the city’s gigantic produce market. Wong Foon-Chuck, who got off the train in Torreon with two baskets of Chinese goods, within several years had founded a school and owned hotels. J. Wong Lim arrived with a medical degree from a California university and became a Mexican national with three languages at his disposal.

Drawn by the idea of establishing a shipping line between Mazatlan and Hong Kong, a wealthy politician and Confucian philosopher, Kang Youwei, was attracted to Torreon because its Chinese were residents, not seasonal migratory workers. He soon began speculating in real estate, buying cheap and selling high, and with Foon-Chuck and Lim, founded what was called the Banco Chino which was designed to become the bank used by all the Chinese in Mexico. Torreon’s Chinese business community became an economic force with the capacity for greater growth--and as the Revolution gathered steam, they became a target.

Kang Youwei’s real estate success led to higher rents and housing shortages and demagogues were quick to exploit that, along with the threat that Chinese businessmen were killing off any competing enterprises. When the Mexican Revolution began to gather force, guerrilla forces destabilized the area around Torreon with frequent raids in the city, setting the stage for unrest long before revolutionary troops arrived on May 13th, 1911.

Making their way to the Chinese produce farms, the soldiers demanded food and water at first, then stepped up their demands to include tools, cash, and even the clothing on people’s backs, leaving their victims vulnerable and “the easiest to kill.” From the night of May 13th to the night of May 15th, Chinese businesses were looted, businessmen and their employees were killed in their shops, and those who found hiding places were dragged out from safety and killed in the streets. Corpses were thrown from the windows of the Banco Chino, at least four Chinese children were murdered in plain sight, and Mexican residents carried away whatever bounty they could scavenge from the looted stores and houses. The massacre continued until the revolutionary leader Emilio Maduro finally declared martial law and an immediate end to attacks upon the Chinese. By that time almost half of Torreon’s Chinese residents had been killed within a period of two days. They were buried in mass graves outside of the city. 

The economic loss to the Chinese community was estimated at over 1,300,00 pesos and many of the survivors left Torreon. China demanded financial indemnity for the death of its citizens and Emilio Madero’s brother Francisco, after gaining power as the Mexican president, promised a payment of 3,100,000 pesos, a decision that was highly unpopular with his fellow countrymen. Not long afterward Madero was assassinated and the indemnity was never paid.

Wong Foon-Chuck’s descendants still live in Torreon. J. Wong Lim remained in the city for years after the massacre; his home is now the Museo de la Revolution. But Torreon’s Chinese community is muted in comparison to what it once was and its bloody history is obscured. As Manuel Lee Soriano’s parents told him, “Better keep quiet.”

Julian Herbert, ignoring that advice, has brought these truths out of the house of pain into the awareness of outsiders in the rest of the world. ~Janet Brown

No One's Perfect by Hirotada "Oto" Ototake (Kodansha)

When HIrotada “Oto” Ototake was born, the doctors thought his mother might be given quite a shock if she were to see him. They decided it was best to keep things unsaid for the time being. It would be more than a month later when Oto’s mother finally sees her newborn son for the first time.

Why did the doctors keep Oto’s mother from seeing him? The year was 1976. In Japan, it was the days before the age of “informed consent”. People took what the doctors said at face value. Their word was final. The father said he was just following the doctor’s orders. You see, Oto was born with a very obvious congenital birth defect. He was born with tetra-amelia syndrome. To put it simply, Oto was born without any arms or legs! However, when Oto’s mother finally set sight on her little baby, she said, “He’s adorable.”

Oto’s story is very inspirational. He  writes his autobiography with a flair for humor such as telling us in kindergarten he made friends at once,  “Thanks to my arms and legs, or lack thereof.” Oto shares with us his life during his preschool and elementary years, followed by his middle school, high school, and cram school years and finally about his campus life at Waseda University. 

Oto’s parents decided to enroll him in a regular school but were faced with a grim reality. Back then, It was still taken for granted that disabled children would go to special schools but Oto’s parents were determined that Oto would get a mainstream school education. Fortunately, they found a school willing to take Oto on as a student. Here, Oto meets Takagi Sensei, a man who thinks about Oto’s future. He held the firm belief that, “We can coddle him all we like right now, but he’ll have to fend for himself one day.” 

As a senior in high school, Oto has to start thinking of where he wants to go for university. University entrance exams can be quite difficult so most students in their third year of high go to a juku or cram school. Oto comes face to face with the discriminatory attitudes towards people with disabilities as he is turned down from one cram school to the next. Most of the schools tell him, “the school doesn’t have full facilities for wheelchair users, such as elevators, and accessible toilets, and so it’s not possible for us to accept you.” or “We can’t be responsible if anything should happen.” 

This is the first time when Oto thinks to himself, “Gosh, being in a wheelchair is quite a problem.” but that does not deter him in any way. Oto does find a cram school that accepts him and passes the entrance exam for Waseda University. At Waseda, Oto meets another key person in his life who introduces him to the term “barrier free”. This sets Oto on a path to make the Waseda campus “an environment in which students with disabilities have free access to learning.”

This book was first published in Japanese under the title “Gotai Fumanzoku” meaning having the body and limbs (gotai) all satisfactorily there (manzoku). As Oto didn’t have any limbs to speak of, he made up and used the word fumanzoku.  He chose No One’s Perfect for the English edition because Oto wanted to send a loud and clear message. He says, “You don’t have to be born perfect to be happy.” 

Oto ends his book saying, “Some people are born able-bodied but go through life in dark despair. And some people, in spite of having no arms and legs, go through life without a care in the world. Disability has got nothing to do with it.” ~Ernie Hoyt

All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe (Kodansha)

Miyuki Miyabe is one of Japan’s best known writers. She has won many awards including the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature, the Yamoto Shugoro Prize sponsored by Shinchosha Publishing Company and the Naoki Prize. Many of her novels have been adapted into movies as well including titles such as “Brave Story”, “Solomon’s Perjury” and “Crossfire”. A South Korean production company adapted All She Was Worth and released the film with the title of `Helpless”. 

Miyabe is best known for her mysteries and this book rates as one of her best  All She Was Worth, originally published in 1992 in Japanese as “Kasha” won the Best Mystery and Best Novel in the year of its publication. It follows the story of a police detective named Shunsuke Honma who is on an extended leave since the death of his wife Chizuko three years ago and is also recovering from being shot in the leg on duty. As a favor to his nephew, he takes on a missing persons case. 

Jun Kurisaka, the son of Honma’s wife’s cousin has come to ask for help. Honma hasn’t seen Jun in seven years who also didn’t show up for Chizuko’s funeral. Honma was wondering why Jun was coming to see him. After Jun arrives and exchanges pleasantries, Jun finally tells Honma the reason for his visit. He tells Honma that he’s gotten engaged but his fiancee has disappeared and wants his help to find her. 

This sets in motion the search for a woman named Shoko Sekine. A 28 year old woman with no parents. The trouble all started with a routine application for a credit card. Jun was informed by his friend who works in the banking and credit industry that Shoko Sekine was blacklisted, that she had also filed for personal bankruptcy. Jun thinks the bank made a mistake and gets into an argument with his friend who suggests that Jun should ask Shoko himself. He tells Honma that when he confronted Shoko about it, she went white as a ghost. Jun tells Honma, she didn’t deny it and said, “...there were all kinds of complicated circumstances behind it.” She told Jun, she needed a little time and the next day, she disappeared.

Reluctantly, Honma decides to help Jun and takes on the case of searching for Shoko Sekine. Jun had told Honma where Shoko worked and that is where he starts his unofficial investigation. First he goes to Shoko’s last place of employment and asks to see her resume. He decides to work backwards to see what kind of information he can garner. When he checks with Shoko’s former employers, he discovers that none of them existed. They were all fictitious companies. He also discovers that Shoko Sekine owes a lot of money to loan sharks. 

As Honma delves deeper into Jun’s vanished fiancee, he discovers a truth that surprises him and thinks it will be an even bigger shock to Jun. It appears that Shoko Sekine is not who she says she is, that her identity has been stolen by a complete stranger!  Honma believes the real Shoko Sekine might be dead. What will he tell Jun? Will Honma continue to investigate to find out the truth of the matter? ~Ernie Hoyt