Customer Reviews

Sword and Blossom: A British Officer's Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of the most moving stories I have read in a long, long time. Set against the backdrop of the most turbulent times in the 20th Century, it tells the love story between a British officer and a Japanese woman that spans many years. Simply fascinating.

Peter Pagnamenta and Momoko Williams' book, Sword and Blossom, takes a look at this real life story, and attempts to tell the story behind a cache of letters that were found in Japan.

In 1904, a young English officer, Captain Arthur Hart-Synnot, arrived in Tokyo, Japan to study Japanese and to learn as a possible advancement in his career. At the time, not very much was actually known about the Japanese, and the view that Westerners had was decidedly skewed towards the quaint and romanticized. Too, the Japanese had kept the world at bay, until Admiral Perry showed up in the mid-nineteenth century and Japan found itself rudely yanked into the modern world, and now was eager to prove themselves as one of the world's power players. Now they were starting to shift to an industrialized economy, and the British were more than happy to help, seeing in Japan a counterbalance to Russian and Chinese expansion in the Pacific.

Arthur settled into an officer's life in Tokyo, and gradually found himself fascinated by the culture around him. Too, he has a talent for languages, and soon he meets somone who is going to help him in the study of both Japanese culture and langauge very much.

Masa Suzuki is a young woman from a large, working class family. Unlike many Japanese women, she has had to fend for herself in many ways after being divorced from her husband, and is working in a club for officers. When she meets Arthur, they quickly become friends, and eventually that affection will turn into romantic attachment. When Arthur is sent as an observer to the Russian-Japanese war in Manchuria, he begs Masa to write to him.

Soon begins one of the most remarkable romances that I have ever read about. While only Arthur's letters to Masa have survived -- it is unknown what happened to the ones that she sent -- there are enough references to hers to piece together some of the story. He is caught up in his military career in the British army, and begs for her to join him, and even proposes marriage.
How it all resolves is the hook that keeps the reader going. I found Arthur and Masa's story heartbreaking to read. His letters are tender and passionate, filled with small drawings and stories of his life when he is away from Japan. Always he tells her that he has not forgotten her, and that someday they will be together.

There are extensive footnotes, a bibliography, introduction and afterword, and a great deal of research. An insert of photographs give Arthur and Masa a face and setting, and several maps help to give an idea of time and distance.

For anyone looking for a truly heartrending tale of love and cultural differences, this is an excellent read. The writing flows easily, the authors are not afraid to touch on the realities of a long-distance relationship, and don't try to whitewash some of the uglier aspects of both cultures. It also helped me to understand some of the attitudes that led up to the Second World War, and gives a vivid picture of life for a soldier on active duty far away from home. Too, the letters that Arthur wrote from the trenches in World War I are particularly harrowing.

I happily recommend this to anyone interested in Japanese culture, it's a real eye opener.

Being married to a Japanese woman myself I have a personal interest in this type of story, like the films Sayonara and Heaven & Earth, of those who dealt with the prejudices and sometimes seemingly insurmountable barriers of marrying someone whose race and culture is so different from your own. It is a good reminder that the hoops I had to jump through, the immigration issues and visas, are nothing compared to what others went through in the name of love. And I am also always surprised at the things that have not changed, that the essential customs and hearts of the East and West remain much as they were a hundred years ago. And I have read enough of these stories to know that they seldom have happy endings.

"Sword and Blossom" is fascinating even from its initial premise. An Irish army officer and his Japanese love continue a multi-decade long relationship mainly through letters, as circumstances do not permit them to be together. Beginning in 1904 and going through World War II, they see each other through great upheavals and changes, through Japan's emergence as a world power in the defeat of Russia, through the initial peaceful promise of a British/Japanese alliance, and the bitter struggle as enemies those nations would later endure. Many of these letters survive, carefully packed away in a box to be re-discovered by a later generation who had no inkling of the powerful love and suffering that their grandmother had endured.

Co-authors Peter Pagnamenta and Momoko Williams used these letters as the basis for their story, doing extensive research on the politics and movements of the time to tell the story of Captain Arthur Hart-Synnot and Masa Suzuki, who met in 1904 and fell in love while Hart-Synnot was stationed in Japan. Unlike most men of the time, who treated their Japanese women as "temporary wives," Arthur was truly in love with Masa, and dreamed of a future where they could be married, raise children and live in happiness and comfort. This love endured monumental circumstances, as Arthur's army career had him stationed in places as distant as Burma and India as well as fighting on the front in World War I.

Aside from the love story, I really enjoyed the historical aspects of "Sword and Blossum" as well. I knew very little about the British/Japanese alliance pre-dating WWI, when both nations saw themselves as reflections of each other, small island countries that had made themselves masters of their respective spheres. The "English Gentleman" and the Samurai were seen as two sides of the same coin, and the two countries felt that they would forge the future together.

The story of Arthur and Masa is ultimately a slightly frustrating one, as that dream of perfect happiness seems to be continually in their grips if only they would close their hands. It was not legal issues that kept them apart. In the same year that they met, Arthur's countryman Lafcadio Hearn was living happily with his Japanese wife and their brood of children. But Arthur wanted to marry Masa and bring her to his ancestral estate in Ireland, while Masa would only agree to marry Arthur if he joined her in Japan. In the end, when Arthur eventually marries another woman even though he clearly still loves Masa, it seems like a betrayal of their promise except for the fact that Arthur begged and pleaded with Masa to marry him, only to be refused time and again. To fall in love is easy, but to leave the country you love forever for a place where everything is strange and unwelcome is a daunting prospect indeed.

This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. I read the book three years ago and just now pulled it up in order to buy it as a gift. The negative reviews simply don't represent the the story. It is a love story told in correspondence between the lovers. The editors supply the historical context. The correspondence reveals the longing, dissapointments, anger, guilt, occasional insensitivity of the protagonists and moves towards the kind of conclusion one would expect in real life instead of in a fairy tale. Anyone who has been in love will love this story.

As the title says, it is a biograph of a British officer's romance with a Japanese woman pierced together years later from letters. But it's more than that, it is:

1) It was part a "foreigner's" insight of early 20th century Japan.
2) It was part a British officer's insight of Russo-Japanese War from an observer's point of view that is difficult to find in any other book because of the lack of biographers who were actually there and wrote one.
3) It was part a brief yet personal biograph of WWI Western Front from a British officer's point of view.
4) It was part an illuminative and open narrative of British officer's relationship with young Japanese woman at a time when that was uncommon, or at least not as open.
5) Compelling, yet voyeuristic.
6) For a book that contains all of the above, I find very rare and unusual.
7) I would recommend this book to readers of romance and history.

I did not love nor really hate this book.

Yes, it is a good story idea but the format is what killed the story for me. It is mainly the letters written by Arthur Hart-Synnot along with historical information. Or in Adverage Joe (or Josephine) terms sappy lettas along wit historical rambling.

In the beginning of the book his letters are sweet and you get that warm feeling in your heart. By the time you reach half way through the book the words that were once sweet you now have heard one too many times and now you are rolling your eyes and asking "OMG do I really have to hear this for the rest of the book???" And, "yeah, yeah, yeah. You are Lonely Arthur. Whatever."

If he REALLY loved her to the point were he put her before his own family why didn't he just leave everything for her? One minute he is with his family and he realizes he cares more about her then them, next his excuse for not going was he needed to achieve the status his father and uncle had achieved. Also he wanted a better pension. Yeah, he needs the extra couple of bucks to live in Japan back in that day. Maybe he truly did not want to go.

Regarding the historical information. If you are into that, groovy. Personally, I found it in the way. Sure, you need to know what was going on

This will be more of a a brief comment than a review. This beautiful and tender book will linger in my mind for a very long time. One agonises along with Masa and although one can readily realise and sympathise with the terrible shock Alfred is going through after losing his limbs, he appears to be a thoroughly selfish person, a cad as we say in England. This is a heartbreaker for me and the abandoned mother and son will remain in my mind for ever.

Sword and Blossom: A British Officer's Love for a Japanese Woman - Pagnamenta /Williams
3 stars
This is the true story of the unlikely love affair of a British Army officer and a Japanese woman. In 1904 Arthur Hart-Synnot was sent to Japan to learn the language of a new British ally and to observe action in the Russo-Japanese war. It is at this time that he falls in love with Masa Suzuki. The story of this unique relationship has been reconstructed from the more than 800 letters found preserved after Masa's death in 1965. Arthur Hart-Synnod emerges as flawed human being. His values and emotional deficits are remnants of the 19th century. The authors use excerpts of Arthur's letters to help Arthur and Masa come alive as sincere people trying, under impossible conditions, to preserve a loving relationship. It is a story of real people,not fiction and not an opera.It deals with both the mundane and the survival needs of two people caught in the catastrophic changes of the 20th century.
For the most part, I found it to be an interesting read. The personal tribulations of Masa, Arthur and their sons were balanced by historical references and the inclusion of photographs.