The Samurai's Daughter (Hardcover)

~ Sujata Massey (Author) "Way too salty. I bet the chef used instant dashi powder..." (more)
Key Phrases: staircase chest, comfort women, new cell phone, San Francisco, Charles Sharp, Ramon Espinosa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

All California-born Rei Shimura really wants is to lead her quiet life in Tokyo as an antiques dealer while learning more about her Japanese relatives, but Massey, of course, has other plans for her in this absorbing cross-cultural puzzle, the sixth in the series (after 2001's The Bride's Kimono). On her way home from Washington, D.C., Rei stops in San Francisco to spend Christmas with her parents and do some research on Japanese decorative objects, including some belonging to her family. Her Scottish boyfriend, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, is involved in a reparation case for victims who were used as slave labor by corporations during WWII. Holiday festivities take on an edge when the woman Hugh is in town to question is murdered, Rei uncovers some potentially disturbing information about her own family's role in the war and a young Japanese medical student boarding with the family disappears. All trails seem to lead to Tokyo, where Rei returns to her beloved apartment and her relatives hoping for resolution. She and Hugh, however, soon find themselves embroiled in some very nasty business leading to her deportation back to San Francisco. Massey poses some deeply resonating questions about guilt and responsibility, while Rei faces some universal truths about families, loyalty and dealing with the past no matter how unpleasant it may be. Hugh's Christmas proposal guarantees intriguing complications ahead. FYI: Massey has won Agatha and Macavity awards.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

After briefly veering off course with The Bride's Kimono (2001), Massey is squarely back on track with this sixth, and possibly best, entry in her series starring young Japanese American Rei Shimura. This time the action takes place both in San Francisco, where Rei's parents reside, and in Rei's home city of Tokyo. Deciding to take a brief sabbatical from her antiques business, Rei is researching Shimura family history, in particular, how the family lived before dramatic modernization in the 1960s. Rei's boyfriend, Scottish attorney Hugh Glendinning, is researching a lawsuit that also involves Japanese history: restitution for Asian women forced into prostitution by large Japanese companies during World War II. The couple's blissful time together is soon shattered when one of Hugh's clients is killed and another seriously wounded. To make matters worse, both Rei and Hugh's projects initiate several confrontations with Rei's Japanese father. Massey deftly weaves fascinating historical and cultural detail into a suspenseful plot. A cliffhanger ending leaves the door open for the series to chart more new territory. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212901
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212906
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #923,671 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 6 in The Rei Shimura Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It had to happen sooner or later, March 24, 2003

By	Erik Fischer - See all my reviews

Even the best authors write at least one book that's not quite up to their usually excellent standard. Let me start with stating, that i am a devoted fan of Massey's work, and her heroine Rei Shimura. The next installment in the series chronicling Rei's mis-/adventures as a struggling antiques dealer and reluctant sleuth is always an eagerly awaited pleasure for me. That said i must confess i was a bit disappionted by this, the latest volume. As has been stated by some of the other reviewers, what makes Masseys books such a treat isn't so much the cases themselves, as the fascinating glimpses she gives us of life in japan (as experienced by a westener) and japanese culture in general. Since The Samurai's Daughter for a large part plays in San Francisco i had already resigned myself to my 'nippon fix' being somewhat diluted, but what was offered was even less than i had feared. Don't get me wrong, it's great to find out a bit more about the Shimura family and Rei's pre japan life,

but i'm afraid it isn't interesting enough to occupy half a book with i'm afraid. Still this would be forgiveable, would it serve as set up for Rei's return to japan, and were the crime investigated truly engrossing, but unfortunately neither is the case. The end of the story sees Rei back where she started from, unlikely to return to her home of choice before the end of the next book, and the 'case', never Masseys strong suit, is i'm afraid an utter, incoherent mess, that completely failed to grip me (it's finally 'solved', if you will call it that, not so much through logical deduction, but rather a chain of lucky coincidences and the elimination of all other possible suspects aka authorial handwaving). Massey can do, and in the past has done, _much_ better. About Rei's 'great epiphany', that belonging to a particular nationality/race doesn't automatically make you a virtous, better human being, and that the japanese people, like everybody else, are made up of individuals, both good and bad, the less said the better. In conclusion it's a book for Massey's fans(and i will definitely buy the next one, and the one after that, and...), but newcomers should start with her earlier works, and, if Rei is their kind of sleuth, buy this volume once it comes out in paperback.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner from Massey, September 4, 2003

By	W. Carol "dog lover" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This latest in the delightful Rei Shimura series finds our intrepid Japanese-American once again up to her delicate neck in mystery and mayhem--with a bit of intrigue and a lot of love interest thrown in.

Stuck with her parents in their San Francisco homestead, Rei is in turn pleased to be spoiled, and chafing under the bit to get back to her privacy in Japan. But she has a strange house guest, a native Japanese student, to contend with--as well as the ardent courtship of her long-time boyfriend, the sexy Scots lawyer Hugh Glendinning.

While contending with the usual East-West contradictions of her everyday life, Rei is contenting herself with researching and writing her family's history. But she uncovers more than she bargained for when it turns out that her grandfather actually tutored Emperor Hirohito--and may have been part of a right-wing Japanese political group that fostered the ultimate events of World War II. Now Rei has to face the Japan of the War, and contrast it with the modern-day Japan, her much-beloved adopted country--and the country of her father.

Add to that the top-secret case that Hugh is working on, which concerns reparations for Japanese war crimes, and one gets an idea of Rei's state of mind. For the first time, she becomes distant from her father and her family as she searches her soul for who she really is.

The answer is there, and always has been, for the enchanted reader to see--and when Rei ultimately finds herself, there is a wonderful treat in store for her and for us.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Moderately Diverting, March 9, 2003

By	G. Mackenzie "gmackenz" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The joy I get out of reading this author's series of mysteries is mainly from the exotic nature of the Japanese culture and the California-native Rei's interactions within it. This book (and the last one) take place mostly in the US. So my joy is muted. I do get pleasure out of learning a lot more about the main character's father and mother and of some of her past life (before living in Japan). As I *am* a San Francisco Bay Area native, the local SF scenes and characters didn't really ring true for me. I don't think the author captured us all that well. It's always more interesting to encounter the alien than the familiar for me as a reader (so maybe I am bit biased? Blase?).

I hope the next book (I surely hope there's one or two more) will again take place in the unfamiliar territory (to me) of Japan. I have always enjoyed the comedic aspects of the interactions of a foreigner who looks like native yet still is "gaijin" no matter how hard she tries to fit into the Japanese culture.

Would she have been more Japanese if she had a Japanese mother than a Japanese Father? So my girlfriend asks me while I type.