Book Review – The Laws of Evening By:
Randolph Giudice The characters in The Laws of Evening, Mary Yukari Waters’ short story collection
about post-war Japan, excel at taking things in stride. Amidst hardship,
loss of life, and the ultimate Westernization of their country after World
War II, the protagonists in these elegant stories manage to keep up
appearances. Beyond contending with the devastating
effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
post-war reconstruction forced the Japanese people to come to grips with
the fact that their future government would ultimately be fashioned by
their conquerors. Now confronted, as Waters puts it, by an “American
government, which has switched with dizzying speed, from enemy to ally”,
these stories center on themes of transcendence, displaying the fortitude
of the Japanese people. Donald Richie, the West’s foremost expert
on Japan, has said that the Japanese mind reminds him most “of the
Japanese garden, which is a place that nature plainly made but which man
has just as plainly ordered.” Thus, Japanese culture, while ordering
nature, never quite escapes it. Appropriately, the lion’s share of
Waters’ stories takes place under shade trees, in gardens, free spaces
for the energies of day to transform into the meditations of evening. In the story, “Since They Burned My House
Down,” a Japanese mother must contend with Western forces all around
her; not only is she being removed from her kitchen, her grandson is
turning American right before her eyes. Forks and knives glisten among her
daughter-in-law’s “English china with the malevolence of surgical
instruments.” Finding herself hemmed in by the “vaguely threatening”
whiff of American tomato sauce, she is surrounded by Western customs she
cannot understand. In the charming story, “Egg-face”, a young,
traditional Japanese woman with no prospects is fixed up on a date with an
attractive Japanese man who is so American that he is unrecognizable. In
the haunting “Kami”, a woman who has lost one husband to war, and one
to cancer, is obsessed with staying happy in the face of old age and a
changing country. In the “Laws of Evening”, Mrs. Kimura, a housewife,
realizes that her life has been wasted. Revelations in these fictions
arrive with the departure of the sun: “She recognized in this evening
the quicksilver quality, the shifting groundlessness, of her dreams. And
it seemed to her that here was life’s essence, revealed as it never
could be in the level light of day.” In a classic Taoist parable, a father
imparts wisdom to his son by teaching him to live with both tragedy and
good fortune. When the son breaks his leg after falling from his horse he
is inconsolable. “How unfortunate I am!” he shouts. His father smiles
and says: “We will see.” Later, because of his injury, the boy avoids
being drafted into a war that takes the lives of all his friends. “How
fortunate I am!” the boy declares. “We will see,” says his father.
After going on like this for an allegorical eternity, the son finally
learns to accept all life’s offerings, good and bad. One character in this wonderful collection
captures this sentiment even more clearly, recalling the simple words of a
childhood poem: “Since my house burned down, I now own a better view of
the rising moon.” The
Laws of Evening, by
MaryYukari Waters |