Maw Books

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Suzanne Kamata, the author of Losing Kei has written a book that I kept forgetting was fiction while I was reading it.  A couple of times I had to stop myself and remind myself that I was not reading a memoir.  I can’t remember this happening to me before which bodes well with the book as I felt the situation and the characters were real enough to  me that I thought everything had really happened.  Which isn’t to say that the events in the book couldn’t have happened because Suzanne Kamata has me convinced that it can happen and probably has.

Our main character, Jill Parker is an American artist who has moved to Japan as a means to escape a broken heart, a place where she will not be reminded at every street corner of her ex-boyfriend.  Jill fully intends to immerse herself in the entire culture and Toyko is to big, to busy, and has to many foreigners.  She finds a smaller seaside town and settles in.  She mets an American man who introduces her to many friends, gets a job as a hostess in a bar and even finds herself beginning to paint again.  Yusuke, an art gallery owner likes her paintings and puts together a show for her.  Jill and Yusuke discover that their shared interest isn’t just in the paintings but rather for each other.

Jill and Yusuke marry and it’s not long before Jill begins to realize exactly what the role of a wife should be in Japan.  Living with Yusuke’s mother isn’t easy as she is harsh, cold, and tradition bound in the sense where they serve the men in the house with no thought for themselves.  Jill is expected to conceive an heir to the house, a boy named Kei, and when she does she still feels small and insignificant.  She decides divorce is the only way out but she soon discovers that doing so means that she must give up custody of her son Kei.  In Japan, foreigners have no rights to their children, she is expected to go back home and leave her little boy with her ex-husband’s family.

Jill won’t give up easily and doesn’t go home.  Instead, she sneaks around trying to catch glimpses of him from time and time, stalks her mother in-law’s house and convinces the babysitter to meet them at the playground.  Jill has only one option left and that’s to kidnap her own son and try to take him back to America with her.  But trying to do so means risking everything, even Kei himself.

Losing Kei is about love lost, love discovered, cultural expectations and misunderstanding and how far one will go to gain back that which they’ve lost.  I was fascinated with the Japanese custody laws and truly felt sorry for all those who have made families in Japan only to have them ripped apart by laws that make no sense.

This particular passage tells the story of what Jill is fighting against really well:

I called my mother a couple of days after the divorce.

“What do you mean you lost Kei?”  She demanded.  “What on earth did you do?”

“Nothing.”

[. . . ]

“You must have done something.  Did you have an affair?”

I hadn’t heard that tone in at least ten years, not since she’d found a joint in my windbreaker pocket.  What did I have to do earn her sympathy?

“I did not have an affair,” I said, getting a little bit testy.  “If I did anything wrong, it was being born in another country.  They won’t let me have him because they’re afraid that I would take him out of Japan.  He’s the heir of the house of Yamashiro.  The only one.”

My lack of income and lodging, my desertion – all of those were nothing compared to this fact of heredity.  On top of that,the Yamashiro family had connections.  I did not.  For all I knew, they were paying off the judge.

I could hear my mother’s intake of breathe, could envision her adjusting the cardigan at her shoulders.  “You’ll see him on weekends, won’t you?” Her reasonable voice.  ” And during the holidays.”

“That will be up to Yusuke and his mother,” I said.  “There is no such thing as joint custody in this country.”

The silence that followed lasted so long that I thought she’d hung up.

“Mom?  Are you there?”

I thought I heard a sniffle.

“Are you telling me, Jill, that I might not be able to see my grandson again?”

Losing Kei is told in alternating time lines from when Suzanne is fighting for her child in 1997 and when she first arrived in 1989, a technique which I think works well for this type of story.  Suzanne writes in a beautiful straightforward manner and it’s a book which I would recommend.

Like I mentioned earlier, Losing Kei felt very believable to me probably because Suzanne Kamata has lived in Japan with her native husband and their two children for the past twenty-one years!  Suzanne was gracious enough to participate in an author interview and share with us some great insight into Japanese custody laws, what it’s like to live in a foreign country and raise multi-cultural children.  I especially enjoyed the insight into differences in literacy between Japan and the United States.  I will have that interview up for you tomorrow so make sure you don’t miss it!

So what would you do if you found yourself in a foreign land unable to gain custody of your child?  Would you go back home empty handed, stay and try to fight, or like Jill, risk it all and try to kidnap your own child?  Tough questions.  What would you do?

Links of interest:  Suzanne Kamata website.
Genre:  Fiction
Publisher: Leapfrog Press.  January 1, 2008
Paperback, 216 pages.  ISBN: 0972898492
Losing Kei is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

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