Book Review

Whispers of Hirohito

Mary Wakefield, The Daily Telegraph

THE FOURTH TREASURE

Todd Shimoda's The Fourth Treasure tells the story of Hanako and Tina Suzuki, Japanese immigrants living in modern-day California. Instead of struggling to protect her cultural heritage, Tina, a graduate student at Berkeley, begins to discover it after meeting her boyfriend's calligraphy teacher, the Zenzen sensei. The Zenzen sensei is old. He has had a stroke and can no longer communicate, but, using the ancient Daizen inkstone, he draws unintelligible Japanese characters of his own devising. Spliced into Tina's life are chapters describing the Zenzen sensei as a young man in Kyoto in 1975.

Most absorbing are the different kanji (Japanese characters) which are demonstrated and explained in the margins of each page. "The characters -- kimochii no ii -- literally mean 'pleasant feeling'," we are told. "Ki meaning spirit was abstracted from the vapor rising above cooked rice, Mochi, the next two characters, are derived from the meaning of ''hold with the hands' which metaphorically means to 'endure'. The last characters, no ii, mean 'good', 'right', 'nice', and the like."

There is a whiff of hokey mysticism about the Daizen inkstone, an Oriental holy grail which imbues great and pure calligraphers with special drawing powers, but The Fourth Treasure is well-constructed and engaging enough to carry it off. More difficult to pass over are the half-page illustrations of the Zenzen sensei's drawings. Large, black-brushed swirls are accompanied by text in italics. One, an upside-down heart with a little tail is entitled, "I know him / I like him / I love him / for years / still he / melts my / heart". This lapse into twee becomes less mystifying once you turn to the front of the book and discover that the artist, LJC Shimoda, is Todd Shimoda's wife.

Copyright 2003 The Daily Telegraph