Jasmine
(Jasumin)

ENGLISH / Juliet W. Carpenter 

Bungeishunju (2004)

 

Tanehiko Waki was working in a Shanghai film studio when he suddenly disappeared. His son, Akihiko, was three at that time. Over thirty years later, Akihiko—now a shrewdly competent director of the local unit of a foreign-based think tank—sets out for Shanghai to try to track down his father, who he believes may still be alive somewhere in mainland China.

It seems that Tanehiko may have been a double agent. Apparently, he had returned to China soon after his post-war repatriation to Japan in response to a plea from his lover, who had been sentenced to be executed, and it was unclear whether he had lived on or died after that. However, there are rumors that the Chinese government is also in pursuit of Tanehiko.

The embers of the Tian'anmen Massacre are still smoldering when Akihiko arrives in Shanghai and encounters Li Xing, an actress who is on the run from the authorities because she is the lover of a pro-democracy activist. Clinging to Akihiko, pleading for help, she asks him to let her stay in his hotel suite. In this way, the two begin a strange-but-sweet period of cohabitation, with Akihiko following in his father's footsteps regarding involvement in perilous love affairs.

But their life together does not last long. Being pursued by security forces, Li Xing directs Akihiko to flee, and she herself makes haste to unknown whereabouts.

Four years after parting with Li Xing, Akihiko presents a formal request for the investigation of his father to the Chinese consul, with whom he had become acquainted at the funeral of a friend. A year after that, the consul's wife Li Yan comes to Japan, but this "Li Yan" turns out to be Li Xing. What will become of the couple's love after their chance reunion? And will the reunion of Akihiko and Tanehiko come to be? This is a masterpiece romantic novel that vividly portrays its era.

 

GENRE: Literary fiction