21 Japan – The flower mat – Shugoro Yamamoto (Score 7.0)

This book opens in 1768. In Japan it is the 165^th year of the Tokugawa shogunate which ran from 1603 to 1867. Tokugawa Ieharu, 10^th shogun, is ruling. He ruled from 1760 to 1786.

The Imperial House is currently led by Empress Go-Sakuramachi, (23 September 1740 – 24 December 1813), near the start of her reign which lasted from 1762 to 1771. She was the last Empress.

The story revolves round a year in the life of the Kugata, a samurai family. The protagonist is Ichi, the wife of Shinzo. Shinzo appears to have become involved in some clandestine, possibly dangerous, affairs. He has taken in a man who is clearly a fugitive, and he and others have secret meetings. These others are brought to the house covertly, and are never introduced.

Late one night there is the sound of fighting with katana, and Ichi and the family are forced to flee from the house into the countryside, leaving Shinzo and others to resist the attackers.

Shinzo is probably dead. Ichi is ready to give birth, prematurely. Her mother-in-law, Iso, is old and her brother Tatsuya is the sole support in their flight. Ichi gives birth to a girl. Later we learn an unexpected side to Tokugawa Japanese mores. A mother is expected, if required, to sacrifice her child to save the life of her mother-in-law. Nothing was said about her own mother.

We are half way through the book before we find the significance of the title. A “flower mat” is like a tatami, but twice the size. Flower mats have patterns woven into them using died rushes. The tatami are made with wick grass and are still used to floor Japanese houses. This is believed to be the original cause of the requirement to remove shoes at the threshold, and to don slippers provided by the house owners.

Ichi takes up a job weaving flower mats, as a complete beginner, intending to do so well that she can start her own company. Many samurai and their families, in later years, went into business, especially after the Meiji Restoration when the Emperors took control and the shogunate lost power, making most samurai masterless and redundant.

At the same time Japan’s three hundred and fifty years of peace was brought to an end by the threat of American, English and French invasion in the 1860s and by the consequent Satsuma rebellion against the shogunate. A few years ago this was made into a film.

Ultimately, in our story, there is a natural disaster, there are deaths, there is rebellion and there is recovery.

Altogether, though, while this story dealt to an extent with the events of the period, I was rather disappointed in the book and could only score it at six.

20 Zimbabwe – The tale of Tamari – Shimmer Chinodya – February 2015 (Score 6.85)

I have to admit to a mistake when I selected this book as one of the options which I put to the group for February 2015. Although I knew that Chinodya also writes books for children, I did not pick up from the Amazon information that this is one of them.

It is very short (just over 50 pages) and written in a much simpler style than we have previously found when we read Chinodya. It is a simple story, written in plain, straightforward English in short sentences, and not at all challenging for experienced adult readers.

I think it probably meets the needs of its target audience very well, and I believe that it would encourage young readers to keep on reading, and possibly to move on to Chinodya’s more challenging books, and other authors, from Africa and elsewhere. We enjoy our “World Reading” and hope others do to.

I read the book in a couple of hours (certainly not skimming). I treated it with the serious consideration due to any of our selections, and in fact to all serious and not-so-serious literature.

With all the above in mind, and thinking how well it met its purpose, I scored it at 8.0.