The Japanese and the Dutch

David Mitchell is a famous author that I somehow missed. And he’s apparently rather hard to miss. Time magazine declared him one of the most influential people on the planet in 2007. The word “genius” keeps cropping up, and critics find comparisons with Tolstoy just inevitable. He has been twice short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He has won many other literary prizes, and he won’t even be 42 years old until Wednesday.

I was telling myself that I had at least heard of his novel, “Cloud Atlas,” but then had to admit that I was probably thinking of another “Cloud Atlas,” the World War II novel set in Alaska by Liam Callanan. Or maybe, it was “The Cloudspotter’s Guide” by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, which is truly about clouds.



Regardless, I have now discovered Mitchell! His latest novel, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” has been on our best-seller shelf since June, but it only came to my attention a few weeks ago. I don’t remember what it was, but something motivated me to request this book through our online catalog system, and with the usual miraculous efficiency, the book appeared with my name on it.

“The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” is a historical novel set in Japan at the very end of the 18th century. Reviewers tell me that the historical genre is a departure for Mitchell; I suspect it may bring him another prize.

In 1799, Japan was largely closed to the rest of the world. There had been trade with the Portuguese, but fear of Christianity led to their expulsion. The Dutch took their place but were confined to an artificial island called Deshima in the Nagasaki harbor. All Christian books were forbidden.

Jacob de Zoet comes to Deshima as a clerk for the Dutch East Indies Company. In exchange for five years service, he hopes to accumulate enough money to return to The Netherlands and marry his fiancee, Anna.

Earnest and devout, Jacob finds himself both repelled and attracted by his glimpses into the Japanese world. Then, through a chance encounter, he meets Orito Aibagawa. Her face disfigured by a childhood accident, Orito, the daughter of a samurai doctor, knows she is “unmarriageable” and has devoted herself to the study of midwifery. Her miraculous intervention in the birth of a powerful magistrate’s son has given her the unheard-of privilege of studying on Deshima with a European doctor.

Jacob becomes obsessed with this woman — a hopeless situation. Only courtesans are allowed to interact with European men on Deshima, and Orito is no prostitute. Jacob is an honorable man; he has not forgotten Anna, and he wants only the best for Orito. But, alas, he is also a young man in the grip of infatuation and far away from home. He will act unwisely with far-reaching consequences.

Mitchell takes his time setting up this novel. The first quarter isn’t boring but seemingly not a lot happens. As I learned the hard way, though, attentive reading will be repaid. Take special note of Mitchell’s skillful, perhaps even manipulative, use of various narrative voices: His is a meticulous and many-layered reconstruction of 18th-century Japan.

Groundwork in place, the novel changes pace. Orito’s father dies and her stepmother sells her to a mysterious remote “nunnery.” Page-turning Gothic suspense, adventure, romance and mystery play out against a backdrop of world politics. It is not until the British sail into Nagasaki Harbor that Jacob will realize that his fate and Orito’s have become inextricably intertwined.

Mitchell’s earlier novels have been hung with the label “experimental fiction.” Perhaps that explains why I “missed” him. Some reviewers have suggested that he wrote “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” to prove that he can play it straight and just tell a story. If so, he has succeeded — this is storytelling at its best.


Photo by Kelvin Cheong (Creative Commons)