FUJIRAMA: RE-WRITING JAPAN [Kindle Edition]
Philip J Cunningham (Author)
Published January 1, 2015
BY CHERYL CHOW
I don’t think I’ve read any other book where the main characters were from three such disparate cultures: the United States, China, and Japan. As a Chinese-American who has lived and worked in Tokyo, I was totally intrigued by how the author portrayed the interactions between the three main characters who each hailed from a different country. It was interesting too, to see how well he captured the cultural differences.
I found the plot to be intriguing; not at all what you’d expect. It wasn’t a hackneyed story of a beautiful Asian woman falling for a handsome American hero. It’s a thoroughly contemporary story set in modern-day Japan. The main protagonist, Collin Long, a charming and charismatic American, is something of an anti-hero. He works as a rewriter for a Japanese TV news department. His colleague, Jianghong Wang, is an ambitious Chinese woman from Fujian. She is the personal assistant to the station’s beautiful and “perfect” anchorwoman, Miki Matsu.
The story is primarily told through the viewpoint of Collin, the American rewriter. He’s the ultimate outsider, a “gaijin”—foreigner—doomed to remain forever in the fringes of Japanese society, which is still somewhat xenophobic after all these years of internationalization. Collin, who is both naïve and individualistic, not only misses subtle cues from the Japanese around him, he refuses to toe the line.
In stark contrast, Jianghong the Chinese woman twists herself in a pretzel to fit in, so much so that she hates it when anyone notices her ethnicity. But she fails to squash her personality completely, or her attraction to Collin, which simmers in the background even as she keeps him at arm’s length. Collin truly cares for her, but they never quite connect because of his penchant for going after every skirt he sees.
As a celebrity who’s idolized and widely admired, Miki is the true “insider.” The irony is that she’s deeply unhappy, suffocated by her fame and the public façade she’s forced to maintain. She secretly begins to envy the “nobody” foreigners who can never gain admittance into the inner circles of Japanese high society—their very status as an outsider accords them a freedom she can never hope to enjoy. Maybe this is why she keeps not just Jianghong, but Collin by her side.
When the story starts, Collin suddenly finds that he’s not only lost his cushy, if meaningless job, he’s being unceremoniously kicked out of Japan. Why, he doesn’t have a clue. While in the process of being deported, he manages to escape the clutches of the authorities—and thus his life on the lam as an outlaw “gaijin” begins. The first thing he does is to seek refuge in Jianghong’s apartment. Events unfold from there for a really wild ride—all the way up to Mt. Fuji.
One thing I can say about the book was that I was really entranced by the author’s writing style. I loved his description of Tokyo coming alive in the morning:
“Millions of punctilious citizens trudge to and fro, transporting themselves from tatami to linoleum, from bedroom to boardroom, getting up a little early and walking a little faster so as not to be a minute late. Commuters scurry into subways, escaping the rattle and hum of surface traffic for the reassuring subterranean clamor of the underground train. Coffee is quaffed, toast crunched, rice balls munched and hard-boiled eggs are consumed on the go.
“Building by building, block by block, a warm tangerine glow beats back the cool shadows of night. Subways slither through banked tunnels into crowd-engorged stations; cars hurtle along walled-in highways, while up above, whispering jets scratch the sky, exuding iridescent vapor trails. To the west, the cloud cover is sundered by unseen winds, unveiling a distinct snowy mound.”
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(The above comments are based on a review copy provided by the author)
