I wanted to read and review this book for two reasons. First, I was captivated by the very attractive cover illustration by Kawase Hasui. Second, I myself had visited the city of Kanazawa in 2021 – though my visit was short, I did manage to see some of the more important sights, such as the old quarters, the castle, and Kenrokuen Garden, in, as it happened, the height of cherry blossom season. It gave the impression of a city that would repay many visits, in many seasons. I thought the novel would help me learn more about it.

Kanazawa seemed to me to be a very civilized place, with plenty of art, beauty and culture. But also, it seemed very dark. The dark and cold of the long winters seemed to produce an atmosphere that hung over the city even when warm and decorated with gorgeous blossoming trees. As well as culture, Kanazawa has within its bones the atmosphere of blizzards blowing from cold Korea and China across the Japan Sea, a very different feeling from those other cities – Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe – which face the bright Pacific and the dawn in the east. It is also near the looming mountain known as Hakusan, which forms the backdrop for many of the scenes in the novel.

Reviewing fiction always has the possibility of spoiler alerts, and doubly so here, with so many people in this group and elsewhere that have a deep connection with this city. But I will do my best, without giving away (I hope) too much of the novel. 

This, to me, was a story of longing. It is the story of two couples, a Western man, Emmitt, and his Japanese wife Mirai, and her mother and father, all living in the same house in Kanazawa. They all long for different things. There are many sparsely drawn but affecting scenes of the young people’s marriage, each partner longing and hoping for some fulfillment in life, and both suffering when they realize that the separate longings they have may take them away from each other. Meanwhile, the father longs to return to a talent he gave up years ago, which deepened his relationship with his wife, and she, in her turn, longs to be part of the revivification of famed Kanazawa writer Izumi Kyoka through the English translation of his works, in which she hopes to be assisted by her son-in-law. 

Even Izumi Kyoka himself longed – for his mother, who died when he was very young; “that longing motivated his works. It gave his writing distinction.” This is a story containing lots of literary and artistic references. The mother and her foreign son-in-law have literature in common; the father and daughter, the visual arts (he drawing and she flower arrangement). This seems to be a microcosm of Kanazawa itself, with its rich cultural history. Most of the characters in the novel are either actively involved in some artistic pursuit, or take its existence and importance for granted. 

In another way Kanazawa provides a rich backdrop for the story of these four people. There is always the push-pull between modernity and tradition. Some of the characters are fascinated by the past, and the beauty of the traditional, either within their own lives or in that of the city; others are attracted to other places far away, especially Tokyo. The foreign protagonist wants to stay in Kanazawa for a simple reason: he feels he has only scratched the surface of a city he feels instinctively to be his spiritual home. He is fascinated by the glimpses of tradition he sees all around him. He also becomes captivated by the natural beauty around the small hot spring town of Shiramine, at the foot of Hakusan, and his fate becomes unexpectedly tied to this town after an impulsive decision.

Meanwhile the father-in-law has been injured, and to rehabilitate himself, starts taking long walks. He also gets in trouble for his obsessive drawing of the statues found around Kanazawa. It seems to me that he is resisting getting older, with all its changes: changing relationships with his grown children, and his decreasing ability to rely on his own body. He fixates on the idea of climbing Hakusan, where a friend died years ago. This longing of his affects Emmitt, who himself has been thinking of climbing the mountain. When the family are at Shiramine, the father suddenly disappears, and finding him again entails both men climbing part of the mountain, which results in some secrets from the past being uncovered and also in some surprising supernatural occurrences.  

This novel leaves the impression of delicately interwoven human relationships set against the rather tough and perhaps even harsh background of unremitting tradition, the imperatives of the past, and the unmoving mountain. Many themes appear, including the choices and compromises necessary in marriage, the beauty of nature and art, and the twists and turns one must go through if one is to find one’s true calling in life. 

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Kanazawa is published by Stone Bridge Press and is available from amazon or amazon.jp. It is David Joiner’s second novel. See his homepage.
Rebecca Otowa is author of books on Japan and Reviews Editor for Writers in Kyoto.