I am a big fan of Seidensticker; one of the biggest, I am sure. Seidensticker mentioned this book in his memoir, Tokyo Central, saying that he had a hard time publishing it, even though he thought it better than a number of other books on the market. I will agree, to an extent; it's not the worst book I read this year. Unfortunately, it was fairly close.

This is an epistolary novel, with letters going between two Americans, Mr. George Brown and Prof. Hilda Gray, and a Japanese woman, Yoko Shiraito. From these, a plot emerges, even if haltingly: Shiraito works in a company where something shady is going on, and her sister is involved in a student revolt; Brown is a journalist working to find out what's happening in the company, and likely has an affair with Shiraito; Gray is friends with first Brown and then Shiraito, and is working on the women's movement in Japan.

It's hard to figure out all the plot, even by the end of the book, since it's written in an oblique way. This is an attempt by Seidensticker to get in the Japanese lyrical style, where people rarely come out and say anything, and that's fine, as it goes, as long as you can actually tell if you read between the lines what happened. With the corruption storyline, I'm not sure you can, though, so that's a problem.

The worst parts, though, are stylistic, sadly. The letters are written in the classical Japanese style, so there's a lot of talk about the weather at the start of each, a short poem, and well-wishes at the end. This is okay, say, for a short story, but 67 letters over a little under 200 pages, and you hear a lot about the weather, and not enough about the plot.

Also, Seidensticker gets cutesy and makes reference both to himself (and not even slyly) and to personality, although you have to know Japanese to get it (an unsexy person is named Mr. Irokenai; the head of the corrupt corporation is named Mr. Kuromaku; etc.). That might fly in a farce, but this isn't one, and so it really detracts from it.

It's not bad; the characters are all right, at least, and there's some good Seidensticker wit in it, but all in all, it's disappointing. I can't really recommend this one to anyone except those like me: diehard Seidensticker fan. And even to them, it's only a curiosity. ( )