Analysis of Gail Tsukiyama's novel The Samurai's Garden - Book Report/Review Example

The Samurai’s Garden This story has three main characters, Stephen, Matsu and Sachi. Each one of them is plagued with loneliness that has affected their life. This trio develops a friendship and with each having a unique strength and a weakness they come together and achieve happiness despite their hardships and suffering that they would not have achieved on their own. Stephen is sent to his grandparents’ beach house in Tarumi so that he will recover from his tuberculosis and to prevent him from infecting his younger sister, Penelope (Tsukiyama 20).

When Stephen moves to Tarumi, he thinks he will die of boredom and homesickness but things take a different course from his thoughts. His love for painting that he had thought would keep him busy when he is bored actually brings him friends. When he arrives in Tarumi, the caretaker of their beach house in Tarumi whose name is Matsu receives him. Matsu not only nonchalant about Stephen’s arrival but seems unhappy with the intrusion. He only engages a talk with Stephen when necessary. While in there, Stephen matures and falls in love with a Japanese maiden by the name Keiko.

However, this love is short lived to their racial differences and the Keiko’s father hate towards Chinese for killing his son, who was among the Japanese soldiers fighting. Stephen’s respect for his father stops when discovers that he has an extramarital affair that he is not intending to stop and this breaks the marriage of his parents (Tsukiyama 85). Matsu warms up towards Stephen probably from what he was going through and he even invites him to go visit a friend of his called Sachi. Sachi is put across as the character that has been through the most severe torture and isolation.

She was Tomoko’s, Matsu’s sister, best friend. They use to play together when they were young. Tomoko developed a rush that was later diagnosed as leprosy. Rather than bring shame to her family, she chose to take her own life (Tsukiyama 156). She discovered that she had developed the same rash but unlike her late friend, had no guts to commit suicide (Tsukiyama 137). Her parents and fiance reject her and only Matsu is empathetic with her. She is forced to live in exile with lepers like herself in a lepers’ village called Yamaguchi with no freedom to interact with the rest of the society.

At first, she is scared of the other lepers due to how they are disfigured but with time, she begins to feel at home thanks to Matsu’s encouragement. Her once beautiful self is disfigured to a point of being rated as ugly. The only person who visits her is Matsu and it seems she is alive because of him and for him. It could be that with time Sachi found out that Matsu needed her as much as she needed him. Matsu’s life seems to be full of contentment in the quiet village of Tarumi. However it seems most of the contentment comes from the relationship he shared with Sachi.

The care and unconditional love that he shows to her is more than just a friendship. He was her sole visitor in Yamaguchi until Stephen came. The story of their past they narrate to Stephen and the events that unfold in the beach house tell of a love triangle between Sachi, Matsu, and Kenzo (Sachi’s fiance who rejected her after she was infected with leprosy). Kenzo was once Matsu’s best friend and their friendship lasted until the day Kenzo discovered the relationship they shared with Sachi.

Kenzo feels betrayed to an extent of deciding to take his own life without wanting