Book review: War is a waste. It’s a waste of people, it’s a waste of resources, and still we justify it to ourselves on grounds that may or may not have any reasonable validity. Part of that judgment is surely cultural: is this principle worth dying for, worth killing for, or would another response be better? I know what side I’m coming down on in Gate to Kagoshima, and I think it’s different from the author’s.
The novel is a time travel romance à la Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books, except instead of an Englishwoman transported back to 18th-century Scotland, it’s a modern-day Scottish woman sent back to 19th-century Japan. (Gabaldon’s influence here is plain, and there’s more than a whiff of self-insertion when the ancestor of Kagoshima’s heroine is also named Kuroki.)
The romance, however, is less well-developed than the setting. Isla, who’s come to Japan to research a samurai ancestor, is caught in a supernatural storm and finds herself embroiled in the Satsuma Rebellion, in which the samurai, led by the popular Japanese hero Takamori Saigō, revolted against the imperial government’s removal of their military role and associated privileges. Isla, knowing that the samurai’s last stand will result in massive slaughter and the end of the samurai class, nonetheless falls in love with the warrior Keiichirō and follows him to war.
This is where the story gets more effective and, paradoxically, falls off the wagon. The samurai are fighting new wars with old weapons, and swords against guns and superior logistics is a grossly uneven fight. Superior technology doesn’t always win in a war but it mostly does; Isla and Keiichirō know there won’t be any miracle victory here.
I read the book, and I don’t want the miracle. Yes, the half of the book that details the war is awful and bloody; likeable characters die in hideous ways. I know I’m supposed to sympathise, to feel that this last stand is a terrible romantic bravery, but it’s all too futile to admire. Kuroki’s periodic attempts to put a soft filter over horror don’t help: when a samurai commits the ritual suicide of seppuku, disembowelling himself with a dagger, he does it remembering the face of his dead samurai lover, and dies “in rapture”. Come on, now. This is agonising death being romanticised here; there should be nothing pretty about it.
That romanticism comes across as convenient, and it’s not the only thing that does. Keiichirō refuses to shoot a man who has only a sword on the grounds that it’s an unfair fight and therefore dishonourable, but four pages later he’s killing enemy soldiers in their sleep. He’s also engaged to Nene, which complicates his potential relationship with Isla, but two-thirds of the way through the book Nene reveals she’s actually in love with someone else, so problem solved!
For all the grief and bloodshed, there’s something glossy and superficial here; a desire to provoke emotion without looking too deeply past the surface. Isla laments the modern-day tourist remembrances of the last battle, wondering, “How could people visit here as a fun day out when it was the place the samurai tradition died?” Fair enough. Tragedy is terrible. But individual merit aside, do we really want the continuation of a tradition that encourages thousands to participate in this sort of futile slaughter of others and of self? Kuroki refuses to really engage with this particular question, preferring to romanticise history and horror, and the book is weaker for it.
