The Commoner: A Novel
by John Burnham Schwartz
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Burnham SchwartzEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-22
ISBN: 0385515715
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Book Reviews of The Commoner: A Novel
Book Review: Excellent Novel Based on the Life of Japan's Empress Michiko
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the story of Japan's Empress Michiko (and to a lesser extent, her daughter-in-law Princess Masako), thinly disguised as fiction. The names have been changed, along with a (very) few insignificant details, but there is no question that this is virtually, if not technically, a biography. I believe the author chose to publish it as fiction only because of the rigidly protected privacy of the Japanese Imperial Family, who would not have otherwise allowed publication of the book. Thus in this review I am using the real names, not the ones of the characters in the book.
Empress Michiko is highly respected and admired - perhaps even revered - all over the world. And that's all I knew about her before reading this book. I did not know that she was born a commoner, the first commoner ever to marry into the Japanese Imperial Family (much less to the Crown Prince himself) in all its centuries-long history. She did this before Princess Di was even born. And suffered the same difficulties in making the adjustment that Diana did, yet we never heard about that due to the extreme privacy of the Japanese nobility. Michiko even had a couple of nervous breakdowns in the 1960's during which she was unable to speak. A large part of the reason for this was the bullying by her mother-in-law, then Empress of Japan.
Yet unlike Diana, Michiko stayed and toughed it out, to end up as the global figure of respect and grace that she is today. Perhaps it helped that there truly seems to be genuine love between Michiko and her husband. But anyone who's had a long-term marriage knows that that didn't happen by accident, but because the couple worked to make it happen.
And now her daughter-in-law Masako is undergoing the same suffering. For Masako, the cultural shock is even worse. She grew up in the Western world and was accustomed to the freedom and independence of a highly intelligent, wealthy, and highly educated young career woman. She understood (apparently far better than either Michiko or Diana did) what it would mean to marry the Crown Prince. No wonder it took six years of courtship and several rejected marriage proposals before she finally agreed to it under enormous pressure from her own family as well as the Japanese Imperial Family and the entire country of Japan.
The Japanese court is far more medieval and rigid in its protocols, rules, and expectations than the English one ever was. Only those brought up in it are able to tolerate such a life successfully. It seems harsh and snobbish, but as long as they continue in such traditions, previous generations of royalty were probably wise to insist that their children do not marry outside of the nobility.
To give some examples of how harsh the protocol is, Michiko was only allowed to visit her family home once after her marriage. She did not see her parents for twenty years. And her parents NEVER saw their grandchildren in real life, only in photos. That's just heartbreaking.
At this time, Masako - formerly a vivacious, happy, and competent young woman - has been retired from public life for about a decade due to mental instability (Adjustment Disorder.)
The book is not a criticism or dismissal of Japanese culture or of their Royal Family. On the contrary, it shows the beauty and strength of both the ancient culture of nobility and the average Japanese person's lifestyle. It simply shows us (without lecturing) the great contrast between, and thus the incompatibility of, the two. The plight of both young women and that of the Court are described with compassion and respect. Like the author, we come to admire and even be amazed at Michiko's hard-won ability to rise above the situation with dignity and elegance.
The book is very well - sometimes even beautifully - written and consistently interesting. Another advantage of writing this as fiction are the dialogues, and the thoughts and feelings of the characters. These allow for great beauty and character development which would not be possible in a straightforward biography.
The ending is completely fictional.
Since this is "a work of fiction", of course there are no photographs. But the interested reader can find many on the Internet. The ones of Michiko's and Masako's weddings are particularly interesting, especially the video of Michiko's wedding where you can see that it takes two women attendants to help hold up Michiko's multi-layered and extremely heavy traditional dress, so that she can walk.
After reading this book, I wanted to learn more about the true story. Little has been written due to the strictly-guarded privacy of the Imperial Family's personal life. But I did find *Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne*, by Ben Hills. (Not surprisingly, there was a huge controversy over its publication and it was banned in Japan.) I've ordered it and will post a review once I've read it.
(Heehee - as I write this, Japanese music is playing on my local classical music radio station. I've never heard that before on this station. Must be fate.)
(351 pages)
Quotes from *The Commoner*:
"One doesn't stop wanting certain things simply because they've been taken away; one simply wants them more. That's what it is to be young. And later in life it is those youthful desires, sharpened by denial, that are the first of the dreams one is coerced into smothering. The trick is to appear to kill desire while actually storing it away in a place so private that no greater authority will ever know of its existence. A kind of bunker, as in a war."
"To lose a daughter to another household is comprehensible; to lose her to another world defeats the mind, to say nothing of the heart. And, once she has committed herself, it is for life. She will never be able to leave that world. She will be sealed in forever."
"You're my daughter - courage isn't a choice for you. Consider it an unreturnable gift from your ancestors. You might think you don't want it now, but when you're my age you'll be thankful."
"But life is not an echo, endlessly returning the past to us so that we might read and reread in its fading variations the meanings we cannot keep ourselves from wanting."
"I have never known a goodbye that was as it should be."
"I've discovered something: it is possible to recover from a catastrophic loss without ever getting over it."
"Because, after a certain point, there is no coming back. For me, that point was Simon's death. For Kenji, it was the fire that destroyed his face. We have all lost something, those of us who are a little strange."
Summary of The Commoner: A Novel
It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman?a rising star in the foreign ministry?to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.
Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet.
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