two tales

memoirs of a geisha - arthur golden (1997)

colonel bullfrog - jeffrey archer (1988)

for the first time in my adult life i read of a japan that reels from the ravages of the second world war as much as syonan-to does, or of the japanese suffering through the 1930's and 1940's as much as the chinese and malayans and burmese do. hitherto i have known only how inhumanly cruel they were, but not that they shed bitter tears for their own losses too. it is a reminder not to be arrogantly righteous because we see so little of the whole.

and yet, sayuri is right when she says, i don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it. i think it is only because i am two generations away from 1940 that i read with a sense of wonder and not of anguish or outrage.