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Title: The Tokaido Road
Author: Lucia St. Clair Robson
Publication Info: Forge 2005
ISBN: 978-0765305206
Genre: Young Adult
This is another I Read This To Push It On The Unsuspecting Bitchery. It’s older, and not totally a romance, but it is a favorite of mine. It takes place in Feudal Japan, and is a version of the story of the 47 Samurai. I remember someone in the comments of… something… asking if both characters in Impulsive were Asian, and that’s it’s rare to get both main characters to be a minority. So here we are (although I planned to do this one long before that conversation even happened).
Cat is the daughter of a daimyo and his “outside wife” (acknowledged mistress). Her father, Lord Asano, had committed ritual suicide after a rival of his, Lord Kira, insulted him in front of the Shogun and Asano drew his sword. It is Very Very Bad to draw your sword in front of the shogun, hence the suicide.
Cat sold herself into prostitution to support her mother (who was left with nothing- acknowledged mistresses are not protected in the death of their lovers, especially when the wife is cranky), but dreams of getting revenge on Kira. So one night, she escapes from the Pleasure Quarter in Edo (Tokyo) and with the intent to walk the Tokaido Road from Edo to Kyoto.
She doesn’t have much of a plan, except to find Oishi, her father’s head retainer (and her teacher in martial arts), and make him do something to avenge her father. But what she does have is a talent for acting, a few friends on her side, mad fighting skillz, and pure determination. Her cause is righteous, and she’ll bring Kira down and/or die trying.
The madam of the prostitution house she works in (basically her owner) hires Hanshiro, a ronin (masterless samurai) to go hunt her down and bring her back. That’s mostly what he does- he finds lost things. He expects this to be an easy job, because women are silly- surely she just ran off with some man who waved his cucumber of love and said some pretty things, right?
It takes him about half the book to finally admit that he was totally wrong. Cat is many things, but silly is not one of them.
The first thing Cat does is call on a kabuki actor, friend, and someone who owes her a favor, Shichisaburo (a real person, apparently), who provides her with a disguise as a priest and a plan to beg along the Road. (It’s a stunning display of “I’m going to do something ill-advised, but I recognize I can’t actually do it all by myself, so I will ask for help.” No Too Stupid To Live to be found here.) Then she stops by her father’s grave, burns some incense, and sets off, where she discovers that begging kinda blows. She then runs into kago carriers (something like a crappy palanquin), who beg her to come to their village and deal with a homeless ghost.
This is the first major detour she takes- while planting a rice field, the peasants found human bones, and the kago carrier’s wife is quite convinced that her infertility is being caused by the ghost of the unmoored person. Cat is disguised as a type of priest that is known for being a little bit crazy (hoping that will cover for any mistakes she makes- since she is a woman and an upper class one at that, she knows very little about reality) (but at least she knows this), so she pulls an exorcism ritual out of her ass (and hopes, very much, that she doesn’t accidently summon anything. She also hopes that her efforts to help a homeless ghost, for whatever reason, will be seen as a net-good, so she won’t have to pay for it in karma later).
This is also the first time that young women get taken with the handsome young man Cat appears to be, and tries to get “him” to sleep with them. It happens quite a bit.
There’s a lot of detours and roadblocks she runs into- the homeless ghost, the famous priest she falls in with for a few days, the peasant girl she acquires, lots of enemies, rain, thieves, fire-walking, and lice ridden bedding. She goes though about five disguises, loses nearly all her belongings several times, and discovers the kindness of strangers and maybe the rigid world she grew up with isn’t that rigid, after all.
Again, since I like this book, and I want you to read it, I’m not going to summarize the whole thing.
In light of the Racefail 2009 fiasco of last year, this is a case of a white woman doing a crapton of research and applying it. She paints feudal Japan vividly, and avoids the trap of being too in awe or sentimental over it, and she avoids being all, “My god, isn’t the this shit crazy?” judgmental (and some of that shit does seem pretty crazy). She presents 18th century Japan as a fully realized world, with nuanced characters, rich locations, and all sorts of food (oh my god you guys, the food). She talks about history, poetry, Buddhist thought, clothing, martial arts- she’s done her research and knows how to use it.
One of the things I look for in a book is that the main characters go on a journey (not always as literal as this one), and learn and change. Cat is on a journey, a literal one and a figurative one. She starts out as a pampered, spoiled girl who had never done a speck of physical labor in her life. She is somewhat better prepared than most women of her class (she does decide to go to Kyoto, after all) but when she runs away from the brothel, she is a bit stymied about what to pack- she’d never packed for a trip before. She’d never used money to buy things before.
Thanks to the people she meets along the way, and her own willingness to learn from life, she becomes more than capable. She learns that people that are not in her class are not automatically stupid, she learns that she can pull off the impossible. Before the journey, she looks on charity as a barter system- do good stuff, and good stuff will happen to her. As she travels, she learns about doing good stuff to help people just makes her feel good. Not purely altruistic (thank you, Pheobe) but close enough. And she learns how to love- not just Hanshiro, but Kasane, too.
Kasane, the peasant woman Cat acquires, is also on a journey. She left her village with a group that included her younger brother to go on pilgrimage. Pirates killed everyone but her, and sold her to a pimp, who sold her to a succession of inns and stole her back each night. Cat had a run in with the pimp and killed him, and took Kasane with her so she couldn’t identify Cat to the authorities. She fully intended to leave Kasane in the next town, but stuff keeps happening, Kasane is so useful (“Finally someone else was carrying Cat’s things. The world was back to normal.”) and Kasane looks so sad and so lost when Cat tries to leave her (kind of like that puppy in the window) that Cat’s like “FINE YOU CAN COME TO THE NEXT TOWN BUT THAT IS IT” and by the time they get to the next town, they work so well together, that’s it. They are a team, and also a family.
(Of course, it’s several more towns before Cat tells Kasane who she really is, and exactly why there are all these people chasing them trying to kill them. Kasane, being a sensible girl, takes this all in stride.)
Kasane learns how the greater world works, how to flirt (which is freakin’ adorable, by the way), and how to read and write. She loves Cat unconditionally, and by the time they reach Mount Fuji, Cat adores Kasane and will not allow anyone to fuck with her. Kasane acquires an admirer on the road, and once they’ve flirted by letter most of the way from Edo to Kyoto, Cat knocks him down and interrogates him on his intentions before allowing him to even talk to Kasane. She takes her role as the elder sibling very, very seriously.
Hanshiro himself is also on a journey. He’s a hired gun that would really like the world to follow the strictures of bushido, but knows it does not. It makes him cranky. The master he swore his sword to when he was a young man lost all his money and became a wandering monk, so Hanshiro has no one he’s bound to. He’d been taking jobs hunting down runaway people, and he really likes the chase.
“It was happening as it usually did.
Hanshiro was always alert; but once the chase started something stirred and stretched inside him. Something yawned and flashed long, ivory fangs and a pink predator’s tongue. Something sniffed the odors in the eddies of the wind and rumbled hungrily far back in its throat.”
He’s bored and disillusioned with life. But he doesn’t have a purpose until he realizes what Cat is doing. She’s serving a greater purpose, so he makes her purpose his.
Of course their first meeting isn’t very auspicious. She’s in disguise as an acolyte, and she knows he’s after her, but he does not know who she is.
“Cat stiffened. She might not know the price of a rice cake or a ferry ride, but she recognized danger, even if it had left its long sword politely at the door.”
It takes quite a while before she trusts him- she makes him stand out in the rain all night, she yells at him, tries to kill him (to be fair, about that, he’s been on her tail since she left Edo, and she knows it. She assumes he’s working for Kira, so…) before she very, very grudgingly accepts his oath of loyalty to her. And when she thinks he’s been killed, she very calmly, and very coldly, completely loses her shit. When they finally do hook up, it’s achingly sweet. And very appropriate for the two warriors.
I love Robinson because she has a talent for writing that is clear, beautiful, and with just a touch of wry snark. She describes things like what happened with Cat’s father in a way that isn’t awkward info –dumping. She’s managed to describe all these things from the ground up, showing what the reader needs, but not being overblown about it. In addition, and I love this, she weaves in the Japanese and the translations in a way that is neither repetitive, nor awkward.
“Is she a kurage, a change of saddles?”
“No, she’s not a habitual runaway.”
See? You get both the idiom and what it means.
“The word Tosa began a resonance inside Hanshiro, not in his head, but in the center of his spirit behind his navel. It spread outward in a shudder of longing for his homeland. He remembered the stunning view from the barrier at Pine Tree Assent. Green mountains, azure sea, waves washing among the roots of gnarled pines along the shore far below. He remembered surrendering his exit permit there. He remembered the intense ache of being set adrift from the country of his birth and upbringing, the home of his ancestors.”
Now, I know that some people have gone over to my blog from here (I see the site stats, don’t lie) and in early October, I posted about the bullying I endured in high school, and how it was centered in my Japanese class. And one of the results of the entire mess was that most things Japanese gave me PTSD-like tremors. This book was one of the few things that didn’t. I bought it at a B. Dalton (way back in the day) on remainder when I was in seventh grade, and it’s one of those books I’ve taken every time I’ve moved (and that’s a lot). I’ve re-read it I don’t know how many times. It’s a security blanket book for me.
I think one of the reasons I’ve kept it with me is it’s the story of a woman who rises above adversity (a name she takes on briefly is “Shinobu,” which means “endurance.”) and kicks some serious ass while doing it. That’s a message I really needed at the time I bought it, and remembered to get through the next several years. And sometimes I still do.
What site? O.o
I wondered about that too, Overquoted. At the top of the post it says “by SB Sarah” but one of the tags is “guest review” so I’m assuming that the post was written by a guest reviewer with her/his own blog.
I read this years ago and immediately placed it on my “keeper” shelf. I think it’s time to take it down for a re-read. Thanks for the reminder, RHG!
Overquoted, Redheadedgirl’s blog is here.
This sounds WONDERFUL. Thanks for the review RHG!
Ok Red Headed Girl, now I may have to hurt you. My fault for following the link to your blog. Your fault that I will now have “Baby monkey, baby monky, riding on a pig Baby Monkey.” stuck in my head for lord knows how long.
Fellow red headed girl
head25——it may be 25 years before I get that song out of my head.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, RHG! I read _Ride the Wind_ by this author in high school and loved it, but couldn’t recall author or book name. Found it just now when I went to order this one! There’s nothing like finding a lost love. . .
Her book Ride the Wind about Cynthia Ann Parker was also very well-researched but didn’t seem dense. I’m planning to read Ghost Warrior about Victorio’s sister Lozen, who was an Apache warrior in her own right and described by Victorio as “my right hand, stronger than a man and braver than most.” I’m sure Robson will present a vivid picture of life with the Chiricahua Apache.
I’mma read the hell outta this!
Sorry, yeah, my blog is at http://www.redheadedgirl.wordpress.com.
And Sasha, I think that spreading the word of Baby Monkey is a good and just use of the internet. So I will not apologize. 😛
Well, I must admit I already showed it to my DD, and of course, posted it on my Facebook.
And spent my whole shower singing “Baby Monkey”.
Sold! Great, add another book to the leaning tower that is my TBR stack. But this book sounds amazing. So unusual and not your typical romance. I’m off to hunt it down.
Great review, this looks *fabulous*. It must be serendipity too, because I was just going to post a query looking for warrior/strong heroines over @ the Amazon discussion threads—I watched Centurion last night; bad movie, but with a great, kickass female warrior character. Made me want moar. 😉
There’s not too many strong heroines acting on their own agency in Romancelandia, so am looking forward to this!
This sounds awesome!
Off to Amazon to add to my to-buy list…
*squeee!* Oh, man, so great to read such a fantastic review of a book that I know and love—for pretty much the reasons you said in your review. Cat is not only a terrific character, but she’s a character who really _grows_ over the course of her journey- she’s extremely smart, but she’s also lived in a very limited world, and she has to figure out how to deal not only with “real life,” but with various and sundry perils (including, of course, the people who are hunting her…). I also love Hanshiro’s progression over the course of the story, from his original impressions of Cat to his growing respect and feelings for her.
Such a fantastic story—I read it years ago, then finally tracked down my own copy (and a copy for a friend who I knew would love it) a couple of years ago. Now, of course, I will have to pick it up and read it again.
(also, “cucumber of love” is just intrinsically hysterical…)
Oh my goodness… I read this book back in high school (although the pub info at the top of the post says 2005 and I graduated in 2000) when I was devouring any historical fiction set in Japan and I absolutely loved it. I think about it every once in a while, but I’ve never re-read it. Now that I’m remembering more details about why this book is so great, I think I may track down a copy.
Ah, ok. Wikipedia tells me the book was originally published in 1991, and I probably read it in the mid-to-late 90s.
Yeah, I picked it up in 1991 or 1992 (during 7th grade when I started taking Japanese), the current edition was repubbed in 2005. Seriously, I’ve been carting this book around (in hardcover) for 18 years. I think it’s one of the ones that made every move with me instead of being in storage for most of college.
Oh, GBPL, you come through for me again! So I already have 11 books checked out and 13 on my reserve list, so what?!
Also, I think someone made a really bastardized version of this that I used to watch on adult swim….
I love this book. Not Romance genre, but a great love love story. Splendid.
Pardon my stupidity, but what is the Racefail of 2009? I know I should know, but for the life of me, I can’t remember.
Racefail 2009 was an extended discussion about writing minority characters an situations. primarily in Sci Fi, but it applies.
This is a good chronology of the entire discussion:
http://wiki.feministsf.net/index.php?title=RaceFail_09
@Donna, this does read like many an anime title which you would have seen on Adult Swim. But probably not based on this book.
Cucumber of Love! I’m gonna figure out how to work this into conversation.
The story of the 47 samurai was brought to my attention in the last of the “ballad” novels by Sharyn McCrumb, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers.
Excellent review, thanks!
Ah, this is also an oldie but goodie I have on the shelf right in front of me. But how in the world did it get categorized as “Young Adult”?
I haven’t read this one, but I may have to seek it out. A couple of years ago, I read Shadow Patriots by this author, and I loved it to death. Had me in floods at the end. Most definitely not a romance, but what a lovely historical.
Hey
Oh Red—thank you thank you for taking me back to one of my favorite books. I loved this book. And there are several famous Samurai Movies based on the back ground story—my fave is Toshiro Mifune in Chushingura.
I really want to read that book now. But just one thing: What the freaking hell is up with the Heroine being called Cat?!!! I do not get it. She’s Japanese, right? The book seems really well researched and all the other names you mentioned are legitimate Japanese names. But CAT?!?!! Why?
Sorry for the rant but I just don’t get why the author would stop at the Heroine’s name.
issue23: yes, I realize that I have more than 23 issues. ^^’
surely she just ran off with some man who waved his cucumber of love and said some pretty things, right?
Even if the book didn’t sound awesome on its own, this phrase alone would make me want to read it 😉
I have this in hardcover. I loved it and am holding on to it for my kids!
This sounds wonderful! Does anyone know where I would be able to get a digital copy of this? I have a nook, but B&N doesn’t have it in nookbook form. The few other places I have checked also do not have it. Suggestions? Thanks!
“Cat?” Is there a reason everybody has a Japanese name except the heroine? Because this sounds like the kind of book I’d love to read, except that name is really throwing me off.
Cat is her nickname. Granted I’m saying this without having the book in hand, but having reread it many times, I believe her name is actually Golden Plum (but in Japanese, not as translated).
But Cat better suits her nature. Read the book, and you will totally agree.
Some friends that I recommend the book to, love it. Others feel the pace is too slow, or they can’t get into the travel thing, with all its side-stops. Me, I love it to death, my dad found the hard cover for me at a yard sale and gave it to me when I came back from Japan on vacation.
Oh wait…the name floated up through my mind. Her true name is Kinume. Kin for Gold or Golden, Ume for….well Plum is the closest translation, though in taste it’s a titch apricot. Cat is her adopted name for her new life in Yoshiwara brothel district.
Of course changing names for a new situation was done a lot then, and even now, Japanese have birth names, and their death name is what’s put on their grave markers.
I checked “Tokaido Road” out of the UGA library just in time to be snowed in for three days. So glad I did! The pacing is superb, the characterization tight I especially loved Kasane), and the relationship between the male and female protagonists is believable.
Like others, I was a little put off by Cat’s name – though calling her by her Yoshiwara name Koneko, “little cat”, or kitten, would have been worse for me. I quickly got over it, and as others have mentioned, the monicker fits.
I have a background in Japanese Medieval history and thought I might be bothered by the historical connection between the novel and the story of the 47ronin. I wasn’t. Robson ties the two together in way that is both adept and respectful. I also appreciated her use of historical and cultural details. It was very satisfying to read a novel that was set in Japan and never once used a word or phrase modern enough to break the enchantment of a good book.
I have to get a copy for my keeper shelf. Thanks, RHG!