This is a novel on China and Japan from 1903 till WW2 16/4/24
This is a Historic novel and very informative and easier to understand than a history book.
1903 and Mary Mackenzie is taking a ship to her fiancé in Peking. She is from South Edinburgh and is Presbyterian, she feels safe on the ship as the captain is Scots. The minister says a prayer and one for the King Edward VII. She is being escorted by Mrs. Caswell who objects to her chatting to men on board Mary tells her I am going to my husband to be and not to a nunnery . Mrs. Caswell later has a stroke in her cabin and Mary had to deal with it later she dies in Penang. This death has made Mary very adult.
Byes Bay 50 km from Hong Kong used to be a Pirate base. Island like the Great Nantuna (remotest part of Indonesia and Sumatra are part of the Dutch Empire. The sun never sets on the British empire. She is warned that she is going to a place of sudden death eg. floods. In preparing for the typhoon they close the inner steel portholes and block the ventilation ducts. None of the ships officers are in the dinning room. China's greatest river is the Yangtze the water is coffee colored and the banks are marshland.
Shanghai all the different Great powers have concessions there. People living on boats and trading from them.
Her fiancé Richard 25 years old is an army man. One gets around on rikshaws and pullers only live an average of 15 years and die of tuberculosis. The ship were anchored at Wei Hai Wei a walled city and British territory taken after the Japanese withdrew in the 1898 war against China. On a 8 cabin ship they go to Tientsin and from there by train to Peking. Jesuits missionaries were on the ship going to convert the heathen.
Rajah James Brook was the white Rajah of Sarawak, Borneo from 1841. His descendant making a total of 6 Brooks ruled till 1946 when the British colonial office took over.
In Peking they lived in the Legation quarter the Boxers had been pacified, the Boxer rebellion 1889 till 1901, after that the Allied forces left. They got married and lived in a big house run by servants. She wanted to learn Chinese but Richard discouraged her from that. He was the 2nd son of an aristocrat which meant he would not inherit the title.
If a Russian, Japanese war began Russia Tsarist army would have 3 times more troops but Japanese troops were better trained. The Brits would support the Tsar as he was a cousin their king. In Peking the head of the Russian legation a count wore enough medals to have fought in 10 wars though doesn't look like a soldier type. The Japanese legation head had led a party of Japanese marines through Boxer filled streets to defend and relieve the Catholic mission. he was Count Kurihama and was leaving soon to go to war against Russia. Peking gave of a smell of rancid butter, perhaps from the fur rug you covered yourself with in the rickshaw. In the open market of meat and vegetables everything was covered with flies.
Ben Nevis in Scotland is the highest mountain in the British Isles and part of the Grampian range it is snow capped part of the year, it is an extinct volcano. However Japan is on the back of a huge dragon subject to uneasy dreams.
Some of the British legation were invited to meet the Empress Dowager Tsz'e including Mary ( she is now Mrs. Richard Collingsworth) as she had just got married in China, to and see the sacred throne of the Manchu Dynasty. Out of date ships become discarded but the Summer Palace floating on its hill will endure forever. As a sign of power finger nails are never cut so the Empress can do nothing and has to be helped even to eat. The young Emperor is kept a prisoner by her.
Via the Trans Siberian Railway post now arrives very quickly. She has now given birth to a girl named Jane who is blond like her father.
1904 The Ginkgo is a geological link between conifer and ferns is found in China. Admiral Alexiev is the Tsars Viceroy in the Far East and the Russians are defending against Japanese attacks. The was is being fought on Chines territory. Japan is victorious over Russia at Liao Yang and the Tsars armies are in retreat on Moukden. The Empress would like the enter the war on Russia side but knows the French and British favour Japan. While this war is on, mail has to come by ship through the Suez.
While her husband is away following the war, she has a relationship with Count Kentara Kurihama a Japanese diplomat and is now pregnant by him. The underwater cable at Port Arthur has been destroyed and no telegrams arrive from Richard.
1905 General Stessel the Russian in command of Port Arthur has surrendered the city.
Richard is paying for her to return home second class and says she is a whore. She is supposed to go from Tientsin to Shanghai and from there on P&O back home. The father takes custody of Jane and sends her to Japan, she is put onto a freighter at Tientsin and arrives in Shimonoseki Japan which is next to the Kanmon bridge that joins the biggest Island with Kyushu. Then taken to Nagoya, this is between Tokyo and Osaka. In Tokyo large section of the city are lit up by German engineers and there are electric trams along the Ginza.
A huge Russian fleet which included 11 battleships arrived after 7 months at sea, and Admiral Togo destroyed it resulting in Total Russian defeat at the battle of Tsushima.
Mary gives birth by caesarean and the baby boy Tomo looks Japanese. She can't have another child as a result. The Sumida River flows through Tokyo. Kentara sent he a gift of money and flowery cloth which would only be worn by a courtesans' as a kimono, and a symbol of a fish which is for a boy. She receives support as Kentars's second wife, who has a place in society.
The present crown prince Hirohito is not the son of the Empress but that of Emperor Meiji and a court lady.
Baroness Aiko Sannotera who spoke a perfect English was in prison for staring directly at Emperor Meiji, she called on the Emperor to free Japanese women from slavery. She had joined the suffragettes during her stay in England. They say that she has been punished as the gods have made her barren and she suggested to her husband to try another woman who gave him 2 children. Her grandfather had been assassinated as well as his wife and servant trying to protect him. He was finance minister and militants wanted more money spent on the army and navy. She considered Japan as feudalism in new clothes.
Russo-Japanese war ended with a peace treaty signed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mary worked at Matsuzakara dept. store in western women's fashion. An American elevator has been installed in the company. She met the wives of war profiteers who were receiving bad publicity in the press. Japanese women's bodies were not meant for the to model European fashion of the day and she had to design suitable fashions. There are lots of whale bones available and the make women corsets.
Korea has now become a permanent Japanese occupation or colony and Kentare is based there. Bicycles are now popular and the Baroness has a 3 speed bike. She considers the victory over Russia will swell Japan's ego and will take on Britain next. she is not popular in Japanese ruling society. Samisen a 3 string instrument and bamboo flutes are played.
Amongst the ruling class in society women are not seen with their husbands. Mary makes an effort to learn Japanese.
She wrote to Sir Claude Macdonald British Ambassador to Tokyo, who she knew from Peking, asking him for help as her son Tomo had been taken from her. She received a reply that her son was born in Japan and the father has full rights over him. Her son was adopted out to an aristocratic family as he came from Kurihama blood, illegitimacy or that the mother is foreign is no problem in Japan as he looks Japanese.
Kamakura is a holiday beach place south of Yokahama. A student of the Waseda University (founded 1882 as a liberal private collage) is teaching her Japanese and she is improving his English.
1902 -1923 Treaty of Alliance and Friendship between Britain and Japan, this was against Russia.
Japanese bows have different meaning depending on who you are, to men women , servants she says a book could be written on it. Kentaro's wife comes to get fitted for a dress to go to England so she meets here. Kentaro is 1st Military Attaché in London.
Mary is appointed head of her dept. and the man she replaces is moved to toys, he commits suicide and in a note writes that he is being replaced by a foreign women who has led an immoral life. The scandal doubles their sales and women come to stare at her. The store sets up a Christmas display of which she know little as in Scotland Xmas displays are not seriously Presbyterian. An Edison phonograph (Invented in 1887) plays a Xmas song.
She was sent to Osaka (an industrial city ) to open the dress department but the husbands there didn't like their wives in western dress and after 7 month returned. She returned to the Ginza store and realized that the attitude in Japan had changed and anything done in the west can be done in Japan. In the end foreigners will have no role at all. Now Japan was no longer importing foreign cloth but producing it locally.
They needed western food for guests and she though of the delicatessen. It would be rather odd to serve Jewish food to a High Anglican household. She started teaching English at the missionary school.
Bob the American Banker now offered to finance her to open a store. Half the loan would be free but the bank would own 60% of her company. Eventually she agreed to them only owning 40% she would now have to work and work and not have a chance to read.
1852- 1912 Emperor Meiji died. He had adopted a constitution and a parliamentary system, instituted universal education, built railroads and installed telegraph lines, and established strong army and navy forces.
Now General Nogi committed suicide as he could not stop the society deterioration caused by Western influence. He had been Japan's Wellington. Enormous bribes had been paid by Siemans wanting to sell wireless equipment and Vickers unholy alliance with Mitsui in a contract to build a cruiser. That Britain has to give bribes indicates that the British Empire is starting to crumble.
1914 August John a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and Mary became good partners. His wife back in the US told him that if he could leave her and their kids so long she does not need him. Off he runs to report on Europe as the war has begun. Japan was on the side of Britain and France in WW1. Tsingtoa is the German concession in China and Japan occupies it immediately later takes the whole Kiaochow peninsula
1915 The Lusitania sunk and America comes into the war. Japan is able to occupy China without UN interference and takes southern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia.
In Yokahama Mary manages to buy a vacant house . After the sons of the owners had both died in the Russo- Japan war they had bled their wrists to death and the house thus was "haunted." She can see mount Fugi from her windows. Her business in Yokahama was doing well as tourists were arriving from the States and she paid rickshaws to bring foreigners to her and were relieved that someone could set them right after they had seen the store.
He friend Marie died, she and Armond had been diplomats and lived in many countries. Armond back to her a parcel of all the letters she had written to Marie. She also finds out that her husband Richard died in the war in 1918 and is relieved as he refused to divorce her.
1923 The Great Kanto Earthquake destroyed most of Tokyo , not the Royal Palace and 140,000 were killed. In the Ginzo a fire before the trapped people could be rescued. Also with a tsunami. Her friend Peter died leaving his house and land to her.
The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and it survived the earthquake.
Her mother died and she received back all the letter she had written to her in the 20 years , they had been read even though he mother never wrote to her. She inherited her fathers library and asked for it to be sent to her.
1928 Her legal and banking advisor said she should put her savings on the NY stock exchange but instead she build 2 three story blocks of flats to rent on the property she owned.
Kentaro had been tracking her over the years and his wife had died and offered to marry her. She was prepared to if Tomo was acknowledged as her son, that is impossible.
1543-1616 Tokugawa Ievasu reunified Japan after the Warring States or Sengoku period. He created a new government controlled by the Tokugawa family that ruled Japan until 1868. He ran an intelligent and liberal government but at the end of his reign he attacked foreigner and mascaraed 30 thousand Christians, He then cut Japan off the the outside world for 200 years They visit Ievasu tomb.
Japan was talking about the ABCD of encirclement by America , Britain, China and the Dutch. They didn't like the American Exclusion Act that branded Chinese and Japanese as unsuitable to land on US soil.
1941 She receives a letter from her daughter Jane who is 37 and her husband died in fighting in Crete. She has a son of 12 and daughter of 9. She can no longer afford to keep her home in Shropshire and has offered to share it with Mary.
The Ginger tree was completely burned in the fire but its roots come to life and sprout.
After Pearl Harbour she is expecting to be interned as an alien but 2 policemen arrive at the house and politely tell her to pack 2 suitcases and is put on a Swedish neutral ship with diplomats leaving. It was Kentaro who arranged this.. At Singapore a Japanese Major comes and meets her in the ships lounge, He shows her pictures of his wife and children who were now regarded as her relatives. She will be acknowledged as an ancestor after her death. He does not believe Japan can win the war and he is a pilot.
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