Fiction is sometimes truer than life. But not in this case.
By William Wetherall
Jill, an American woman, meets Philip, an American man. They both planned to go to Africa but his plans took him there first. As the poet said, way leads on to way, and he left her with little doubt that he would ever come back into her life.
Jill then snags a scholarship to develop her drawing talent in Japan, where she finds Yusuke. Or rather he finds her, and she is unable to resist his Americanized Japanese charms -- enhanced by a small gallery and a desire to promote her work.
Jill and Yusuke have a son, the namesake of Suzanne Kamata's novel, Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008). But Jill's dreams of a romantic marriage and shared parenthood dissolve into a "domestic nightmare" as the blurb on the back cover puts it.
Yusuke sheds his American gloss and becomes the stereotypic Japanese husband. His mother, and the construction business he has taken over in the wake of his father's death, come first.
At the start of the novel, Jill promises to be a complex and sympathetic heroine. Before long, though, she is just another American who gets lost in translation. Her narcissism and drinking contribute to her incapacity to persuade her apathetic husband and dominating mother-in-law to accommodate the kind of life she wants.
Social issue tie-in
Kamata plotted Jill's plight around the problem of "child abduction" by an estranged parent. The most publicized cases in Japan have involved an American or British man who claims his Japanese wife or ex has taken the kids and denied him access. Kamata reverses the gender of the parental victim.
Jill leaves with Kei. Yusuke finds them and wants her to come back. She refuses. He walks out with Kei. Later she tells him she wants a divorce. "If that's what you want," he says.
Yusuke locks Jill out of Kei's life. She wants custody but has trouble finding a willing attorney. Her search ends one night at the club where she has returned to work as a hostess, when one of Yusuke's cronies walks in off a B-movie set, flashes his silver teeth, and reminds her she is violating her visa.
In the meantime, Jill has been in touch with Philip and is entertaining a number of options, including leaving Japan and starting over elsewhere.
I won't spoil the ending of Kamata's story -- except to say that she has not written a thriller.
Hollywood rewrite
From here the story is mine. I will alter Kamata's development a bit then introduce some Mission Impossible action.
Yusuke had never lived in America before his marriage to Jill and remains Japanese. After Kei's birth, she becomes Japanese through naturalization but also retains her US citizenship. Kei had become a dual national at the time of his birth.
Having become a successful artist in Japan, Jill has an opportunity to show her work in America. Yusuke agrees to accompany her to the United States with Kei.
Philip shows up at an exhibition of her work in New York, and one thing leads to another. She persuades a court to grant a divorce and give her custody of Kei.
Yusuke is awarded a sum of money and is allowed to see Kei on the condition he continues to reside in New York. The court rejects Jill's request that Yusuke not be able to take Kei to Japan for visits.
Yusuke, though, finds life in the United States -- and the conditions imposed on him in what had been an unfamiliar and hostile legal setting -- unbearable. The second time he takes Kei to Japan he fails to bring him back.
Jill and Philip, who she has remarried, go to Tokyo to get Kei. Jill rents a car, snatches the boy as Yusuke is walking him to school, and speeds toward the US Embassy. Yusuke calls the police, and Jill is arrested within steps of the embassy gate.
Under international private law, Japanese courts will treat Jill, and Kei, as Japanese. It also turns out that she and Yusuke had not filed a notification for divorce under Japanese law -- which prohibits polygamy.
I won't give away the climax of my tale -- except to say that Philip, who had stayed at the hotel to await Jill's call from the embassy, has a helicopter license, and finds a ground plan of the Tokyo Detention Center on the Internet.
15 October 2009
