DEBORAH CROMBIE: I adore novels that weave in and out of history, that show me unfamiliar places and engaging characters. Add in a mystery and I am on it!!! Jonelle Patrick's novel THE LAST TEA BOWL THIEF has it all, plus the most gorgeous cover ever. Meet Jonelle!
JONELLE PATRICK: Is it possible for an outsider to write an authentic story set in a foreign culture?
As you can imagine, I get asked this question a lot. I mean—if you had to guess—what do you think someone who looks like Pandemic Barbie is most likely to know more about: the merits of saving all the marshmallows in a bowl of Lucky Charms until last, or Japanese tea bowls? And even if you knew that I came in the special edition Tokyo Pandemic Barbie set (complete with Japanese language school diploma, a set of swordsmith-crafted kitchen knives and a wardrobe of masks that all squish her beaky nose) you’d still be completely within your reader rights to wonder how a foreigner could have enough insight to write a book that’s not only set in Japan, it’s got some Japanese characters.
If you can suspend your skepticism for just a moment, let me suggest something kind of counterintuitive: that illuminating stories about what it’s like to be an insider are often written by those who will always be outsiders.
Reason #1:
Foreigners aren’t fish
If you ask a fish to write about life in the ocean, the fish will leave out a lot. The ocean is the only world the fish knows, and there are fairly essential things about living in the ocean that it doesn’t even notice. But if you’re not a fish, and you need all kinds of expensive and complicated equipment to survive in the ocean for even a short time, you pay attention to the details. Because it’s the details that can kill you.
I was once working with a Japanese actor to translate a traditional comic rakugo story into English. While demonstrating the acting that went with the part we were working on, he “arrived” at the house where a gathering was being held and said, “Ah, I see everyone is already here.” Then he opened the door to go inside.
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Didn’t you get that backwards? Shouldn’t you open the door before you mention that everyone is already there?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “No, didn’t you see how I looked down at all the pairs of shoes people left outside first?”
That’s the kind of thing you forget to explain if you’ve never lived in a country where people don’t take off their shoes before going indoors. If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more mysteries by Japanese authors in translation, that’s why. It’s not because there aren’t a boatload of bestselling potboilers, it’s because you can’t translate many of them verbatim. You’d either have to add lots of heavy-handed cultural explanation to make the detective’s leaps of deduction make sense, or baffle foreign readers who have no idea how the sleuth guessed a crowd of people would be on the other side of that door.
Reason #2:
Forbidden fruit is the best fruit
There’s one piece of advice I give friends who want someone to show them around Japan: never hire a Japanese guide. Japanese guides only want to show you what they’re proud of, not the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stuff that makes for amazing stories to tell back home.
When a Japanese guide shows you Tokyo, you’ll gaze across the moat at the impenetrable ranks of trees surrounding the Imperial Palace, view the imposing beaux-arts Diet Building, and visit the Japan Traditional Crafts Center to buy the finest products produced in every prefecture.
When I take friends around Tokyo, we tiptoe into a taiko-drumming fire ceremony, ogle the hundreds of prayer plaques painted by anime artists at the electronics district shrine, browse all the plastic food shops on Kappabashi Street, and walk through the red-light district at night to marvel at the outrageous designs of the love hotels and watch handsome bar hosts inviting customers into their swanky clubs.
Which would you rather read about?
I’m lucky to have a lot of relatives who are insiders—my mother-in-law is from a large Tokyo family—and Japanese friends who I can wheedle into taking me to see the kind of stuff Japanese authors hesitate to write about and Japanese tour guides like to steer foreigners away from.
But it’s because I’m a foreigner that I know it’s worth seeing.
Reason #3
Those who are all too aware of the box are the best at thinking outside it
If you’re like me, you’re up early and waiting at the curb for the delivery van on the day a Jungle Reds book comes out. Maybe this time I’ll be whisked away to England to help Scotland Yard’s most intrepid husband and wife investigators solve their latest, while juggling the needs of their great kids. Or I might drop in on my favorite female Episcopal priest and see how she’s wrestling with whatever crime needs her attention today. Or maybe I’ll be spending the day with that duke’s daughter who is always flat broke.
One thing I know for sure is that my favorite reads are all about characters who are insiders in some ways, but outsiders in others. Characters who have to figure out how to work within a system where they don’t quite fit the mold. Characters who have to learn from their mistakes and keep on their toes to avoid disastrous missteps. Characters who sometimes have to fake it to make it.
Sort of like living in Japan. The American character in The Last Tea Bowl Thief has to cut back on her rice because no pair of pants in the whole country will fit her, she accidentally insults people when she thinks she’s using honorific Japanese, and is resigned to moving through every day feeling like a sixth grader in a chair made for first graders. But it’s because she doesn’t fit in that she can unlock the mysteries of the tea bowl that’s been changing the lives of everyone who possesses it for three hundred years, and help right a wrong that has stymied Japanese insiders for generations.
For three hundred years, a missing tea bowl passes from one fortune-seeker to the next, altering the lives of all who possess it.
In modern-day Tokyo, Robin Swann’s life has sputtered to a stop. She’s stuck in a dead-end job testing antiquities for an auction house, but her true love is poetry, not pottery. Her stalled dissertation sits on her laptop, unopened in months, and she has no one to confide in but her goldfish.
On the other side of town, Nori Okuda sells rice bowls and tea cups to Tokyo restaurants, as her family has done for generations. But with her grandmother in the hospital, the family business is foundering. Nori knows if her luck doesn’t change soon, she’ll lose what little she has left.
With nothing in common, Nori and Robin suddenly find their futures inextricably linked to an ancient, elusive tea bowl. Glimpses of the past set the stage as they hunt for the lost masterpiece, uncovering long-buried secrets in their wake. As they get closer to the truth—and the tea bowl—the women must choose between seizing their dreams or righting the terrible wrong that has poisoned its legacy for centuries.
Jonelle Patrick is the author of five novels set in Japan. She also writes the monthly newsletter Japanagram and blogs at Only In Japan and The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had. Her newest mystery, The Last Tea Bowl Thief, will be published on October 20, 2020 by Seventh Street Books.
