Eight Million Gods and Demons

By Noelle Perera · UrbanWire
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At first, Hiroko Sherwin's prose seems immature and lazy, and one has the urge to toss the book. Don't. What emerges from seemingly thoughtless words randomly strung together is a delicately orchestrated tale of one Japanese family's experience of World Wars I and II.

Married to political activist Taku when she is 14 years old, Emi learns that her husband is having an affair with a geisha named Hana, and is supporting her and their children. It sounds like the beginning of a tale we have heard countless times before, but the story slowly unravels to become something very special.

Forced to deal with the deaths of her mother and children, as well as her husband's infidelity, Emi still manages to maintain her optimism, which is endearing without being sickening. First-time author Sherwin's gift for powerful narrative becomes evident at this juncture, where the tone of her writing changes as the mental and emotional state of Emi develops.

Where Emi, and Sherwin's prose, begins sounding childish:

The dinner got cold. Taku didn't come home and Emi could not sleep. Every time she heard the slightest noise, she stood up and ran out the door. There was nothing there except the wind. She looked at the clock on the wall every fifteen minutes. In the end, she tried not to look, but the ticking clock woke her every time she dozed off.

she matures, without resigning, into acceptance of her fate:

For the first time since she had found out about Taku's second family, Emi felt she could cope with reality. It might not be ideal, but it was not worth wasting her life trying to deny it.

There is a trap here, for Sherwin's Emi to become the Asian wife we know so well, wondering what she has done wrong, and trying to improve herself. But Sherwin bypasses the stereotypes, allowing Emi to deal with her lot in life without becoming the weeping willow literature is tired of.

Not only do readers witness the transformation of Emi, but we are witnesses also to a host of other characters changing and growing in every paragraph. It is partly Sherwin's multi-faceted characters, and her understanding that people grow and change, that prevents the story from becoming fluff.

Named for the 8 million deities in the Japanese pantheon, this is an especially apt story in light of the wars that are being fought today, 60 years after the Sherwin's story ends. It presents a rare look at the terrors of war faced by Japanese civilians, and the government's determination to control Korea and China .

Having grown up in Japan during World War II, Sherwin has also sensitively recaptured the political atmosphere of the time, and allows readers to see war-torn Japan through Japanese eyes. It almost feels like she is holding one's hand, guiding one's steps through the rubble that was once Tokyo .

Sherwin's only flaw, if any, is that in her determination to create the right ambience and texture, her imagery becomes forced, and seems like a copy of techniques used in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha . However, as this is a first novel, such weaknesses are forgivable and made up for by her powerful storytelling.

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