After Work - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell steeps us in the exotic civilization of eighteenth century Japan.  The enclosed, stifling culture struggles to benefit from, without absorbing Christian Dutch trade, while fending off military acquisitiveness from alien nations.

The novel’s microcosm is peopled by Jacob de Zoet, a newly arrived clerk cum accountant from Zeeland, Orito Aibagawa, a midwife whose unusual training spans the Japanese society and the Dutch trading enclave, and Uzaemon Ogawa, a translator with a sometimes-open mind.  Although nominally a love-triangle, their innate politeness and the harshness of their various circumstances throw these characters off the paths of their choosing into the overwhelming grinders of official power and imperious private interests.

Orito Aibagawa is whisked away from her fragile world of learning.  Jacob de Zoet is trapped on the artificial island ceded to the Dutch traders.  Trusted by his once rival, he can only imagine the quest of Uzaemon Ogawa, who abandons his once-treasured home life to rescue Orita Aibagawa before she is destroyed completely by a ritualistic, obsessive fate.  As in any world, the characters pursue their decisions and actions in ignorance, upsetting each other’s well-laid plans.

The setting of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet plays a dominant role in the novel.  The enclosure of the Dutch trading company squeezes our imaginations into narrow streets, dark warehouses and fetid living quarters teeming with traders, their slaves and the imposed Japanese guards.  The scene shifts to a monastery, no less stifling in its quiet, contemplative position on an isolated mountain-top. Then, as the quest unfolds, we struggle along the icy paths of winter and clamber up mountain roads, frightened by other travellers in the damp wayside inns. Is this freedom? 

Perhaps we all yearn for what we cannot have.