by Don Lee
Tonight she was chipper. “What do you want for dinner?” she asked. “Tonkatsu or unagi?”
“Tonkatsu,” he said. “What can I do to help?”
After they cooked and ate and washed the dishes, they sat on the couch and watched TV.
“What are you thinking about?” Keiko asked during a commercial. “You seem distracted.”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, although he was thinking about Lisa Countryman. He wished he had been able to bring her soul some peace and dignity, since her life seemed to have meant so little to anyone. Tomorrow he would arrange for her remains to be put in a coffin and shipped to the US, but he didn’t know to where. Was her sister still alive? Would she want Lisa’s remains? And then he thought briefly of Atlanta, Georgia, and Yumiko, and Simon.
He and Keiko turned in early. They made love for a sweet, delicious quarter-hour, then climbed under the blankets, both inserting earplugs and biting down on mouthguards and sliding eyeshades on their foreheads. This apartment was roomy, but the building was beside a highway, and noisy.
Fish-mouthing their lips, they kissed, pulled down their eyeshades, and scooted apart on the bed, careful they wouldn’t touch during the night, and fell asleep happily.
IT WAS a dream, but not a dream. It was more like a film—grainy, off-hue, the motions stuttering, an old home movie that never existed. As Lisa lay on the bed in Mojo’s mansion, immobile, she felt her heart slow down, then jiggle, and just before it stopped beating, the film began to unreel, and she saw herself as a little girl—the girl, with fate and fortune, she might have been.
She was four years old, and she stood on the deck of the USNS Hayford with her parents—her birth parents. They were among the few passengers on the Navy cargo ship for the passage from Yokohama to San Francisco. Despite a stop in Hawaii, it had been a long trip, but they were finally here, the California coast before them.
It was a brilliant morning, the sky so clear and blue, the sun glaring fiercely, everything painfully aglitter. Lisa looked up at the faces of her father and mother—she knew their names all of a sudden, Bobby and Miyako, sweet names for a couple in love—and Lisa thought of something Miyako had once told her. Growing up, Miyako had said, she had repeated a Korean adage to herself, one with which she had promised to live her life: chin, son, mi. Truth. Goodness. Beauty. As they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, Lisa imagined what her mother must have been feeling right then, seeing the United States for the very first time. A land where all was possible, where truth prevailed, goodness was rewarded, and beauty could be found in the meeting of outcasts. Oh, what a sight, Lisa marveled.
We are orphans, all of us, she thought. And this is our home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
For their editorial insights and support, I would like to thank my friends Katherine Palmer-Collins, Fred Leebron, Lily King, Danzy Senna, and Kathy Herold; my editor, Alane Mason, and, also at Norton, Alessandra Bastagli; my agent, Maria Massie, and my fact-checker, Chikako Atsuta.
Although I did a fair amount of research for this book and spent part of my childhood in Tokyo, this novel should not be considered an accurate representation of Japan. Dramatic licenses were freely taken. For guides and studies of Japan and its people, I referred to books by Rick Kennedy, Elisabeth Bumiller, Peter Tasker, and Ian Buruma. For information on the mizu shobai, I relied heavily on Anne Allison’s Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club and Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan, and Lisa Louis’s Butterflies of the Night: Mama-sans, Geisha, Strippers, and the Japanese Men They Serve.
COUNTRY
OF ORIGIN
Don Lee
READING GROUP GUIDE
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In Country of Origin there are three protagonists—Tom Hurley, Kenzo Ota, and Lisa Countryman—each with his and her own story line. The story of Lisa Countryman is heartbreaking and tragic. Kenzo Ota is predominantly a comic character; he winds up happily married and reasonably successful, a traditional conclusion of a comic tale. Tom Hurley’s story is one of maturation, a lightweight who gains solidity, a hero typical of a coming-of-age novel. Whose story resonates most? With whom do you most identify? Is the novel disturbing to you, and do you think that is the book’s intent?
2. The novel is set in 1980—the year of the Iran hostage crisis and the political ascension of Reagan over Carter. Are there themes in the novel and the lives of the main characters mirrored by events in U.S. and global history? At the end, Tom muses that “after 1980, everything had changed,” the world had become “a much meaner place.” Do you agree? If so, how have Kenzo and Tom been affected adversely by this general corruption and deterioration? Is the novel’s viewpoint cynical or subversive?
3. Kenzo is a police detective, and many of his scenes track his investigation of Lisa’s disappearance. Tom, within a diplomatic setting, is also assigned to Lisa’s “case” and asked to play detective. But the reader is shown at the end of Chapter 1 what has happened to Lisa. How does this early disclosure and resolution open up other levels of Lisa’s story? What other conventions of the mystery genre, including Japanese crime stories, are played with or inverted? Are these elements meant to be serious or farcical?
4. Consider the personalities and histories of Lisa, Tom, and Kenzo. What traits and life events do Tom and Kenzo share with her? Why do they become so involved in her case? They survive, and she doesn’t. Is this just luck, or is she more flawed than they are?
5. At the end of Country of Origin, in Lisa’s “dream, but not a dream,” she and her birth parents pass under the Golden Gate Bridge to “a land where all was possible.” Do the immigrants coming from Asia today have different expectations than those who came from Europe in the past? How does the concept of America resonate throughout this work?
6. Lisa Countryman, as an orphan uncertain about her roots, describes herself as “a blank page.” Discuss how her behavior through the novel might be affected by her “blankness” and the anxiety that accompanies being undefined in a world compelled to identify and stratify.
7. Pete Congrieves, with his “thick blond hair” and “skin . . . ruddy with vigorous health” speaks of “the inherent need of one people to assert their superiority over another.” In this novel, are Pete Congrieves and his ilk triumphant? In the last chapter, Kenzo questions the wisdom of Japan’s “imperatives of racial purity and homogeneity.” Discuss the pluses and minuses of cultures primarily homogenous and those (such as the United States) more open to immigration, integration, and assimilation.
8. Both Tom and Lisa are of mixed blood. What advantages and disadvantages has this caused them? Are they more open-minded and compassionate because of it?
9. In many works of literature, Americans in Europe have been depicted as “innocents abroad.” Do you consider Tom and Lisa more innocent than many of the characters they interact with, especially the native Japanese and those, such as Julia Tinsley and Vincent Kitamura, who have resided in Japan for a longer time? Are Tom and Lisa less innocent by their stories’ end? What has each learned about the ways of the world? With what consequences?
10. Kenzo is living in his country of origin, and has been for years. Yet he, too, like Tom and Lisa, is described by the author, and perceives himself, as an “outsider.” Discuss the journeys of the novel’s characters from outside society to inside. What qualities do they discard, and which do they retain? Can you picture Lisa ever accepting a place within the status quo?
11. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes Tom and Daisy Buchanan as “careless people” who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their . . . vast carelessness, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Both Tom and Lisa suffer because of their attraction to Julia Tinsley and Vincent Kitamura. Do you consider Julia and Vincent, like the Buchanans, to be morally “careless”? Are Tom and Lisa culpable for what happens to them?
12.One aspe
ct of perversity is an attraction to artifice and that which cannot reciprocate affection. Do you believe the behavior depicted in the Japanese sex clubs is perverse? Is it fair for us to judge the Japanese culture and their attitudes? What about the strong undercurrent of humiliation in the novel, and the assertion that Japan is a shame culture and not a guilt culture?
13. Both Julia (at the end of chapter 5) and Lisa (at the end of chapter 10) deliver karaoke performances. What do these two performances say about the characters? Do we witness in these scenes any keys to Julia as an amoral survivor and Lisa as a tragic victim? In the world of this novel, do those who fake depth and feeling have an advantage over those who can only express themselves by exposing their vulnerability?
14. The characters in Country of Origin and its readers encounter an obstacle course of illusion and delusion. There’s a scam travel agency, an indoor surfing beach, a faux harem and chalet love hotel.
More Praise for Don Lee’s Country of Origin
“The mercilessly absorbing Country of Origin does many things that most novels—not to speak of first novels—can only hope to do: it renders a time and place that feel both meticulously researched and swoonily atmospheric; delivers up complex and sympathetic protagonists; poses questions about race and identity that resonate throughout the story and beyond it; and conjures up such a prickling aura of mystery that the reader is left helpless to desist. Be warned: you may find yourself canceling plans, shirking work, or neglecting your children to finish this book.”
—Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me
“The central preoccupations of Don Lee’s first novel feel like urgent issues for our times. The characters wrestle with slippery questions of race and identity, and the story unfolds in that liminal space where America interacts with another culture.”
—Tessa Hadley, New York Times Book Review
“[An] engrossing first novel . . . about origins and destinations that succeeds rather effectively in dramatizing all sorts of questions about where we have come from and where we are going. . . . A nicely textured travelogue of Tokyo’s underlife, all a swirl of action, a whirl of love and sex and race and politics, local and international.”
—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
“[An] elegant and haunting debut . . . [Country of Origin] hinges on a taut plot and then widens in concentric circles to become a novel of ideas.”
—Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Entertainment Weekly
“Japan seems the perfect carnavalesque, opaque background for people trying to discover or to forget their identities and their personal truths. Don Lee’s novel is upsetting, amusing, filled with surprises, and wonderfully well-written.”
—Ann Beattie, author of Park City
“In this innovative first novel set on the eve of Japan’s economic boom, Lee, a Korean-American who grew up in Tokyo and Seoul, tells a poignant story of prejudice, betrayal and the search for identity.”
—Kay Itoi, Newsweek International
“A lesser writer might lose control of such a story, turning it into pulp or, worse, some kind of half-baked noir. But Lee is a polished and extremely diligent writer, his focus first and foremost on his characters. . . . Lee demonstrates an intimate knowledge of how cultural labels can be both slipshod and stubborn. With Country of Origin, Lee slowly peels back this prettified skin to reveal Tokyo’s unbeautiful underbelly, and the sad souls who truly find themselves lost in translation there.”
—John Freeman, Seattle Times
“Tokyo sex clubs. CIA drones. Hapas and missing black-white girls. This is a strange, sexy, and perilous world Lee has painted for us, where nobody stays put in one nation or one race and nobody’s identity remains fixed. A profound, gripping, and elegant book.”
—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia
“[An] outstanding first novel. . . . There is much more here than a detective story. It is reminiscent of one of the best thrillers of last year, John Burdett’s Bangkok 8, especially if you enjoy wading into the waters of exotic cultures.”
—New York Sun
“Fans of Don Lee’s terrific stories will recognize with pleasure in Country of Origin the intelligence and humor that he brings to bear on the complex issues of race and culture. His characters, whether Japanese or American, Polish or ‘and/or,’ are richly imagined, and his plot is both deadly serious and deeply entertaining. This is a wonderful novel.”
—Margot Livesey, author of Banishing Verona
“On the surface, the story line sounds like a fast-paced tale of intrigue and suspense—and it is. But in the cool, confident hands of Don Lee, it is much more. As might be expected, Country of Origin is a smoothly written, carefully crafted, contemplative novel of race, identity and Japanese social conventions.”
—Rob Mitchell, Boston Herald
“Country of Origin is a remarkable novel, a work of art and a work of entertainment, profoundly enjoyable and deeply resonant. It captures the identity crisis of observer/participant research, while at the same time ambitiously exploring issues of self-inventionin the face of parentage, race, and class. It is, I believe, a real achievement.”
—Fred Leebron, author of Six Figures
“Country of Origin can be enjoyed as a first-rate thriller, but the book’s strong subtext concerning race and racism is pure literary fiction. . . . Lee’s style is chilly and lean, but the book itself is touching, wide-ranging, often funny—and never less than compelling.”
—James Ireland Baker, Time Out New York
“[An] elegant first novel. Lee discourses on race, identity, the Japanese sex trade, social conventions and law. Sharply observed, at turns trenchantly funny and heartbreakingly sad, this novel could be the breakout book for Lee. . . . [A] grittier counterpoint to Memoirs of a Geisha, and might, for some, recall White Teeth.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Lee expertly weaves a tiny new pleasure into every page. . . . As satisfying as it is unsettling, this quiet literary triumph eschews plot pyrotechnics for fully realized, deeply felt characters who bumble and struggle their way toward grace much like the rest of us.”
—Frank Sennett, Booklist, starred review
“It is a testament to Lee’s skill as a writer that these people’s careers, romances, interior lives and even housing situations seem to be of page-turning importance.”
—Tom Baker, Daily Yomiuri
“Satisfying. . . . The characters are victims of both perceptions and their own defense mechanisms, and their emotional responses are consistently convincing. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.”
—Library Journal
“First novelist Lee . . . leaves no fingerprints: his cool, precise prose captures his characters without overexplaining them.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This is a highly accomplished debut. . . . The fact that Lee has successfully incorporated a mystery plot into a highly literary novel about race, memory and origin makes this book even more remarkable. This is a novel that will keep you thinking long after you finish reading.”
—Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail
“An easy, enjoyable read, Country of Origin is also a love song to America, where many heritages entwine as the backbone of a nation.”
—Santa Cruz Sentinel
“A tricky, intelligent first novel. . . . Lee’s treatment of race is fascinating. . . . Lee has crafted a mystery-plus, artfully entwining social issues and personality.”
—Carlo Wolff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Lee builds his story with gem-like scenes, cut to pay off, and he has plenty of wise things to say about race and belonging, our relationship to one another.”
—Ashley Warlick, The Journal News
Copyright © 2004 by Don Lee
Portions of this book appeared in a slightly different form in Narrative magazine.
All rights reserved
First published as a Norton paperback 2005
For information abo
ut permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Book design by JAM Design
Production manager: Anna Oler
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Don, 1959–
Country of origin : a novel / Don Lee.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-393-05812-3
1. Young women—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Police—Japan—Tokyo—Fiction. 3. Sex-oriented businesses—Fiction. 4. Americans—Japan—Fiction. 5. Missing persons—Fiction. 6. Tokyo (Japan)—Fiction. 7. Diplomats—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.E339C68 2004
813’.6—dc22
2004004722
ISBN 0-393-32706-X pbk.
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
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