The Garden of Evening Mists

“Outside, the mountains have been drawn into the garden, becoming a part of it. Aritomo was a master of shakkei, the art of Borrowed Scenery, taking elements and views from outside a garden and making them integral to his creation.”

The narration here explicitly defines the novel’s central motif, shakkei. This Japanese gardening principle serves as a metaphor for the narrative’s treatment of memory, suggesting that the past cannot be walled off but must be purposefully incorporated into the present landscape of one’s life. By framing the distant, unchangeable mountains as part of the immediate, cultivated garden, the author establishes a model for how Yun Ling must integrate her own vast and traumatic past into her present consciousness.

“‘The one on the right is Mnemosyne. You’ve heard of her?’ […] ‘Her twin sister, of course. The goddess of Forgetting.’ […] ‘Ah, doesn’t the fact of your not recalling prove her existence?’ He grinned. ‘Maybe she exists, but it’s just that we have forgotten.’”

This dialogue introduces a key symbol that directly confronts the theme of The Negotiation Between Memory and Forgetting. The invention of a goddess for forgetting, whose existence is paradoxically “proven” by the inability to remember her, encapsulates the novel’s complex view of memory as an act of both holding on and letting go. The visual contrast between the statues—one with defined features, the other blurred—further symbolizes Yun Ling’s internal conflict between the sharp pain of remembering and the terrifying void of forgetting.

“Raising his bow, the man drew back the bowstring, his arms stretching in opposite directions until he reached a point where he seemed to be floating just above the floorboards. He stood there with his tautened bow, an expression of complete peace spreading across his face. Time had stopped: there was no beginning, there was no end.”

This passage introduces Aritomo through an act of intense discipline and stillness, establishing the theme of Art as a Response to Chaos and Violence. The author uses imagery of transcendence (“floating”) and temporal suspension (“Time had stopped”) to portray kyudo (archery) as a meditative practice for achieving internal order. This moment of perfect mental control provides a stark contrast to the historical violence and personal turmoil that define Yun Ling’s world, presenting a state of being she will seek through her apprenticeship.

“‘You were the only one?’ He looked at me as though I was trying to deceive him. I held his stare, not swerving away from it. ‘I was the only one.’”

This terse exchange distills the immense weight of Yun Ling’s trauma and survivor’s guilt into a moment of stark vulnerability. The minimalist dialogue, stripped of all descriptive language, forces the reader to focus on the immense gravity of her admission. The repetition of “the only one” emphasizes her profound isolation, while her ability to hold Aritomo’s disbelieving stare signals a hardened resolve born from that same isolation, setting the complex foundation for their relationship.

“‘The first batch of seedlings came from the same estate in Ceylon where I had once worked as a prisoner of war. History is filled with ironies, don’t you think?’”

Speaking to Yun Ling, Magnus Pretorius reveals the origins of his tea estate, Majuba. The author uses situational irony to underscore The Ambiguity of Justice and Reconciliation, as the seeds of Magnus’s idyllic new life originate from the site of his past trauma and imprisonment. This connection establishes a pattern in the novel where characters build their present lives directly upon the foundations of their violent histories, suggesting that the past is inevitably repurposed into the present.

“He looked at me for a long moment. In his eye I knew he understood my own fears. ‘I couldn’t for a long time,’ he said. ‘But in the last few years … well, they’ve come back to me again. As you get older, you start remembering the old things.’”

After Yun Ling asks if he can still remember the faces of his lost family members, Magnus reveals the fluid and uncontrollable nature of memory. This moment of shared understanding between two survivors of different wars illustrates the central theme of the negotiation between memory and forgetting. The dialogue suggests that memory changes over time, receding and resurfaces, challenging the notion that time guarantees healing or forgetting.

“‘We are composing a picture within this frame.’ He pointed to the lines of the roof, the posts and the floor, his finger drawing a rectangle in the air. ‘When you look at the garden, you are looking at a work of art.’”

As he begins Yun Ling’s apprenticeship, Aritomo explains the foundational principle of viewing Yugiri from a specific vantage point. His statement explicitly defines the garden as a deliberate artistic composition, an idea central to the theme of art as a response to chaos and violence. By using the architectural elements of the house to frame the natural landscape, Aritomo demonstrates a desire to impose order, perspective, and aesthetic control onto an often chaotic and violent world.

“‘Just think—once, these prayers were carried from the temple in the mountains all the way to the sea, blessing all those they floated past.’”

Aritomo explains the history of the waterwheel, a gift from the Japanese emperor, which has inscriptions on its paddles. The imagery of prayers being physically imprinted onto the water and flowing out into the wider world serves as a potent metaphor for the far-reaching and unseen influence of history and belief. This symbolism suggests that acts of devotion and creation can have a spiritual resonance that extends far beyond their immediate location, embedding sacredness into the landscape itself.

“He shook his head and pointed to the cloudless sky. ‘I borrow moonlight for this journey of a million miles,’ he said.”

After burning his paper lanterns, Aritomo declines a flashlight for the walk home. His reply encapsulates his philosophy and directly references the shakkei (borrowed scenery) motif, expanding its application from garden design to life itself. This line characterizes Aritomo as a man who integrates his art into every action, finding utility and beauty in transient, natural phenomena rather than relying on artificial means, thus highlighting the novel’s Zen Buddhist undertones about living in harmony with the world.

“‘A garden borrows from the earth, the sky and everything around it, but you borrow from time,’ I said slowly. ‘Your memories are a form of shakkei too. You bring them in to make your life here feel less empty.’ […] ‘It is the same with you,’ [Aritomo] said a moment later. ‘Your old life, too, is gone. You are here, borrowing from your sister’s dreams, searching for what you have lost.’”

In this exchange, the Japanese gardening principle of shakkei, or “borrowed scenery,” is elevated from a literal technique to the novel’s central metaphor for managing memory. Yun Ling’s insight, which Aritomo affirms, demonstrates her deepening understanding of his philosophy. The dialogue explicitly links the external act of creating a garden to the internal process of constructing a life from the fragments of the past.

“In the space between releasing the bowstring and the arrow hitting the target, I discovered a quiet place I could escape into, a slit in time in which I could hide.”

This quote illustrates the theme of art as a response to chaos and violence, using Yun Ling’s practice of kyudo (archery) as a method of psychological healing. The author uses the metaphor ‘a slit in time’ to articulate how the discipline and focus required by the art form create a mental sanctuary, a deliberate pause from the relentless intrusion of traumatic memories. This introspective moment reveals Yun Ling’s discovery that the purpose of the ritual is not aggression but the achievement of internal stillness.

“‘I am sorry, for what we did to you. I am deeply sorry.’ ‘Your apology is meaningless,’ I say, taking a step back from him. ‘It’s worth nothing to me.’”

Following Professor Tatsuji’s confession of his wartime actions, this stark exchange confronts the theme of the ambiguity of justice and reconciliation. Yun Ling’s terse, unequivocal rejection of his apology challenges the idea that reconciliation can be achieved through simple expressions of remorse. The author pairs her dismissive dialogue with the physical action of stepping back, creating a powerful visual representation of the impassable gulf between perpetrator and victim. This moment asserts personal and historical wounds cannot always be healed by words.

“For the first time I felt I was inside a living, three-dimensional painting. My thoughts took shape with difficulty, expressing only the thinnest layers of what my instincts had grasped and then let slip. A sigh, both of contentment and of sorrow, drained out from deep within me.”

This passage marks an epiphany in Yun Ling’s apprenticeship, signaling her shift from a technical student to an intuitive artist. Her perception of the garden as a “living, three-dimensional painting” indicates that she has fully internalized Aritomo’s philosophy of nature and design. The author’s diction, particularly the pairing of “contentment and of sorrow,” directly invokes the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware—an awareness of impermanence. This moment captures the complex emotional texture of her experience, blending the beauty of creation with the sadness of its transient nature.

“Standing there with our heads tilted back to the sky, our faces lit by ancient starlight and the dying fires of those fragments of a planet broken up long ago, I forgot where I was, what I had gone through, what I had lost.”

This moment of shared wonder during a meteor shower provides a temporary transcendence of personal and historical trauma for Yun Ling and Aritomo. The author employs cosmic imagery—“ancient starlight,” “dying fires,” and ‘fragments of a planet’—as a metaphor for the characters’ own fractured pasts and the distant, yet impactful, nature of memory. In this instant of sublime beauty, the scale of their individual suffering is diminished, allowing for a rare and profound sense of peace. This shared experience creates an intimate bond that moves beyond their respective histories of pain.

“‘Life is fair, is it not?’ he said. ‘I built the airplanes that sent other people’s sons to their deaths. So it has to be balanced out—my son must die too.’”

In this flashback, Tatsuji recounts his father’s words before dying by seppuku, or ritual suicide. The father’s statement embodies a personal sense of justice rooted in reciprocity, exploring the ambiguity of justice and reconciliation beyond legal frameworks. His reasoning presents complicity not as a crime to be tried, but as an existential debt that can only be paid through an equivalent sacrifice.

“‘Civilian holding centers?’ I said. ‘You mean slave-labor camps. I’m sure you’ll find those in your army’s records.’”

During a tense visit from a Japanese delegation, Yun Ling confronts their euphemistic language. Her interjection directly challenges the group’s sanitized historical narrative, forcefully substituting the brutal reality of “slave-labor camps” for the Japanese government’s benign phrasing. This rhetorical act is an instance of verbal resistance against the erasure of trauma, foregrounding the conflict between official national memory and the indelible scars of personal experience.

“‘One day you will realize that there is no wind, and the flag does not move,’ he said. ‘It is only the hearts and minds of men that are restless.’”

Aritomo recounts a Zen koan told to him by a blind monk in his youth. The monk’s aphoristic statement shifts the locus of reality from the external world to the internal state of the observer, a central philosophical tenet of the novel. This perspective suggests that both the surrounding chaos of war and the perceived tranquility of the garden are shaped by human consciousness. The image of restless ‘hearts and minds’ serves as a precise metaphor for the unresolved trauma and turmoil that define the characters’ inner landscapes.

“‘This is how we’ll survive,’ she said once. ‘This is how we’ll walk out of here alive.’”

In a flashback to the forced labor camp, Yun Ling recalls her sister, Yun Hong, making this statement while describing the gardens of Kyoto. The declaration is deeply ironic, as Yun Hong weaponizes the memory of Japanese aesthetic perfection as a defense against Japanese brutality. This quote exemplifies the theme of art as a response to chaos and violence, positing the mental construction of beauty as a desperate sanctuary when the physical world offers only suffering. The stark contrast between the ideal of the garden and the reality of the camp underscores the fragility of such internal defenses.

“‘The horimono can be an extension of Sakuteiki. I will put in the ideas I have accumulated over the years, the things you should remember when designing a garden.’”

Aritomo explains his vision for the tattoo he wishes to create on Yun Ling’s back. This proposal articulates the ultimate fusion of the novel’s central symbols, directly linking the art of the garden (Sakuteiki) to the landscape of her body. By offering to inscribe the principles of ordering nature onto her scars, Aritomo seeks to transform the physical marks of trauma into a living text of memory and art. The horimono is thus conceived as a permanent, embodied map, making Yun Ling’s body an extension of Yugiri itself.

“The shadows on the rice paper walls wavered and, for a moment, I felt I had been inserted into a wayang kulit, becoming a character in the shadow play the Malays performed with leather puppets by the light of a paraffin lamp.”

During the first session of her tattooing by Aritomo, Yun Ling uses a metaphor that connects the Japanese ritual to a traditional Malay art form, grounding the intimate act within its specific cultural setting. The image of a “shadow play” reflects her sense of dissociation and lack of agency, suggesting that her story is being inscribed upon her by larger historical and personal forces. The wavering light and shadow also visually represent the novel’s treatment of memory as an unstable and interpretive medium, rather than a fixed record of the past.

“‘Life has been suspended, somehow, during the Emergency,’ Aritomo said. ‘I often feel I am on a ship, heading for a destination on the other side of the world. I imagine myself in that blank space, between the two points of a mapmaker’s calipers.’”

Aritomo’s simile captures the psychological state of living amidst the constant, low-level violence of the Malayan Emergency. By invoking the mapping motif, he describes a state of profound dislocation, suspended between a lost past and an unknowable future. This “blank space” is not only a temporal limbo but also a moral and geographical one, highlighting how prolonged political conflict creates an internal state of placelessness and uncertainty for those living through it.

“Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.”

In her present-day narration, Yun Ling’s simile offers a concise summary of the novel’s central theme, the negotiation between memory and forgetting. This naturalistic imagery directly counters the idea of memory as a complete or reliable archive, instead characterizing it as ephemeral, fragmented, and subject to forces beyond individual control. As she faces the erasure of her past due to aphasia, this metaphor depicts her internal cognitive landscape with a sense of impermanence.

“Taking the sack from me, he reached inside it and pulled out a handful of brown, withered leaves. He stepped onto the lawn and scattered them, as though he was a gust of wind.”

After Yun Ling declares the garden “perfect,” Aritomo’s symbolic act of scattering dead leaves upon the pristine lawn is a final, critical lesson in the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi—the appreciation of transience and imperfection. This gesture repudiates the Western notion of a flawless, static Eden and insists that true harmony must incorporate decay and change. The act serves as a piece of foreshadowing, anticipating his own disappearance and the ultimate impossibility of preserving anything, be it a garden or a memory, in a perfect state.