Featured image: Woman in a kimono walking at Yasaka Pagoda in Kyoto by oneinchpunchphotos

Making Japanese culture accessible to everyone

By Carolyn Ray, Editor, JourneyWoman

Dance plays an important role in the book, as do kimonos and Japanese culture. Copeland was born in Japan but moved to the States when she was only 3 weeks old. She returned in her 20s, and through dance lessons, was able to learn the culture.

“The way dance is taught in Japan (and this is true of other arts) is through modeling,” Copeland says. “It’s called “mi-narai” (learn through your eyes). My teacher would show me and the other student (an American woman who had better Japanese) the dance move.  We then tried to imitate what she did, over and over. In this way, we learned (through our eyes but also through our bodies). And I found that dance became a language for me. Dances themselves tell stories or channel emotions. In a way, dance is a form of translation.”

For me, dance and kimonos are inextricably linked,” she says. “Both operate on the level of discourse. They tell stories. To practice dance I had to learn how to wear a kimono. My dance teacher lent me a practice garment—a cotton kimono known as a yukata. Midway through my lessons, my mother (who was also in Japan with me), bought me a new (but inexpensive) kimono and formal sash. My teacher taught me how to wear it, fold and store it, and appreciate it.   I hadn’t intended to write about kimonos or dance in The Kimono Tattoo. My initial plan was to write about a translator who begins translating the story of a murder, only to find a real murder taking place outside the world of fiction. As I was writing, though, the kimono angle appeared. And with kimonos, came dance!”

Balancing the beauty of the kimono with Kyoto’s underground

“Silk unravels. A tattoo is forever. Layer by layer the truth is revealed.” 

In The Kimono Tattoo, Copeland also wants readers to appreciate the beauty of the kimono —not as some kind of moribund garment of yesteryear—but as a living, dynamic, flexible aspect of contemporary material culture.

“We can all wear kimonos,” she says.  “I wanted the story to unfold like a kimono. I wanted it to change meaning as the layers came off. And if you ever go to Kyoto, you can rent a kimono for the day and try out walking around in one. The rental shop will dress you! (https://www.okamoto-kimono-en.com/ )

She also wanted to represent something dark. In this case, the storyline of Ruth’s brother Matthew, who was abducted as a child in the novel.

“I don’t want Japan to seem like just a land of eternal beauty,” she says. “It has a very dark underside as well. Women, particularly non-Japanese women from less-wealthy countries, are exploited in the sex trade in Japan. Because of the Matthew angle, I needed the darkness to involve children.

The Japanese sex trade has exploited women from under-developed countries, promising them work if they come to Japan and then trapping them in slave-like conditions. (Once Japan’s economy tanked, some of these practices ended, but it’s still happening.  Young men are trapped, too, often in restaurants, construction, and other low-end jobs.)  Women from more wealthy countries sometimes find themselves getting involved emotionally with psycho-men in Japan who then harm them.”

Book Club Discussion Questions

Join us for our May 17 Book Club discussion at 8 pm ET. Bring your favorite tea, wear your kimono and learn mor about Japanese culture. 

We may not get through all of these, but here are some thoughts to start our discussion!

1. Have you travelled to Kyoto or anywhere else in Japan? Did anything about the book’s setting feel familiar? Why, or why not?
2. What was your favourite passage in the book, and why?
3. Did you learn anything about kimonos in particular, or Japanese culture in general, that surprised you?
4. The art of the kimono is central to the plot of the novel. There is also a strong presence of other arts, such as dance, tattooing, and calligraphy (with an emphasis on the meaning of the characters). Have you read any other works of fiction where a specialised skill, craft or art plays as strong a role in the narrative?
5. The author also uses kimono imagery, both literally and figuratively, to develop and describe her characters.  Can you think of any examples where she does this?
6. Ruth’s department chair didn’t consider her Japanese-to-English translations to be original work, worthy of academic distinction. Have you read books in translation? Have you ever thought about what value a skilled translator might bring to the story?
7. Ruth travels about the city using buses, trains, and taxis. When you travel, how do you choose to move from place to place, within and between cities? How did her descriptions of public transportation compare with the systems in your home countries or places you’ve visited?
8. Maho talks about her own experience of tattooing: how she has tried to explain to her parents that tattoos are a way to release her inner self, how Satoko’s tattoos could have been an expression of self-love, and how the pain of the process is a kind of language. Do you (or does someone close to you) have tattoos? Do either the designs or the procedure have any personal significance?
9. The manuscript delivered to Ruth uses various storytelling devices, from diary entries to letters to first-person narrative. What effects do these different forms have on reading a story? Do you think that’s the reason the writer of the mysterious manuscript used them?
10. Ruth feels simultaneously both very at home in Japan and visibly a foreigner. How does this affect her interactions with those around her? Have you found that your identity as a foreigner has affected how others treat you on your travels?
11. At the end of the story, Ruth returns to a particular pillar at the Nanzen Temple where she and her brother had played as children. Have you ever returned to a childhood landmark and noted how it has changed with the passage of time, or how different it seems from your perspective as an adult?
12. Did the book make you want to travel to Japan?

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