Customer Reviews

December 6: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The setting, Imperial Japan in the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, and the characters, American business man and con artist Harry Niles and his Japanese mistress Michiko, make this a most interesting novel. Martin Cruz Smith has dramatically depicted an American who was raised Japanese -- his Southern Baptist missionary parents abandoned him to a Japanese nanny -- but remains forever an outsider. As the clouds of war gathered, the conflicts that turned Harry Niles inside out and threatened his very life make for a page-turning thriller.

Many of the other reviewers here have already hit some of the flaws in December 6 right on the head: not everyone is really going to know, four years in advance, just how the war will end. And the closing of the novel leaves too much unanswered, with some characters' fates not clearly delineated.

What really made December 6 an interesting read for me were the flashback chapters which alternated with the present-day chapters (i.e., 1941). It is these chapters that show the young Harry Niles, outwardly a gaijin in a country that will never fully accept him, but inwardly just as Japanese as his ethnically Japanese friends. Smith renders with unsparing detail the artsy community of Asakusa and the people who are the greatest influences on the young Harry Niles, the witty artist Kato and the beautiful Oharu. These chapters do a remarkable job of drawing parallels between what happens to Harry in 1941 and his childhood, and showing just how and why Harry the boy becomes the man he is by the time Japan bombs Pearl Harbor.

Overall a very absorbing read, even if flawed, for anyone who is interested in the years that led up to the clash of Japan's empire and America's "Arsenal of Democracy."

I've always enjoyed Smith's books because they immerse you in a new world. He paints word pictures of a place and time so vivid that you actually seem to know them. This isn't just praise of Smith's writing expertise (although that is great) but of his incredible research talent. He must totally immerse himself in a historical environment before he puts a word on paper.

I knew little about pre-war Japan before reading "December 6". With a fast-paced plot and Japan-raised American Harry Niles as guide, I was whisked through a crash course in Japanese history, culture, and psychology. Like most historical fiction, it requires some suspension of disbelief (gee, how DID Harry bump into all of the key figures in Japan that day?). I find so few books that so convince me of their time and place that I'll willingly ignore some plot contrivances.

Amazon also sells this book under the title "Tokyo Station." They won't tell you this, and if you order the book and you've read "Tokyo Station" and complain to Amazon, you'll be told you should have read pages from inside the book before ordering. This, I imagine, will be true for other books published under more than one title. So beware.

Surprising deriviative of Casablanca, perhaps unnecessarily so, it still works as a unique--if somewhat turgid--insight into a fascinating culture.

One person's "complicated" is another's "convoluted." The setting is never less than interesting, but the narrative is never quite satisfactory. The dialogue is unbelieveable at best, often belabored, and the plot's gimmick is telegraphed to anyone with a knowledge of Pearl Harbor. The prescience of the novel's key characters to universally agree that Japan will lose the war--literally 12 hours after the attack--is, well, ludicrous. But how else to make the ending play?

Worth the read, but overpraised by critics. Smith has done better.

Harry Niles is a cultural schizophreniac: a son of US missionaries, he is more at home in the Japanese demi-monde. He owns a jazz club, the "Happy Paris", where his lady-friend selects the records from a jukebox. Sounds a bit formulaic? Forget any preconceived ideas, because nothing and nobody in this book are remotely what they seem to be.
Other reviewers have already done a very creditable job in summarising the novel, so I will not repeat the exercise - except to remind the reader that Martin Cruz Smith does not write fluffy pulp with happy endings. The final spin is worthy of a grand master.
I read this book starting very early one morning after arriving in Europe with an 8-hour time difference. I did not put the book down until it was finished. Harry's character and motivations are beautifully portrayed, and his life as a foreigner in Japan is described in a way that rivals James Clavell's "Shogun" (one of my personal favourites) - but with more twists and turns, and set to darker music. Very, very much recommended.

This is a well-researched book that gives the reader a good look at the seamier side of Tokyo and Japanese attitudes towards "Gaijin" in the years before WWII. It tells the story through the eyes of an American raised in Japan who grew up fraternizing with artists/pornographers/actresses and came to run a nightclub. The plot weaves back and forth from his youth, ostensibly "formative years" and December 5-6, 1941.

I found that the flashbacks did not add much to the book. It only showed that every urban center has a seedy side. So also his girlfriend added nothing to the book except for an unlikeable character and a relationship that had all the warmth of an ice cube tray.

The last stage of the book has some action and is far less stagnant than the first two thirds. As the attack on Pearl Harbor nears, his protection from the higher ups for whom he had done work, begins to falter. He also has to escape from his nemesis - a blood thirsty killer who had made his mark in the Rape of China.

The book was filled with details that did nothing to move it along. The main character was interesting, the rest seemed like cardboard cut-outs. All-in-all the cultural aspects were fairly interesting and the last portion's action and intrigue lifted this to a three star. I give it only a lukewarm recommendation.

Harry Niles, the ne'er-do-well son of a Baptist missionary in Pre-WW II Japan is the protagonist of this fine thriller, a character closely patterned on the Rick Blaine character of Casablanca. Harry has had an adventurous youth growing up in the risqué Asakuza "arts" area of Tokyo under the rather derelict "supervision" of his Uncle. He's the proprietor of "The Happy Paris", actually an American Expat bar in Tokyo. Ostensibly a simple bar owner, Harry is in actuality a seemingly perpetual thorn in the side of the local Tokyo authorities-from the police to the military. The problem is Harry doesn't fit in with the form for a gaijin-a barbarian foreigner. Though definitely foreign, Harry has been raised in Japan virtually all his life and is, in terms of behavior, outlook and temperament, more Japanese than American. Moreover, his boyhood school chums have all grown into roles of prominence in pre-war Japan That Harry has in fact helped the authorities out in some singular cases diminishes their suspicions of him not one whit.

And they are justified in their suspicions-for Harry is as American as they come in his heart-of-hearts and in fact is scamming the Japanese Navy. Or is he? That's the question vexing the authorities as they prepare for Pearl Harbor. How this all plays out forms the basis of an excellent suspense novel.

A first rate novel, as it turns out, populated by interesting, exotic characters, a vivid presentation of pre-war life in Japan, complex plot twists and a very high level of suspense that sustains itself throughout the book.

This is Smith at his best. He excels in the historical suspense novel and in Harry Niles has developed a truly engaging and absorbing character around which he has crafted a first class story.

This is a most unusual historical novel, an espionage thriller of sorts, but much more. Martin Cruz Smith's hero, Harry Niles, is even more unique then the tale he tells - the story of Japan on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The perspective is Japanese, interpreted for us by a chameleon.

Harry Niles grew up in Japan, the son of American Baptist missionaries, zealous in their determination to bring the light of God to the Japanese. Harry's Uncle Orin, a devout alcoholic, baby-sat him as his parents wandered the country spreading the Word, with no knowledge of the Japanese language, or culture, and no desire to learn. The couple saw Harry as a "sort of amphibian, neither honest, nor stupid, neither adult nor innocent, neither American nor Japanese." And Harry, who ran wild in the streets of Tokyo, at home in the shady underworld, dance halls, and back-room card games, learned early to survive well in this environment - and became a master of the "artful scam." He survived Japanese school, where he was the only "gaijin," (foreigner), forever playing the Indian to the Japanese schoolboys' cowboy...or samurai, as it were. He also learned the aesthetics of Shinto, which he was more comfortable with than his parent's Christianity; as well as Japanese ethics, their world view in general, their take on international politics, etc..

The narrative switches back and forth between Harry's adolescence, and his present life, in early December, 1941. He owns the "Happy Paris," an American jazz bar, where a juke box provides the music, and his Japanese Communist lover, Michiko, selects the tunes. He is a con man with a heart of gold. Niles has more than an inkling that the Japanese are about to attack Hawaii - he is a man with many sources, and knows how to do simple addition. And 2+2 = Pearl Harbor. He needs to be on the last flight out of the country - otherwise the consequences won't be pretty. Japanese military and intelligence officials don't particularly care for him, and neither do the Americans, nor the Brits, for that matter. His last days in Japan, before the war, are filled with intrigue, suspense and murder.

Cruz Smith writes a tight, taut narrative, as always. He is a master at building suspense, in a real life drama that is already fraught with tension. His research is impeccable and I learned much while enjoying the read. Descriptions of a meeting of the elite Chrysanthemum Club, where Harry tells the Japanese version of the upcoming hostilities, are both hilarious and informative; as is the scene where Harry plays catch with the Japanese Giants' baseball team. One minute you're laughing, the next you're biting your nails.

Harry Niles is Smith's real masterpiece, however. Niles breathes life into every event and person that surround him. He is a perfect anti-hero on the surface. He is well aware of the multitude of contradictions that make-up his persona, and accepts them, even enjoys them, with a dark, sardonic humor. The scam has a whole new meaning in Harry's hands - his cons can cause war! Yet he is also a decent and kind man. Just beneath the surface, there exists the man who saved many Chinese lives in Japan's brutal rape of Nanking. And he continues to help both friends and strangers up until the novel's last page. Harry just doesn't want anyone to know. He doesn't want to be anyone's hero.

This is one of Martin Cruz Smith's best works. The historical aspect and original point of view make it 5 Stars all the way!

JANA

While this novel is historical fiction, it does a great job of teaching the reader about Japan in 1941. The research of Japan was great. For readers that don't understand the reasons for WWII from the Japanese perspective, this novel lays our the ground work. Too many novels treat the Japanese like "yellow devils". This work shows that there is a another point of view. I enjoyed the book. It challenged my way of thinking. It makes good summer reading.