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The novel is an intimate, emotional story of forbidden love in post-war Japan. One of Buck's most personal works on the subject of interracial relationships. Less epic, more psychological and melancholic than her Chinese novels.
A young Japanese woman, Josui Sakai, from a respectable family (her father, a doctor, fled America during the internment of the Japanese), falls in love with an American officer, Allen Kennedy, stationed in occupied Japan. Their love quickly develops into a serious relationship, and Josui becomes pregnant.
The problem arises when Allen inherits the family estate in Virginia (Southern USA), where interracial marriages are forbidden and socially intolerable at the time. Josui, sensitive and proud, faces deep cultural and racial barriers: on the one hand, Japanese tradition and family honor, on the other, American racism and prejudice.
Buck subtly depicts the internal conflicts of both characters, the suffering of mixed-race children, and the trauma of the post-war era. The novel is primarily about love that blooms in secret (“a hidden flower”), but struggles to survive in a world full of divisions.
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