“Gai-jin” is the final novel of James Clavell’s Japanese saga. Continuing “Tai-Pan,” it takes up the plot in 1862. Gai-jin (foreigners) appear in the country, burning with the desire to trade with Nippon. But the Japanese—led by a captive emperor, with rival warlords and samurai fighting among themselves—still live by laws that even forbid using wheels on carts. No less exotic is the enthusiastic narration of love stories, as if inspired by Alexandre Dumas himself.
Amid universal dissatisfaction and mounting tension, as the weakening shogunate forms a circle around itself—while daimyos are already making moves to seize power—the events unfold that are a direct prelude to civil war: the novel intertwines the fates of many characters, both real historical figures (as per Clavell’s custom—renamed, but easily recognizable) and invented ones: a powerful guardian of a young shogun, the Sonno-joi fanatics ready to die for the destruction of the shogunate, the transfer of power to the emperor, and the expulsion of gai-jin; a young heir of the Struan house and his beloved; diplomats, geishas, traders, and many others. All this creates a vivid picture of Japan before global changes.