The Samurai's Garden

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1994

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Autumn: October 27, 1938-Autumn: October 29, 1938Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Autumn: October 27, 1938 Summary

As Stephen packs for his journey to Hong Kong, three days away, he and Matsu feel their looming separation: “it’s as if the house is slowly becoming a stranger to us. Matsu stares hard into each room as if he already sees it as it once was, silent and uncluttered” (207). Sachi turns up for an afternoon visit and stays until evening, an unexpected delight tinged with sadness. As Matsu walks her back to Yamaguchi, Stephen realizes that the visit was for Matsu, not for him.

Autumn: October 28, 1938 Summary

On the morning of Stephen’s last full day in Tarumi, Matsu greets him with two packages. One contains dinner, Matsu tells him. The other is a secret.

Stephen gives Matsu his painting of the garden and thanks him for taking care of him. Matsu is deeply touched and responds, “I sometimes think it has been the other way around” (208).

They go to the Tama shrine, where Stephen performs the rituals from before. But he has not come to pray; rather, he wishes to leave a slip of paper on the wall near the altar with all of the other villagers’ prayers so that something of him will remain.

Autumn: October 29, 1938 Summary

Stephen writes of his final dinner in Tarumi with Matsu the night before, his anxiousness, and Matsu’s apparent calm. Stephen tells Matsu that he might take classes in Hong Kong; Matsu says that he might visit Fumiko in Tokyo and might move to Yamaguchi to be with Sachi.

After dinner, Matsu shows Stephen the daruma doll Stephen gifted him months before with one eye drawn in. “When you return, I’ll draw in the other” (209), Matsu says.

On his last morning in Tarumi, Stephen sits in the garden and remembers the relationships that have blossomed there. He hears a sound at the gate and goes to it: Keiko has left a single, pressed white flower.

In the afternoon, Stephen and Matsu walk to the station. Foreboding rainclouds darken the sky, and the waves are strong. By the time they reach the station, it’s begun to rain. As they prepare to part, Matsu bows low to Stephen. Instead of bowing in return, Stephen waits for Matsu to straighten, then hugs him. Matsu returns the embrace. Matsu assures Stephen that they will write and that he will continue to care for Sachi. As Matsu leaves, Stephen feels the urge to run after him.

On the train, Stephen finds the secret package from Matsu tucked into his baggage. In it are two blank-paged black leather books: “then as the train rattled toward Kobe, taking me away from Tarumi, I took out my fountain pen, opened one of the books, and began to write” (211).

Autumn: October 27, 1938-Autumn: October 29, 1938 Analysis

These three chapters are Stephen’s final three days in Tarumi. Sachi visits the beach house – a surprise after Kenzo’s suicide. It’s clear that this visit, unlike some before, is more for Matsu than for Stephen: Matsu feels the loss of Stephen as much as Stephen feels the loss of him and Sachi, and Sachi is there to ease the transition.

Stephen gives his painting of the garden to Matsu. While this painting has not been mentioned many times in the novel, it is an important symbol of Stephen’s transition: he has moved away from painting and writing primarily to express himself and toward using his gifts to serve others. When Matsu bows in gratitude, Stephen says, “It isn’t half as good as having the real garden, but I thought you might enjoy it anyway” (208). Stephen has come out from behind his book and brush to experience real life with others. He has grown stronger not only in body, but also in mind.

When Stephen and Matsu visit Tama shrine one last time, Stephen leaves a prayer slip on the wall near the altar: “I wanted to leave a message on the wall by the altar, tacked alongside all the other hopeful requests so that even if I never returned to Tarumi, something of me would remain” (209). The theme of present and past returns: Stephen’s present in Tarumi is quickly becoming his past, and he wishes to leave a bit of himself in the place that has given him so much. Like all of the prayer slips there, his holds a secret. We are never told what he writes in it.

Just before Stephen leaves for the train with Matsu, he finds a white flower on the garden gate from Keiko. Her flower motif has returned, a final gift of grace to commemorate their time together. A greater gift, though, and the one that brings the novel both back to its beginning and to its close, is Matsu’s gift of two bound leather books. Stephen, changed and fortified by his time in Tarumi, will now create his next journey.