The Samurai's Garden

Throughout the novel, flowers are associated with grace and good luck. Keiko often has a lavender scent, and most of Stephen’s interactions with her involve flowers: “I looked up to see a shower of white petals fall in my direction… I jumped up and could hear two girls laughing aloud as I rushed to the gate” (19). Keiko is also associated with persimmons, fruit that comes from a flower, colorful and abundant. Sachi and Matsu both find plants flowering against odds or out of season in their gardens. Stephen, on Sachi’s balloon plant’s blooms, may as well be asking about Sachi herself in Yamaguchi:“’How are they able to grow here?’ I asked, amazed that anything so delicate could grow among rocks” (127). Matsu, using the Japanese word for “flower,” calls Sachi his “[l]ittle hana” (59).

The garden at the center of the novel changes with weather and the seasons as the lives of the characters change. It blooms, goes dormant, is wrecked by storm, and returns. Its transformations show how fragility and resilience may coexist. When Matsu, Sachi, and Stephen work in either the main garden or Sachi’s stone garden, their time there is also work on the soul. When Matsu resists Stephen helping in his garden after the storm, “Sachi turned to Matsu and softly said, ‘I remember a time when you told me working in the garden would give me back my life’” (56). Matsu then allows Stephen to join them in rebuilding.

Tsukiyama uses food throughout the novel as a grounding trope, with a few exceptions (e.g., Stephen and his father eating in Tokyo as they are watched by wary Japanese patrons). From the comfort of a first breakfast with Matsu (“rice with pickled vegetables and miso soup” (13)) to the joy of the “[h]omemade yokan” Keiko gives Stephen(Matsu comments, “’You must be quite special to this girl’” (61)), food connects people to places and each other. 

Stephen’s painting and writing allow him to capture on canvas and paper his surroundings and, more importantly, his feelings. His journal literally and figuratively holds his Tarumi experience. His painting of Matsu’s garden from the novel’s title is his final gift to Matsu, encapsulating all he has learned there and modeling service. Matsu’s final gift to Stephen, two blank books, is the tabula rasa on which Stephen will write his future.

The prayer slips at Tama shrine are mentioned only twice in the novel – once on Stephen’s first visit there, once on his last. But these visits and the slips frame Stephen’s time in Tarumi. They show that he has moved from being an outsider to having an investment in Tarumi and its people. They show that he has learned to bridge isolation and connection, past and present, the individual and the collective: “I knew all the praying in the world wouldn’t stop the war… or make my parents love each other again. I wanted to leave a message… something of me would remain” (209).

When Stephen and Sachi first meet, she is wearing a black veil to cover her face, which has been scarred by leprosy. Stephen gets glimpses of her face beneath and finds her beautiful both in spite of and because of the scars. For the young artist, this realization that beauty occurs not just in the obvious but in the “ugly” is central. It ripples into all of his relationships.

The veil is at once a symbol of shame and – when Sachi removes it – a window into vulnerability. When she shows her true face, she bares her history and her soul. Stephen spots Sachi outside Kenzo’s funeral:“she lifted her veil and her eyes caught mine for just a moment as she bowed low in my direction” (110). Here, Sachi reveals herself to Stephen both literally and figuratively. Stephen has just been shamed by Keiko’s father, and though his friend is not aware of that encounter, she lifts the veil on shame for both of them.