Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Names of Main Characters
- Brief Historical Timeline
- Japanese Honorifics
- Map of Pre-war Greater Shanghai
- PART 1 [Thursday, 15 January 1942–Friday, 31 March 1944]
- PART 2 [Monday, 3 April 1944–Thursday, 26 March 1946]
- Epilogue Tuesday, 9 April 1946, Shukugawa, Japan
- Acknowledgements
1 - Thursday, 15 January 1942, Cathay Hotel, Shanghai
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Names of Main Characters
- Brief Historical Timeline
- Japanese Honorifics
- Map of Pre-war Greater Shanghai
- PART 1 [Thursday, 15 January 1942–Friday, 31 March 1944]
- PART 2 [Monday, 3 April 1944–Thursday, 26 March 1946]
- Epilogue Tuesday, 9 April 1946, Shukugawa, Japan
- Acknowledgements
Summary
Is this uncontainable sense of liberation improper? But how could I not bask in my good fortune to be in this luxurious hotel, far away from stifling Japan – a country engulfed in a sense of moral superiority ever since Pearl Harbor.
Shortly, I will be dressing up and applying make-up to my heart's content, in preparation for our second wedding anniversary dinner. It can't be like the sad send-off party for Hiroshi-sama's promotion and transfer to Shanghai, with little to eat and drink even though it was supposedly a celebration – austerity now a Japanese virtue, to feed the samurai spirit that will bring victory to Japan. No, I will be gliding into the grand Palace Hotel, just as I used to go to Claridge's in my London debutante days, and will be seated in the glittering dining room as if in a Hollywood film.
Was our wedding only two years ago? How desperate I was to appear the perfect bride, trying to suppress my jittery nerves and discomfort, clad in a heavy silk bridal kimono, head weighed down by the wig and head-dress – quite an ordeal for a Westerneducated bride unaccustomed to traditional Japanese ways, moving from London to Japan to marry the heir of an Osaka merchant house!
If it hadn't been for the warm acceptance of Father and Mother Kishimoto, treating me with such respect as the bride of their precious first-born son, I would have been completely overwhelmed by my life change. I couldn't believe it when Father Kishimoto even cancelled a business meeting to attend Benji's birthday party – a tea party for his daughter-in-law's dog! Even so, it certainly felt like a marriage into the Kishimoto clan rather than to Hiroshi-sama himself. I must surely have spent more time with Mother Kishimoto than with my husband.
Here, it is just the two of us, living in this beautiful room with rose-coloured curtains and crystal lights, on the seventh floor of the Cathay Hotel, overlooking the Bund and the Whangpoo. Spread before me is a whole new world and lots of free time – a golden opportunity to keep a diary.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- My Shanghai, 1942-1946A Novel, pp. 3 - 17Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016