...
Show More
I had vaguely heard of Shibumi by reputation, but never actually having had read it, I decided to take the dive. And quite the dive it was with spies and assassinations, sex, and vengeance. After a few hundred pages of backstory, it blisters through the plot at breakneck speed.
The protagonist is the deadly Nicholai Hel, assassin of terrorists and aspirer to the Japanese state of perfect consciousness, or shibumi. We learn of his birth to a Russian/Aryan/German mother and unknown German father in pre-war Shanghai, the effect of the Japanese invasion on China, his surrogate Japanese father...in fact the book covers a lot of ground between Chinese, Japanese, and Basque culture and history.
Nicholai's adoptive Japanese father ultimately is drawn into the war and sends the boy to Japan to study the Japanese game of Go with Otake-san, a Dan seven legend. Otake-san teaches the boy many things, not the least of which about the knowledge of older people: "never resent the advantage of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coins of life and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled." (p. 117). It is interesting to note that most of Hel's make companions from then on are his age or older. I also appreciated this twist on a common maxim: "Many Japanese seemed not to realize that the propaganda of the victor becomes the history of the vanquished." (p. 141).
Arrayed against our hero is the Mother Company, one of those Hydra-like supra-governmental organizations representing the power of oil and telecommunications forcing various militaristic organizations such as the CIA and both MI-5 and MI-6 under their heel. Sort of like Crown Prince Bonesaw allied with Zuch and Huawei with Pompeo and Mom all working for him. Except he's a she. Well, anyway, these baddies are willing to kill nine people in the elimination of just two and, of course, miss the one that will be able to lure Hel out of retirement to fight for her cause. In a nutshell, that is the core of the plot. One interesting sidenote is how, as far back as 1980, Trevanian was insightful and visionary enough to see the evil potential of a supercomputer - like Facebook and Google today - that studies minute actions of all of the world's citizens called Fat Boy (interesting choice of name also given the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Hel's first love interest). So, you can think of Hel as a sort of Ed Snowden that can kill you with a playing card or drinking straw. Did that get your attention?
Needless to say, there are high moments and low moments in this epic struggle including a long cave sequence (too long?) that becomes critical to one of the key moments late in the plot (No Spoilers, I promise). Along the way, we learn of Hel's few friends:
- Hana - his concubine with whom he has level IV sex (!) - this sex is never described because as the author points out in a footnote, detailed descriptions performed incorrectly could produce permanent harm in the practioners - see the footnote on page 179
- Le Cagot - his boisterous Basque caving friend who is a Zorba the Greek kind of larger than life Dionysian giant
- The Gnome/De Llandes - who is is intellectual counterpart providing him with a backdoor into Fat Boy and thus leverage against the big boys
We only meet the Gnome briefly, but we are able to see a true bromance having formed. I liked how De Llandes telescopes their friendship into twelve hours:"We have know each other for more than twenty years, but...we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another's minds and emotions...Actually, that's not bad. Most good friends and married couples (these are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles." (p. 405). I found that rings true because my best, deepest friendships are with those I spend the least time with to some degree.
As for the book, the style is very late 70s with loads of sexism (braless boobs, carelessly exposed pubic hair and James Bond-like sex) and loads of clichés (the tired ones about Arabs, but also about Americans and French (see the diatribe by Le Cagot in the cave). Perhaps, it was partly as satire of Bond literature, and there were strong female characters such as Hana (albeit that her position was due to her expertise in sex) and Mrs Perkins, but most of the female characters were relatively superficial (like ill-fated Hannah). So, don't expect the multi-cultural positivity of Leigh Bardugo or Suzanne Collins here.
As for Hel, he is a fascinating anti-hero:There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primitivism, but progress. And the new hero - the antihero - is the one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that the salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don't know how far." (p. 407). I would add that even now, 40 years later, we still have not decided on this. We have both kinds of heros - Superman representing the former and Batman representing the latter (or if we take Marvel characers, Iron Man vs Captain American in Avengers: Civil War), so I found that particularly insightful.
Overall, a fun and interesting read. Exciting and with a positive message overall despite the hundred and eight corpses that litter the pages - mostly bad guys or avenged good guys. A worthy read that entertains to a great degree and educates to a minor one (again when one filters out the sexism and racism).
The protagonist is the deadly Nicholai Hel, assassin of terrorists and aspirer to the Japanese state of perfect consciousness, or shibumi. We learn of his birth to a Russian/Aryan/German mother and unknown German father in pre-war Shanghai, the effect of the Japanese invasion on China, his surrogate Japanese father...in fact the book covers a lot of ground between Chinese, Japanese, and Basque culture and history.
Nicholai's adoptive Japanese father ultimately is drawn into the war and sends the boy to Japan to study the Japanese game of Go with Otake-san, a Dan seven legend. Otake-san teaches the boy many things, not the least of which about the knowledge of older people: "never resent the advantage of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coins of life and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled." (p. 117). It is interesting to note that most of Hel's make companions from then on are his age or older. I also appreciated this twist on a common maxim: "Many Japanese seemed not to realize that the propaganda of the victor becomes the history of the vanquished." (p. 141).
Arrayed against our hero is the Mother Company, one of those Hydra-like supra-governmental organizations representing the power of oil and telecommunications forcing various militaristic organizations such as the CIA and both MI-5 and MI-6 under their heel. Sort of like Crown Prince Bonesaw allied with Zuch and Huawei with Pompeo and Mom all working for him. Except he's a she. Well, anyway, these baddies are willing to kill nine people in the elimination of just two and, of course, miss the one that will be able to lure Hel out of retirement to fight for her cause. In a nutshell, that is the core of the plot. One interesting sidenote is how, as far back as 1980, Trevanian was insightful and visionary enough to see the evil potential of a supercomputer - like Facebook and Google today - that studies minute actions of all of the world's citizens called Fat Boy (interesting choice of name also given the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Hel's first love interest). So, you can think of Hel as a sort of Ed Snowden that can kill you with a playing card or drinking straw. Did that get your attention?
Needless to say, there are high moments and low moments in this epic struggle including a long cave sequence (too long?) that becomes critical to one of the key moments late in the plot (No Spoilers, I promise). Along the way, we learn of Hel's few friends:
- Hana - his concubine with whom he has level IV sex (!) - this sex is never described because as the author points out in a footnote, detailed descriptions performed incorrectly could produce permanent harm in the practioners - see the footnote on page 179
- Le Cagot - his boisterous Basque caving friend who is a Zorba the Greek kind of larger than life Dionysian giant
- The Gnome/De Llandes - who is is intellectual counterpart providing him with a backdoor into Fat Boy and thus leverage against the big boys
We only meet the Gnome briefly, but we are able to see a true bromance having formed. I liked how De Llandes telescopes their friendship into twelve hours:"We have know each other for more than twenty years, but...we have shared perhaps a total of twelve hours of intimate conversation, of honest inquiry into one another's minds and emotions...Actually, that's not bad. Most good friends and married couples (these are seldom the same thing) could not boast twelve hours of honest interest after a lifetime of shared space and irritations, of territorial assertions and squabbles." (p. 405). I found that rings true because my best, deepest friendships are with those I spend the least time with to some degree.
As for the book, the style is very late 70s with loads of sexism (braless boobs, carelessly exposed pubic hair and James Bond-like sex) and loads of clichés (the tired ones about Arabs, but also about Americans and French (see the diatribe by Le Cagot in the cave). Perhaps, it was partly as satire of Bond literature, and there were strong female characters such as Hana (albeit that her position was due to her expertise in sex) and Mrs Perkins, but most of the female characters were relatively superficial (like ill-fated Hannah). So, don't expect the multi-cultural positivity of Leigh Bardugo or Suzanne Collins here.
As for Hel, he is a fascinating anti-hero:There was a time in the comedy of human development when salvation seemed to lie in the direction of order and organization, and all the great Western heroes organized and directed their followers against the enemy: chaos. Now we are learning that the final enemy is not chaos, but organization; not divergence, but similarity; not primitivism, but progress. And the new hero - the antihero - is the one who makes a virtue of attacking the organization, of destroying the systems. We realize now that the salvation of the race lies in that nihilist direction, but we still don't know how far." (p. 407). I would add that even now, 40 years later, we still have not decided on this. We have both kinds of heros - Superman representing the former and Batman representing the latter (or if we take Marvel characers, Iron Man vs Captain American in Avengers: Civil War), so I found that particularly insightful.
Overall, a fun and interesting read. Exciting and with a positive message overall despite the hundred and eight corpses that litter the pages - mostly bad guys or avenged good guys. A worthy read that entertains to a great degree and educates to a minor one (again when one filters out the sexism and racism).
