Kagami

This long and baggy, though revealing, saga of Japan is Australian-born Kata's second novel (after A Patch of Blue ). The author, who married into a Japanese family, captures the intricate nuances--politely mannered yet barbed, circumspect yet pithy--of her characters' speaking voices. She draws the reader into the private lives and entwined fortunes of three families, from the 19th century to the 1920s: the noble Yamamotos and Okuras, and the wealthy upstarts the Fukudas, who manufacture such gadgets such as erotic ``toys . . . for the unsatisfied ladies of Japan.'' Renzo Yamamoto's life spans the epoch from Japan's isolationism to its jarring and inevitable exchanges with the West. His maturation involves changing relationships with his aloof father, his elegant mother Lady Masa, his wife, his debonair sister-in-law/lover Aiko, his Europeanized children and his father's aging mistress, Osen. Kata's insider views of cultural mores and obligations are fascinating, and she provides intriguing details on the roles of wives, concubines, geishas and liberated women. The sacred Kagami , a bronze mirror hung at shrines (or carried in the sleeve by ancient scholars) and gazed in to study the secrets of one's own heart, comes to symbolize inner truths and ultimately history itself. (July)