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The Commoner: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: John Burnham Schwartz
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $11.98
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Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 10330
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0385515715
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385515719
ASIN: 0385515715
Publication Date: January 22, 2008
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Product Description
It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic.
Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. With the unerring skill of a master storyteller, John Burnham Schwartz has written his finest novel yet.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 38 more reviews...
 Based on a true story January 25, 2008
Diana Phillips (Gulfport, MS USA)
45 out of 57 found this review helpful
I just learned of this book's release and, after reading the synopsis (haven't gotten my hands on the actual book yet), wanted to let other readers know that the premise of the novel is based on fact, though that's not mentioned in the Amazon information. This modern historical element may be as fascinating to others as it is to me. Empress Michiko of Japan married the current Emperor in the Fifties and suffered a similar breakdown that led to her "losing her voice" for an extended period of time. This story was widely reported in Japan and the Empress (Princess Michiko at the time) was (and remains) a very popular figure with Japanese public who regard her as one of "their own" - someone not from established nobility. Rather like Princess Diana, really. This novelization is definitely going on my must-read list!
His Daughter-in-Law Elect February 5, 2008
Jay Dickson (Portland, OR)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful
John Burnham Schwartz's roman a clef about the Japanese imperial family takes as its centerpiece one of the most startling stories of the continuation of ancient royal tradition into the twentieth century: the life and career of the current Empress Michiko, the first commoner in memory to marry an heir to the throne. The empress's life has been paradoxically both intensely dramatic and intensely stultifying. Despised by the court insiders (and supposedly in particular by her imperial mother-in-law) for her common birth and unfamiliarity with court customs, and worn down by the dullness of court routine and the strictures of imperial tradition, the empress allegedly had a nervous breakdown in the early 1960s after the birth of her first son, losing her voice completely for several months. Then, when her husband succeeded to the throne and her son wanted to marry another commoner (this time an Oxford-educated career diplomat), she saw her own new daughter-in-law go through the same horrors she had three decades previously and then even more when the young woman cannot produce a male heir.
Schwartz has as his narrator the empress, here known as "Haruko." The names are changed not to protect the innocent, but rather because Schwartz varies from the story of the current empress particularly at the end, where he imagines a different fate for the current crown princess heroically engineered by her kindly mother-in-law. There's little here critical at all of the current empress or of her husband, son, or daughter-in-law: only the emperor's dead parents are treated as in any way less than fully sympathetically (his mother is basically treated as a wicked witch). As a result it seems almost impossible that the crown princess (here called "Keiko") could get into the emotional fix she does, since everyone here seems constantly brimming over with high promises and kindly intentions. (Surely there could have been a more balanced and honest way to tell these women's stories, even as told from the empress's own perspective.) The best thing about the book is its lovely prose style, which seems simultaneously elegant and understated, as prettily befits its subject. And where else will you find a novel told from the point of view of an actual living empress? That rarity alone makes it worthy of attention.
Beautifully written. January 29, 2008
Robert Busko (Waynesville, NC USA)
24 out of 34 found this review helpful
The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz is one of the mose beautifully written novels I've read in some time. Haruko, the main narrator of this story is such a rich and lovely character that it is hard to accept the fact that the cruelty she talks about happened.....it is base on fact.
Terrific characters richly illustrated by Schwartz add to the novel. I'm also amazed at the level of detail provided to the reader about the comings and goings of the royal court. The Crown Prince, the Empress or Haruko, and even some of the secondary figures make the characterization so readable. It says volumes about Schwartz's research.
The Commoner is a book you'll want to read soon. It is destined to become an icon in its own right.
I highly recommend The Commoner.
Peace
 The rating fell as I read on March 17, 2008
Japan Reader (eastern Japan)
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
I began this book willing to give it a definite three or possible four based on the concept and the writing, but as I read on the rating steadily fell, until I got to the end convinced that this was worth one star at best. As one other reviewer said, it touched my head but not my heart -- that's a big part of it, but hardly all.
The characters were flat and none of them, including Haruko, ever really came alive. She herself was tepid, and most of the others were worse. This made it very hard to sympathize with any of them or their problems. I've lived in Japan for 20 years and know the ins and outs of the royal family pretty well, so I was very disposed in this book's favor when I began. There were a few moments during Haruko's falling in love with the Crown Prince that I did feel a spark of life in the book, and interest in myself. But that faded fairly fast. I suppose the author's intention was to create a book as mannered as the Imperial Family -- well, that succeeded. Mannered unto death, and boredom. Maybe that was his intention too.
It also seemed as if the author was more interested in having each phrase be a work of art than in actually bringing the plot or the characters alive. But this "art," enjoyable enough at the start, gradually became cloying, until by the end of the book I was cringing. A few examples:
"He spoke from his heart, and then he took it with him."
"The eyes I found looking back at me held no past and no future.
"The lack of evidence was so astounding....that over time it had the effect of a powerful narcotic...separating them from their honest perceptions and absorbing all curiosity."
This is purple prose you might expect of a novice, or a romance writer (sorry, romance writer friends), not an author with four published books to his credit. In addition, it seemed he chose images and incidents designed to play to a Western idea of what Japan is. All the cliches are trotted out: red falling maple leaf, the kimono (once a sash is "blood red" -- bit overdone, again), a child whose hair smells of "plum blossoms" (in autumn, metaphors getting a bit messy there). While the problems of Japan's imperial family partly -- or largely -- stem from aspects of their nationality, he's missing the biggest story here, a universal human one. A woman whose job is to produce a child suffers from fertility problems, etc. If drawing a story from the real imperial family, there are much more interesting stories to write than the one we get here. Even this one could have been told with much more life, if the author weren't determined to make it "artful" and "exotic." Japan is way less exotic than people think these days -- it's the land of Toyota, Nintendo, anime -- all of which are part of our lives. Yet people persist in loving these little bits of exoticism more than the true face. Most Japanese didn't like "Lost in Translation" because it played to stereotypes. This book does too.
Finally, a lot is simply unbelievable. Besides the ending, which could never, ever, ever take place. The supposedly touching scene where a father sits on his daughter's bed to talk to her at nighttime, in early 1960s Japan? Well, to start with, I find it hard to believe that a traditional family -- the father's a sake brewer, for goodness' sake -- would have had a bed in that era. But for the father to come in and sit on the side of his daughter's bed -- that would never have happened. It's a very American gesture that even in Japan today would be almost unimaginable. A Japanese father would be far too embarrassed to do that with a grown daughter even now, never mind the early 1960s. The way the Empress expresses herself. What the young, new Crown Princess says at a news conference.
And the author, for all his supposed years of research, messed up some very basic facts. The worst was when he had two people at the imperial family's villa in Nasu, taking "small walks by the seaside." I'm sorry, Nasu is in the mountains. Some people may say that a tiny slip of fact shouldn't make a difference in fiction, but it makes the author seem sloppy. This, on top of the purple prose, really detracted from my reading experience.
I wasn't impressed with "Bicycle Days," which I thought was a patronizing look at Japan that pandered to stereotypes. This book hasn't changed my impression of the author much. I wish I hadn't bought this book in hardcover. Borrow it from the library or wait for it in paperback, please.
An incredibly engrossing read January 28, 2008
David N (Los Angeles)
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
Such a beautifully written and fascinating story. I found myself so quickly and thoroughly caught up in a world that was previously completely unknown to me that it was hard for me to tell where biographical/historical fact ended and novelistic invention began. The fact that the story of Haruko's marriage into the semi-divine confines of Japan's royal family is in fact based on a true story only makes this book that much more intriguing. Although it's completely authentic in its tiny details of palace life, ultimately what makes this book so pleasurable in the read is it's first person narrative. Haruko is a marvelous and original character that you can't help but root for. Her journey from a cloistered family upbringing in the rubble of World War II through Japan's remarkable 20th century history is so deep and so true that it's hard to believe it was written by a man. Interestingly , one thing I kept thinking as I was enjoying this wonderful book, is that by bringing me into to the interior life of this uniquely contemporary Japanese monarch that I was somehow gaining access to another late 20th century royal icon - on a different continent - who also paid a price for being born a commoner.
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