The Bride’s Kimono, by Sujata Massey. 49.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Massey, a biracial (Indian-German-American) woman, used her experience living in Japan and dealing with cross-cultural issues to create a series of mysteries featuring a biracial Japanese-American woman antique dealer living in Tokyo.

I read the first bunch years ago and was charmed by the vivid and down to earth depiction of Tokyo, which was very close to my own experience of the city. The novels themselves are fluffy mysteries with romantic elements, each focusing on a different aspect of Japanese culture, such as ikebana in The Flower Master. I recall them as fun but not terribly well-written, and may also be quite dated by now judging by my experience with the one I just read.

Bride's Kimono, The is mostly set in American, as Rei Shimura gets a job shepherding a set of valuable kimono from a museum in Tokyo to one in Washington DC; naturally, a kimono is stolen, someone is murdered, her ex-boyfriend appears, and she’s accused of being a prostitute (!) and must clear her name, find the kimono, pick a man, and solve the crime, all the while stumbling through culture clashes with both Japanese and American people.

The new setting took away a lot of the fun of the series for me, though I did enjoy the details about antique kimono. I was a little boggled that in a book written in 2001, Rei had never used a computer and didn’t know what a mouse was; this was presented as slightly eccentric but not bizarre.

Nothing special, but I was entertained.

Comments

[sanguinity]

2001? You could probably find antique dealers that were only just then thinking about getting on the internet in order to list their goods for sale; in their own circles, they wouldn't have been considered weird, I don't think, just slow to adopt tech.

I knew lots of people circa 2005 who had never touched a mouse (I taught several classrooms full at my workplace that year), and no one thought them weird or bizarre. Class, profession, and age, all come into it strongly.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry I implied that not knowing about computers is bizarre in general. I was thinking that in terms of that particular character, who is from an upper-class San Francisco background and is in her late twenties or early thirties at the time; my experience is that people in that demographic (approximately mine as well) did know the concept of point and click by 2001, even if they didn't own or habitually use computers. But I could be completely wrong.