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Japanese culture and a dash of magic create a spellbinding recipe

Across the Nightinggale Floor By Lian Hearn 294 pages Macmillan

There has been an enormous amount of pre-publicity about this book, and inevitably a certain amount of skepticism as a result. What the publishers clearly hope is that this will be in effect a Harry Potter in Japan. What the skeptics suspect is that an already established author is switching tracks in the hope of emulating J.K. Rowling's enormous international success.

But nothing can disguise the fact that this is a wonderful book. It's Tolkien meets Rowling meets something new and different. But above all, it's exquisitely written. Nothing as good as this could come from an author bent on imitating august predecessors.

It's set in what Hearn calls an "imaginary country" with many Japanese customs and traditions, not to mention landscape and seasons. This "imaginary"proviso is no doubt there simply to allow free play to the supernatural elements the author introduces into her story. For all intents and purposes the book is set in feudal Japan.

In a mountain village occupied by a tribe called the Hidden, a young boy escapes the murderous attacks of the Tohan, under their terrifying leader Iida Sadamu. He owes his life to a lord of the Otori tribe who is mysteriously present at the scene and carries him away under his cloak.

The boy is re-named Takeo and becomes the book's central character, its Harry Potter or Frodo if you like. He is inducted into the Otori tribe and adopted as his mentor's son and heir.

The Otori is determined to overthrow the hideous Iida Sadamu, and predictably Takeo becomes the chosen agent for this task. He is aided in his assignment by magical powers he has possessed from birth as a member of the Hidden. He has exceptional hearing, he can briefly become invisible, and he can also divide himself into two independent images.

Meanwhile a beautiful girl, Kaede, is being held hostage by one of the Tohan's allies. After she gains her freedom she encounters Takeo, and a romance that is both physical and mystical ensues. This love story gives the book another dimension, adding the flavor of the medieval romances of Tristan and Isolde, or Lancelot and Guinevere.

As he grows into adolescence, Takeo acquires a mysterious teacher, Kenji, who is more than he seems. A lesser figure than Gandalf, but more important than anyone at Hogwart's Academy, his true significance is not revealed until close to the book's dramatic, heart-rending conclusion.

Lian Hearn is the pseudonym for Gillian Rubinstein, an Australian writer of children's books. The new name comes from taking the last four letters of her first name, and adding the surname of the famous nineteenth century author Lafcadio Hearn. This Hearn went to live in Japan at the end of the 19th century and produced many books on the traditional life he found still flourishing there.

Macmillan are advertising this book as their first cross-over publication, equally suitable for children and adults. This is at best irrelevant. This book is a classic of its kind, and considerations of "target market" are distasteful in that context. There is no way in which the nature of this book has been adjusted to take account of a possible teenage readership.

Critics who argue that Across the Nightingale Floor is merely an imitation of Harry Potter and his predecessors miss the point. It's certainly true that the concept of a magically talented male adolescent who sets off, with the aid of a powerful teacher, on a quest on which the fate of whole populations depends is very familiar. But great myths don't thrive on originality, but instead on tapping into archetypal patterns that recur throughout humanity's imaginative history. Aeneas and Odysseus could as well be cited as Frodo or Potter. The greatest literature, it could be argued, only has a few prime narratives.

Much that is most characteristic of traditional Japan makes a showing in this novel, and old Taiwan doesn't seem very far away either. Typhoons batter roads and bring down bridges, rice is harvested against purple sunsets, samurai ride through flood-ravaged villages demanding tribute, Buddhism informs the mind-set of the people and endorses many magical practices. Muddy town streets are overlooked by all but impregnable castles from whose walls hand wicker cages containing prisoners condemned to be pecked to death by the beaks of circling crows.

It wouldn't do to overstate the importance of this book, but it is nonetheless magnificent in many ways. First and foremost, the style is very fine. It's both terse and poetic. The pacing is all but perfect, with no effusive passages, no self-conscious "fine writing," and certainly no weak links.

Moreover, the author has drunk deep in Japanese culture, and this of course is one of the most sophisticated the world has known. There is a wonderful scene describing paintings by the classic Japanese artist Sesshu. Looking at these, Takeo comments "You felt that at any moment the spell would be broken, the horse would stamp and rear, the cranes would see us and launch themselves into the sky. The painter had achieved what we would all like to do: capture time and make it stand still."

There is another writer who Lian Hearn has learnt from, Mary Renault. She achieved near-classic status in her novels based on the legends and history of ancient Greece, books like The Last of the Wine and The King Must Die.

This new book may not be quite in the same class -- it lacks, for instance, Renault's feeling for the psychology that underlies myth, as well as her stubborn and fiery individuality. But it has her spell-binding power in good measure.

The title, incidentally, refers to the squeaking floors that Japanese rulers used to have constructed round their living quarters so that no one could approach undetected.

Happily, this is only the first of three volumes, the whole to be known as Tales of the Otori. The other two books, Grass for his Pillow and Brilliance of the Moons, are forthcoming. Needless to say, film rights have already been negotiated.
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