THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET by David Mitchell

It’s 1799, and Jacob de Zoet has landed a job at the Dutch trading post Dejima, a manmade island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan.  He has high hopes that this assignment will win him the approval of his girlfriend’s father when he returns to the Netherlands in five years.  His task is to clean up the Dejima’s accounting records and uncover financial irregularities within the company.  He is honest to a fault, but his superiors are not, so that he is a shining example of how no good deed goes unpunished.  Also, Jacob has become infatuated with a young aristocratic Japanese midwife, who after her father’s death, is sent to an unsavory abbey where the monks perform unthinkable acts in the interest of earning immortality.  She has another admirer, a Japanese interpreter, who stages a dicey rescue mission.  Overall, this novel is a bit dense but worth the effort.  The first quarter of the book is as dull as a post.  Then the second half gains steam when the daring attempted rescue of our plucky damsel in distress gets underway.  In the final quarter, a British frigate arrives in port, hoping to seize the Japanese copper before the Dutch can ship it out.  The British captain has gout, and his struggles with pain, with his Dutch informer, and especially with Jacob de Zoet, are borderline semi-humorous.  In any case, this last section is riveting and explosive, as Dejima has no copper and no defense.  Bottom line:  the Japanese are cruel; the Dutch are corrupt; and the Brits are untrustworthy.  The British captain just wants to save face, and I found it ironic that the Japanese during the shogun era were known for just that.