Peter Pagnamenta

Sword and Blossom: A British Officer’s Love for a Japanese Woman – Pagnamenta /Williams
3 stars
This is the true story of the unlikely love affair of a British Army officer and a Japanese woman. In 1904 Arthur Hart-Synnot was sent to Japan to learn the language of a new British ally and to observe action in the Russo-Japanese war. It is at this time that he falls in love with Masa Suzuki. The story of this unique relationship has been reconstructed from the more than 800 letters found preserved after Masa’s death in 1965. Arthur Hart-Synnod emerges as flawed human being. His values and emotional deficits are remnants of the 19th century. The authors use excerpts of Arthur’s letters to help Arthur and Masa come alive as sincere people trying, under impossible conditions, to preserve a loving relationship. It is a story of real people, not fiction and not an opera. It deals with both the mundane and the survival needs of two people caught in the catastrophic changes of the 20th century.
For the most part, I found it to be an interesting read. The personal tribulations of Masa, Arthur and their sons were balanced by historical references and the inclusion of photographs.


… (més)

A very good and often entertaining summary of the involvement of the British upper crust in the development of the western United States—a subject most often treated only in the small magazines of western historical societies. This is, I think, the first time the topic has been explored in depth by a British author, so the book has a different perspective than that provided in 1989 by Lawrence Woods in his excellent but long out-of print “British Gentlemen in the Wild West: The Era of the Intensely English Cowboy.” New material from British journals, and quotations from letters and diaries found in British repositories make the presentation fresh, and Pagnamenta also benefited from, as he acknowledges, his access to previously unavailable electronic databases of early western newspapers.

The chapters chronicling the role of early British entrepreneurs and sportsmen in romancing the region to their countrymen and inspiring them to follow in their footsteps are particularly strong, as is the “epilogue” that chronicles the American reaction in the late nineteenth century to what was perceived as a British attempt to recreate its system of property landlordism in the American West. All in all, a well-written, well-paced, and eminently readable book.… (més)