Paul Kasoura and Betty Kasoura

Paul Kasoura and Betty Kasoura are a young, stylish Japanese couple living in the exclusive City of the Winding Mists apartments on Skyline overlooking Belmont, a district where no white people live. They first appear in Robert Childan's store, American Artistic Handcrafts Inc., where they are immediately distinguished from the boorish military types Childan despises; they are cultured, educated, and treat him with kindness rather than superiority. Childan, a thirty-eight-year-old white American dealer in historic artifacts, is instantly captivated by Betty's large, dark eyes and the couple's shared appreciation for the art objects he sells, and he fantasizes about being accepted by them as a man rather than as a yank or tradesman. Their visit, during which they reveal they are starting to decorate a new apartment and are stationed in San Francisco with the Standard of Living for Unfortunate Areas Planning Commission of Inquiry, represents for Childan a chance to meet the rising generation of Japanese who do not remember the war and for whom the rigid hierarchy of place has less significance. He notes their names in his notebook—the Kasouras—and trembles with fear at the prospect of visiting them, imagining the proper act and utterance required at each moment, and quailing at the thought of his own aspirations bordering on the insane or suicidal, given that relations between Japanese and yanks are generally between a Japanese man and a yank woman, and Betty is married.

The Dinner Party and the Collapse of Pretense

When the Kasouras telephone Childan toward the end of the week and invite him to their apartment for dinner, he is delighted and takes special pains with his attire, yet as he ascends the stairs he thinks, "Here I am, not invited in a business context, but a dinner guest," and reflects that he is an outsider in his own country. Betty greets him in a silk kimono and obi, her long black hair in a shining tangle, and Paul, holding a drink, invites him to use their first names—Paul and Betty—while Childan offers his own, Robert. The apartment is tasteful in the extreme, ascetic, with few pieces, embodying the Japanese sense of wabi, a beauty found in simple objects that cannot be thought in English. Childan presents a guest gift of scrimshaw, a bit of ivory carved a century ago by New England whalers, which he feels sums up old U.S. culture, and for a moment there is peace in his heart, a libation that lifts some of the anxiety and oppression he has felt since the Colt .44 affair. But the evening quickly sours when Childan, emboldened by drink and nervousness, argues politics, defending the German leaders and dismissing rumors about Hermann Goring's orgies as lies, and Paul and Betty, with adroit tact, steer the conversation away. Childan, recognizing his own rudeness, feels himself a white barbarian, and his resentment grows as he observes the couple's possessions—the Early American bone napkin rings, the sterling silver, the Royal Albert china, the Imari porcelain from Arita—which he sees as loot piled up by the conquerors, pillage from his people. When the conversation turns to The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the novel by Hawthorne Abendsen that imagines a world where Germany and Japan lost the war, Childan declares with harsh conviction that such a world would be much worse, that Communism would rule everywhere, and that the Japanese and Germans had suffered to stop Slavic world inundation. Betty, with a spot of deep red in each cheek, quietly disagrees, saying she does not believe any hysterical talk of world inundation by any people. Childan, retreating into his own thoughts, concludes that these people are not exactly human, that they are like monkeys dolled up in the circus, clever and able to learn but nothing more, and that only the white races are endowed with creativity. When Paul asks for his help understanding Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, Childan admits he has never read it, and then, in a moment of naked hostility, declares that if Germany and Japan had lost the war, the Jews would be running the world through Moscow and Wall Street. The two Japanese seem to shrink, to fade, grow cold, and descend into themselves, and Childan, feeling alone, continues eating with more enjoyment, convinced that the nonsensical dream of common ground has lifted from his mind.

Paul's Analysis of the Edfrank Jewelry and the Concept of Wu

Several days later, Childan visits Paul at his business office, bringing the piece of Edfrank jewelry he had intended as a gift for Betty. Paul reveals that he never gave the piece to his wife, that it has not left his office, and that he showed it to a number of business acquaintances who laughed at it. Yet Paul himself, after days of inspection, has come to feel a certain emotional fondness for the piece, which he describes as a blob of metal, melted until shapeless, representing nothing, without design, mere content deprived of form. He tells Childan that the piece does not have wabi, but it has wu, a Chinese word meaning wisdom or comprehension, and that the hands of the artificer had wu and allowed it to flow into the piece. Paul explains that the object is complete, that by contemplating it one gains more wu, experiencing the tranquility associated not with art but with holy things, and that it is a marvel precisely because it has no historicity and no artistic worth, yet partakes of some ethereal value. He compares it to the Christian aphorism about stones rejected by the builder, and concludes that an entire new world is pointed to by this object, a new thing on the face of the world. Paul then reveals that one of his business acquaintances, an importer who deals in immense quantity, especially to South America, wishes to discuss the piece with Childan, with the idea of mass-producing such pieces as good-luck charms to be peddled all over Latin America and the Orient. Childan, realizing that Paul is conveying the wishes of a superior, feels the weight of obligation and the subtle humiliation of the proposal, understanding that the Japanese are ruling not crudely but with subtlety and timeless cunning, getting him to agree that American art is worthless. In a moment of defiance, Childan rejects the idea, declaring that the men who made the piece are American proud artists, that to suggest trashy good-luck charms insults them, and that he demands an apology. Paul, after a prolonged silence, asks forgiveness for his arrogant imposition, and they shake hands. Childan feels calmness descend in his heart, as if he has lived through and out, and he reflects that life is short, while art, or something not life, is long.

The Couple's Significance in the Novel's Structure

The Kasouras function as a mirror for Childan's own conflicted identity and for the broader dynamics of the Pacific States of America, where the Japanese are the conquerors and the whites the conquered. Their effortless consumption of American culture—the jazz records, the bone napkin rings, the steak dinner—both fascinates and repels Childan, who sees in their imitation a confirmation of his own theories about Japanese inferiority even as he is forced to bow to their power. Betty, in particular, represents for Childan an unattainable ideal of beauty and grace, and his longing for her is intertwined with his resentment of her race. Paul, meanwhile, is the more complex figure, a former science fiction enthusiast who reads Nathanael West and identifies the concept of wu in a piece of American jewelry, yet who is also complicit in the commercial schemes of his superiors. Their relationship with Childan, from the initial store visit to the dinner party to the office confrontation, traces the arc of Childan's own development, from his hopeful fantasy of acceptance to his bitter disillusionment and finally to his moment of defiant self-assertion. The Kasouras, in their grace and their cruelty, embody the paradox of the Japanese occupation: they are the bearers of a culture that values wabi and wu, yet they preside over a world built on the subjugation and humiliation of the very people whose artifacts they collect.