Ellis Avery, The Teahouse Fire

The Teahouse Fire

Ellis Avery

Riverhead, Dec 28 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 1594489300

Now an elderly woman, Aurelia Bernard looks back on her life, starting with the pivotal event in 1865 New York when her mother is dying and her missionary Uncle Charles takes his nine-year-old niece with him to Japan to do the Lord's work. Less than a year later in Kyoto, he is dead and Aurelia is taken in as a servant to the Shin family by their teenage daughter Yukako.

The patriarch head of the Shin brood, dubbed "Mountain" by Aurelia who the locals call Urako, is a grandmaster teacher of the tea ceremony temae. However, the western invasion with its technology has made tradition look ancient so unless experts like the Mountain make a paradigm switch to adapt to the invasion, they will become like the dinosaur. As it is, the Meiji government has withdrawn its subsidies to the arts like the temae ceremonial rite. Mountain worries that his legacy will not survive his offspring Yukako and there is little he can do even as he is humiliated watching his mother and his spouse sell valuables at horrendous, deflationary prices to pawn dealers. Worse, Yukako rejects tradition as she easily adapts to the economic opportunities the west has brought to Japan.

THE TEAHOUSE FIRE is an insightful, historical tale that provides the audience with a vivid look at mid-nineteenth-century Japan during a period of incredible change. The key players surprisingly are the father and daughter as Mountain sees his reason for living dying while Yukako hugs the new economy. Surprisingly, Aurelia is more symbolic as a stranded westerner. The amount of information slows the plot somewhat, but armchair traveling fans will appreciate this trip to Japan where tradition is losing the battle to outside influences.

Harriet Klausner