The Theme Of Beauty In The Samurai's Garden

Plenty of authors, when writing literary novels, have a tendency to write on topics that have a similar or direct correlation to their own life. This is also the case with The Samurai’s Garden. In the book, The Samurai’s Garden, by Gail Tsukiyama, Stephen, the narrator of the story, has a Chinese mother and a father who lives most of his life in Japan. This situation is similar to Tsukiyama who has a Chinese mother and a Japanese father. Stephen, having suffered from tuberculosis, travels from China to Tarumi, Japan to take rest and heal from the disease. While he is there he meets Matsu, the caretaker of his father’s beach house. Matsu, similar to Tsukiyama, likes to work in the garden and spends much of his time there. He also meets an old friend of Matsu’s, Sachi who suffers from leprosy, a disease that causes deformity in the body. This forces her to live in isolation with other lepers up in the mountains. These three characters all explain how outer beauty should be disregarded and that inner beauty which includes personality, humanity, hidden uniqueness, and inner feelings should be the type of beauty that should be judged.

The topic of beauty and the main characters in this book help communicate that through the course of The Samurai’s Garden, Tsukiyama uses Sachi’s experiences in her garden and her “forceful” banishment to Yamaguchi to exhibit the idea that beauty can be found in the most unexpected places, however, for one to notice it, they must be able to understand inner beauty and its precedence of importance over physical