has been translated into 15 languages, and its se-
quel Autumn Bridge (2004).
Matsuoka’s first book, Clouds of Sparrows,
echoes Asian-themed fictional adventure and spirit
in the tradition of James Clavell’s Shogun (1975).
It tells of a historical adventure and a love story
set amid the violence and beauty of 19th-century
Japan. After two centuries of isolation, Japan has
opened its doors to the West in 1861. As foreign
ships threaten to destroy the shogun’s castle in Edo
(present-day Tokyo), a group of American mis-
sionaries—among them Emily Gibson, a woman
seeking redemption from a tormented past, and
Matthew Stark, a cold-eyed killer with one more
death in storage—arrives at Edo Bay into a world
of samurai, geishas, noblemen, and Zen monks.
Shortly after, Emily meets the handsome Lord
Genji of the Okumichi clan, a nobleman with a gift
of prophecy who must defend his embattled family
and confront his forbidden feelings for an outsider.
Forced to escape from Edo and flee to his ances-
tral home, the Cloud of Sparrows Castle, Genji is
joined by Emily and Matthew. Unaware of the dan-
gers ahead of them, these three characters begin a
harrowing journey together with Genji’s uncle, the
samurai Lord Shigeru, and the Lady Heiko. Mat-
suoka places the story at a time when traditional
samurai society was about to be extinguished by
the gun and the weak shogunate and began to be
replaced by Western influences and modern po-
litical structures. In Clouds of Sparrows, Matsuoka
equates the ethos of Japanese samurai (Genji’s
uncle Shigeru) with that of Western gunslingers
(Matthew Stark), implying that somehow Japan
and the West were not that different after all.
Autumn Bridge presents the revelation of the
prophecy that was introduced in Clouds of Spar-
rows—linking a 14th-century event to Lord Genji’s
unlikely alliance with Emily in the 19th century. In
1311, while a woman in the tower of the Cloud of
Sparrows Castle watches the enemies battling below
and awaits her fate, she begins to write the secret
history of the Okumichi clan, a gift of prophecy
the clan members share, and the destiny that awaits
them. Six centuries later, her writings are discovered
when Emily translates the Autumn Bridge scrolls
and sees common threads of her own life woven
into these ancient premonitions. The strength of
the novel lies in its multitude of appealing and lik-
able characters and the complex interrelationships
between them over the centuries and cultures.
Monika DixM. Butterfly David Henry Hwang (1988)
With M. Butterfly, DAVID HENRY HWANG achieved a
double success: a commercial hit on Broadway and
a serious contribution to the awareness of issues
affecting the relationship between the West and
the Far East. M. Butterfly opened at the National
Theatre, Washington, D. C., on February 10, 1988,
and moved to Broadway within six weeks, debuting
at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on March 20. John
Dexter was the director of these productions; the
play’s early progression onto Broadway reflected
the confidence that the producers, Stuart Ostrow
and David Geffen, had in the play’s potential for
theatrical diversion and cerebral stimulation. The
play gained commercial success on Broadway
for a number of reasons: the spectacular staging
called for in Hwang’s elaborate stage directions;
the comic, innuendo-laden one-liners that are
typical in Hwang’s work; an extraordinary acting
performance by B. D. Wong; the admirable direc-
tion of the veteran Dexter; the sumptuousness of
Asian costumes; the aural effect of Puccini’s opera
music; and the direct, straightforward tragedy of
the story. The play has also made a lasting impres-
sion on Asian-American culture because it attacks
Western notions of Orientalism directly and force-
fully. The play succeeds as intellectual provocation
because of its merciless deconstruction of Asian
stereotypes fanned by fantasies such as Puccini’s
opera, Madama Butterfly.
The plot is based very loosely on a scarcely be-
lievable real-life story about a minor French dip-
lomat who is jailed for passing national secrets
to his Chinese lover, who turns out to be a male
spy for the Chinese government. In Hwang’s play,
set in the 1960s, 30-something Rene Gallimard,
who works for the French diplomatic services in
Beijing, is transfixed by a Chinese woman sing-
ing passages from Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera,M. Butterfly 18 5