The Samurai's Garden

In 1937, as Japan pushes into China, a twenty-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent from Hong Kong to his family's summer house in a small Japanese coastal village to recover from tuberculosis. There he is looked after by Matsu, a quiet gardener and housekeeper whose calm hides a long history. Over the course of a year, Stephen learns that Matsu has devoted much of his life to Sachi, a woman whose face was disfigured by leprosy and who lives in a secluded village for the afflicted nearby. As the war creeps closer and Stephen worries for his family, he watches Matsu's steady kindness and comes to understand a private code of honor and love. The garden becomes the still center of a story about war, illness, and quiet devotion.