In many ways, this is a conventional historical novel with a lot of narrative push. It's hard to put down, a quality that generally puts me on guard. The story proceeds in linear fashion, after a brief introduction to Orito the midwife, with the arrival in 1799 of clerk Jacob de Zoet at Dejima, a Dutch East Indies Company trading outpost on an island in Nagasaki harbor. The novel ends with the death of Jacob de Zoet, approximately 40 years later, and approximately 20 years after his return to the Netherlands. The novel is fairly static in its location as well. Except at the end (and this section is brief), all events take place in Dejima, on board ship just offshore, nearby in Nagasaki proper or in or near Mount Shiranui Shrine. Although the third person narration shifts, all points of view belong to the same story, primarily that of Jacob de Zoet (this is also a story about European colonialism at the turn of the 19th century, as well as the story of Japan of the same epoch). Certainly, it's a meditation on power, hierarchical social and economic structures, and the foolish & dangerous human tendency to seek immortality "by any means necessary." The game of go played between Magistrate Shiroyama and Lord Abbot Enomoto is never-ending. Like with the affairs of men (& I use "men" here advisedly), there is always another move to be made, until the game ends, or is abandoned. Morality plays little to no part in this. Integrity & courage are rare qualities of character, only allowed for in special circumstances for most men, yet, when they do occur, they make art as beautiful as the white moth landing on a black pebble on the go board.
Although conventional in its structure, the novel is full of Mitchell's signature touches. The story is set in Japan after all. There is a tale of seafaring colonialism. There is a bizarre & bloody pseudo-mystical cult, reminiscent of, although not quite as graphically portrayed as, the Yakuza criminal gangs in number9dream who commit murder by bowling ball & sell body parts extracted from unwilling donors. Or the cult follower of His Serendipity featured in Ghostwritten who bombed the Tokyo subway with sarin gas in 1995, an acolyte inculcated with belief in an alpha-quotient.
My biggest disappointment with this novel was Mitchell's decision not to fully develop the one prominent female character, the midwife Orito. She must be seen as a very compelling woman, because at least three men are either in love with her or obsessed with her in some way [de Zoet, Ogawa & Enomoto]. Although some page space is devoted to her point of view, the novel still doesn't give us enough about her. If we were only to see her through the eyes of the men who are in love/fascination with her, then the novel wouldn't need to shift to her point of view at all. But since it does, we need to know more. The characters of Ogawa Uzaemon and, toward the end of the novel, Magistrate Shiroyama also beg to be better developed. However, their stories could be told elsewhere, perhaps in a prequel to this novel. But Orito is destined for this novel alone and it should be more hers than it is. In order to pay more attention to the three main Japanese characters, I would have skipped, or at least spent less time with, the English Captain Penhaligon with his ever worsening and much described gout. But it's Mitchell's novel, so he gets to choose, and for the most part, he chooses well.