Several years ago, Suzanne Kamata read an article in a Tokyo magazine about expatriate parents in Japan losing custody of their children after divorce. The article described one woman divorced from a Japanese man who lost custody of her son because she was a journalist; having a career meant she was "unfit" to be a mother. Although at first permitted to see her son, she found that the child grew increasingly distant, and the woman could see that the boy's father and stepmother were "working on him."

"I found all this very disturbing and provocative. The idea of a mother-- not necessarily a bad mother by Western standards-- who loses access to her child stayed with me, and I found myself wanting to write about it. I originally wrote it as a short story which was published in Wingspan (editor's note: ANA's inflight magazine), but I was interested in turning it into a novel even then. I felt there was quite a bit of backstory that I could explore-- why this woman came to Japan, what happened in her marriage."

Thus was born Losing Kei, a powerful novel of love and loss published in January 2008 by Leapfrog Press. The 196-page book tells the story of Jill Parker, an American painter living in the remote seaside village of Tokushima, Japan, and working as a bar hostess. A spur-of-the-moment decision to attend a showing at the prefectural museum leads to her meeting Yusuke, owner of a local art gallery, and the two begin a love affair that culminates in their marriage.

Forsaking her small apartment, Jill moves in with her husband and his parents, where her mother-in-law introduces her to the proper duties of a housewife in Japan. Only Yusuke is not just any son, he is chonan, the eldest son, and it is Jill's duty to learn all that is involved in being his wife as instructed by her new mother-in-law. The domestic situation deteriorates even further when Yusuke's father dies, and the birth of the couple's son, Kei, does little to improve matters. Eventually, Jill must make a terrible choice: the personal freedom that would be hers through divorce or abandoning her child to her husband and mother-in-law. When she finally makes her decision, she faces tremendous struggles.

The story takes place between the years 1987 and 1997, with the action flipping back and forth between the years. The time frame was a deliberate choice on Kamata's part. In this earlier era, travel documents were not as strictly specified as they are now. As she explains, "I wanted the story to be set before immigration authorities started requiring parents traveling alone with children to have letters of permission signed by their spouses. Also, the yakuza (Japanese gangsters) were a bit more powerful then."

Jill is the narrator of her life's events, and we slowly come to know the good and the bad about her. Remembrances of her life before arriving in Japan provide needed character background and offer a better understanding of why she makes certain choices. Kamata deftly weaves in several supporting characters, including Veronica, the Filipina bar hostess who works with Jill, and Eric, her American buddy.

The mother-in-law, the book's antagonist, is extremely well written and not at all a caricature. Jill is given glimpses into what makes the woman act as she does, and gradually awakens to the negative force of the older woman's actions. We come to realize that Jill's individuality is being stifled, her marriage undermined, and her mothering role threatened, all while her husband refuses to intervene.

True to the story's time and location, the yakuza play a role in Jill Parker's struggles. Her father-in-law runs a construction business, an industry notorious for such connections. When he dies and his son takes over the family business, her husband's ties with organized crime become even stronger. I asked the author how she researched this information. She replied, "I read newspaper and magazine articles, paid attention to the TV news, and also relied on anecdotal information from people in Tokushima who'd had dealings with yakuza."

In the end, Losing Kei tells the story of a woman's discovery of what matters most in her life. "In my short story version, the mother leaves her son behind and goes back to the States, with the hope that she will someday reconnect with her son. By the time I'd started the novel, I was the mother of two small children and I realized that Jill wouldn't have gotten on that plane so quietly. She would have done whatever possible to get her son back. So it was less that my character took over than it was that I understood her better. Motherhood gave me insights that I would not have otherwise had."

Suzanne Kamata writes with a sure understanding of the nuances of family life in a remote location in Japan. She says that she is often inspired by events in her own life. "Being the wife and mother of Japanese citizens informs my writing a great deal. I have lived here for nearly 20 years, so Tokushima is what I know best.

"There are many writers who spend a couple of years here, and then go on to write a memoir or novel based in Japan. But a lot of these books feature young single expats hanging out in Tokyo who eventually return to their own countries. There are very few novels about foreigners who live immersed in the culture, at the heart of Japanese families. And there are not so many expat novels set outside Tokyo. Young writers are often advised to write stories that only they can tell. I feel that I am telling those stories."

I asked whether Jill Parker is at all autobiographical, and whether any of the novel's characters are based on her family members. Kamata admits that, like Jill, she has always wanted to go to Africa and was accepted into the Peace Corps. Further, she says that when she married her Japanese husband, she was a bit naïve as to the role her in-laws would play in her marriage. But while Kamata has heard of marriages threatened, or ended, by mothers-in-law, she stresses that the mother-in-law in the book is not her mother-in-law.

She concludes, "I write in English, surrounded by people who can't read what I write. This is both freeing and isolating. While I was writing Losing Kei, I had the support of an online writing group, made up mostly of foreign wives of Japanese men. The interest and enthusiasm of these women helped me to keep going. I am very grateful for their support."

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Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008; ISBN: 978-0-9728984-9-2) is available at bookstores and online merchants. Suzanne Kamata is a prolific author. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in more than 100 publications. She is the editor of the anthology The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997) and the forthcoming literary anthology Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising Children with Special Needs. She is currently working on a new novel. Further information is available on her website: http://suzannekamata.com/.

Robbie Walker Okamoto is a freelance writer and editor whose articles have been published in U.S. and overseas publications, as well as on Internet sites. She and her Japanese husband reared their three children in Tokyo, Japan, and Naperville, Illinois. A year ago, after the couple became empty nesters, they moved to Baja California, Mexico, on a part-time basis, to fulfill a lifelong desire to live by the ocean. Robbie now also writes a twice-monthly column for the local English-language newspaper profiling individuals who choose to live in northern Baja. She can be reached at robbiesw@hotmail.com.

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