Pitch
London (1989)—a Japanese FX trader ends her engagement to an English barrister after evidence surfaces that her father committed war crimes in Burma during WW2. Investigating separately, they uncover conflicting accounts of atrocity and mercy that could take them on the path to reconciliation.
Synopsis
1941, Hakone, Japan: KANOU TAKAHASHI, eccentric owner of a mountain ryokan, is forced to end his thirty-year friendship with EDWARD DILLON, a cultivated British Army doctor, after Pearl Harbor. Their friendship began in 1907, when Edward stayed at Kanou’s inn beneath Mount Fuji. Over the years, the two men exchanged letters, gifts, and stories of their growing families, never imagining their sons would one day fight on opposite sides of a war.
During the Burma campaign, tragedy engulfs both families. In 1943, Edward’s youngest son is reported missing, leaving his mother unable to accept his loss and determined to uncover the truth. A year later, Kanou’s eldest son is also killed. Rumours, secrecy, and grief leave both households bound to wounds that never heal.
1989, London: JAMES DILLON, an erudite British barrister, meets MASAKO TAKAHASHI, a formidable Japanese banker, by chance in the National Gallery. Their attraction deepens into love and they become engaged, despite the hostility of James’s mother, who cannot forgive the Japanese for what Burma did to her family.
As James and Masako uncover links between their families, an old photograph album reveals their grandfathers once met in pre-war Japan. A watch inherited by Masako from her late father bears an engraving commissioned by Edward Dillon in Kyoto in 1907. James learns the watch was later given to his missing uncle before he sailed to India, becoming the key to a hidden history.
Masako is shaped by her own inheritance of silence. Her father returned from Burma consumed by guilt and trauma before taking his own life when she was nine. Determined to escape that legacy, she has built a disciplined life in London. Yet the deeper she and James investigate, the more she fears what the past may demand of them.
Former soldiers from both sides reveal fragments of what followed a clash in Burma, where James’s uncle — mortally wounded and beyond saving — was killed. Some call it murder; others insist it was mercy. The discovery that Masako’s father was involved threatens to destroy the relationship, confirming James’s mother’s deepest convictions.
Terrified that the truth will open unbridgeable chasms within and between the families, Masako breaks off the engagement.
Heartbroken, James turns to a retired intelligence officer who once served with his father. The investigation leads to a former Kempeitai officer who later worked with British Intelligence in Saigon. Together they uncover the final truth: the uncle’s death was an act of compassion to end suffering. They also discover that, two years later in Saigon, Masako’s father risked his life to save James’s father from assassination — an act without which James himself would never have been born.
As the truth emerges, decades of hatred begin to loosen their grip. In Japan, beneath the mountains where the story began, the two families finally come together. Veterans who once fought each other share memories as comrades, while James’s mother and Masako confront the grief that has shaped their lives. Slowly, the possibility of reconciliation takes hold.
Bio
Now retired after a career as a NATO civil servant and later as a partner at PwC, I have lived in Luxembourg, California, and Belgium, and travelled/worked extensively across the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East. My novel was inspired by my grandfather’s journal of his travels in Japan in 1907, and by my research into my father’s role as an Intelligence Officer in Burma during WW2 and in Indochina after the war, where he commanded Japanese troops, including visits to India, Pakistan, Saigon, and Japan. I now live in West London.
When I am not writing, I take photographs for charities– with recent commissions in Chiswick, Romania, Ukraine and Iraq – and love spending time with my family.
Comps
The upmarket historical novel combines the multi-generational sweep of Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water (2023), the Southeast Asian historical inheritance and family secrecy of Catherine Menon’s Fragile Monsters (2021), and the post-imperial family dislocations of Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History (2024). Like Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, it traces how political upheaval and inherited loyalties shape successive generations across cultures, following two British and Japanese families whose intertwined histories reverberate through postwar Asia and 1980s London.
What sets Forgotten Acts of Mercy apart?
Forgotten Acts of Mercy delves into the subtleties of reconciliation—not only between individuals but also between generations. This distinguishes it from other works that focus on resolution as a singular moment rather than a complex, ongoing process. Forgotten Acts of Mercy's approach to illustrating how seemingly small decisions create profound linkages over time is also unique.
Unlike many of the books mentioned, which centre on specific cultural or national perspectives, Forgotten Acts of Mercy takes a more universal approach. It explores the shared human experience of conflict and reconciliation, transcending individual wars or cultures to reveal the interconnectedness of our histories and the enduring impact of our choices.