The Iris Fan

The Iris Fan (#460) is the eighteenth and final installment of Laura Joh Rowland's outstanding historical mystery series set in feudal Japan.  The series follows the ups and downs of samurai Sano Ichiro at the court of Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi over the twenty years of his reign.  Following the course of samurai honor, busihido, Sano-san has remained faithful to himself and his principles, but at great personal cost, and it has earned him implacable enemies.  This final entry is not only a nail-biting adventure on its own, it resolves some of the long-standing questions that have haunted Sano and his wife Reiko as the balance of power shifts in Japan.  Although you could read The Iris Fan on its own, I think it's best appreciated if the politics of the underlying allegiances, enmities and sequences of events leading up to them are known by reading the previous books in this series.  Believe me, it will be no hardship if you enjoyed such books as Clavell's Shogun.

In 1709, when The Iris Fan opens, Sano has doggedly been pursuing the guilty parties in the deaths of potential claimants to the Shogun's throne for four years, despite being warned to drop it.  But Sano's primary loyalty is to his lord, the ailing and elderly Shogun who raised him from the ranks to Chief Inspector and then Chamberlain at his court.  The rival heirs to the Shogun's throne are responsible for demoting Sano to the lowest possible post in the Tokugawa regime as the Shogun's health has failed.  Since both Lord Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu are Sano's enemies, Sano knows that no matter the outcome of the succession, he and his family will be put to death, so he is desperate to solve his final case, the mysterious stabbing of the Shogun in his bed, which has left him close to death.  Sano is convinced either Ienobu or Yanagisawa is responsible, but which?  To find the truth behind the attempted assassination may be to determine the fate of Japan in the future, even if Sano dies in the attempt.

This series is so well-written and intriguing that I will miss having the adventures of Sano, Reiko and the rest of the court to look forward to, but by the same token, this is the perfect place to end the series.  Japan is about to enter the modern age, however reluctantly, through the opening of Japan to the West.  Nothing will ever be the same again for the samurai system and feudal Japan, of which Sano Ichiro was the exemplar.  Thank you for taking us there in your books, Ms. Rowland!