Gai-Jin
By James Clavell
 
First UK edition, first impression: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993
 
Original dark blue cloth, the spine lettered in gilt within a gilt-ruled panel, publisher's name in gilt at the foot; dark blue endpapers printed with Japanese characters in white; dark blue ribbon marker. Original pictorial dust jacket from the painting by Bill Gregory, unclipped and priced £16.99 net in UK; author photograph by Annie Leibovitz to the rear flap.
 
A fine copy, the binding square and firm with bright gilt, the contents clean and fresh throughout.
 
The jacket near fine and unclipped, with minimal traces of isolated wear to the top edge and some sunning to the spine panel. Gregory's painting - a Yokohama shoreline of barges, palanquins, sumo and a paddle steamer, worked in the manner of a ukiyo-e print - runs unbroken across both panels, the colours fresh and the black title lettering strong, the folds sharp.
 
Gai-Jin is the third novel of the Asian Saga in chronological sequence and the sixth in order of publication, following King Rat (1962), Tai-Pan (1966), Shogun (1975), Noble House (1981) and Whirlwind (1986). It was the last of the saga to be written, and the last full-length novel Clavell published; he died in September 1994, the year after publication. Set in Yokohama in 1862, during the Bakumatsu, it follows the Struan house some twenty years on from Tai-Pan, among the foreign traders of the treaty settlement and the samurai factions ranged against them, and takes the Namamugi Incident of that September as its principal historical matter. Clavell's preoccupation with East Asia had its origin in his imprisonment at Changi as a prisoner of the Japanese, the experience behind his first novel; the saga that grew from it produced the television adaptations of the 1980s, of which Shogun drew an audience of more than 120 million. Gai-Jin stood sixth on the New York Times bestseller list in the week of 9 May 1993.