There's nothing like a good Cinderella story. Partly it's the
romance, partly it's the glamour, but mostly it's the myth, the intoxicating
combination of obscurity and sudden fame. If a servant can become a queen just
by wishing hard enough, standard limits no longer apply. But what happens the
following midnight, and in the years to come? Inspired by true events, John
Burnham Schwartz's novel The Commoner attempts to show the darker side of the
fairy tale, with mixed results.
The only daughter of a wealthy Japanese industrialist, Haruko
Endo grows up used to a life of moderate privilege. World War II leaves her
family largely untouched, but amid Toyko's destruction and rebirth, she watches
Japan's royal family lose its godlike stature through the influence of the
conquering American army. When Haruko meets the Crown Prince during a tennis
match, she beats him handily; this attracts his attention, and after a distant
courtship, leads to a marriage proposal. Haruko's father objects, believing
that even with the royals' degraded status, their world is too vastly different
for his daughter to succeed. But his wishes are overruled, and Haruko becomes
the first commoner to gain the title of Crown Princess. It's only once the
marriage is formalized that she realizes the depth of her mistake; her life is
no longer her own.
There's tragedy here, of a sort Disney would never bother to
animate. But for all its graceful longing, Commoner never manages to go deeper
than the monotonous rituals that make up its heroine's life. Schwartz tells
Haruko's story through her own voice, and the measured tones read more like a
formal exercise than a woman pouring out her soul. Comparisons can be made
between Commoner and Memoirs Of A Geisha; both are meticulously researched, both offer fascinating
glimpses into Japanese culture, and both ultimately fail to bring that culture
to life. Commoner
comes out as the better work because the story doesn't fall back on cliché,
even when the writing does. Haruko's struggles to establish herself in a world
of eternal symbols has a futility that never fails to ring true—a lesson
that maybe some glass slippers are better left lost.