Sayonara Bar - Susan Barker

The modern geisha-girl scene is explored in this edgy, commercial literary novel set in a hostess bar in Osaka.

Mary, a blond graduate from England, has drifted into a job in a hostess lounge in Osaka. She and other “economy geishas” are employed by the enigmatic Mama-san to spend their evenings flirting with rich Japanese salarymen, playing drinking games and taking turns in the karaoke booth. Mary is in love with Yuji, Mama-san’s handsome son. But Yuji’s loyalty is to the petty Yakuza gangster for whom he works. Watanabe, the introverted cook, watches Mary from the Sayonara’s kitchen. He exists in his own manga-fuelled fantasy of the fourth dimension, but when he perceives the danger of Mary’s growing obsession with Yuji, he resolves to protect her whatever the cost.

Mr. Sato works for the Daiwa Trading Corporation. Obsessive overwork cannot cover the emptiness of his solitary life. Lured against his will to the Sayonara Bar by his boss, he finds himself returning there to escape his dead wife’s ghost.

Sly and often very funny,Sayonara Barspins a kaleidoscopic, genre-crossing tale of people cut adrift in a shrinking, globalized world.


From the Trade Paperback edition.