Queering imperial history: The ethics of reconciliation in Tan Twan Eng’sThe Gift of Rain

Abstract

Drawing on the postcolonial discourse of reconciliation, this article critically examines The Gift of Rain (2007) by Malaysian Chinese writer Tan Twan Eng. It attends to the reparative work that the novel performs in relation to Japanese imperialism in Asia, particularly the Japanese occupation of British Malaya (1941–1945). It argues that Tan’s text, with its investment in the Buddhist-inflected queer passion between its Anglo-Chinese protagonist (the colonized) and his Japanese aikido master (the colonizer), gestures towards an ethics of reconciliation. Framing the queer romance in the Buddhist idiom of reincarnation, the novel offers a distinct cultural conception of reconciliation as an ongoing process. By queering and querying the specific Asian imperial encounter that is the Japanese Occupation, the novel ultimately registers a desire for restoring cultural connections in the wake of atrocities in postcolonial Asia.