By creating a story about Dejima (rather than "Japan" per se) that is both as inward-looking and in-between worlds as that tiny island, Mitchell quickly finds his own voice and creates a unique story very different than Shogun and focused on universal and timeless issues like race, power, and faith. Where Shogun is expansive, Thousand Autumns starts off delightfully claustrophobic whereas Shogun's protagonist quickly becomes a Japanophile, gains entry into the inaccessible and the exotic, and sets off on a series of adventures, Thousand Autumns' protagonist is-although intelligent and likable-clearly out of his element, lacking in power amongst his own people let alone a foreign race, and more observer than participant.
I thought the first 200 or so pages of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet were absolutely brilliant: Mitchell succeeded precisely by dismissing any suspicions or expectations that his story would be a reheated version of the novel that-for better or for worse-has become the archetype of historical fiction written about Japan by non-Japanese: Shogun.
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