When We Were Orphans

Akira has dual roles as a character: he is the young Japanese boy with whom Christopher spends much of his time as a child in the International Settlement, and he is a spectral companion of the adult Banks once he travels back to China to solve the mystery of his parents’ disappearance.

Ishiguro reveals Akira’s character as a child only through the mediation of Banks’s memories, which prove to be unreliable at the beginning of the book. The boy appears to be the son of a Japanese family, whose father also works for one of the big Western companies that facilitate the import of opium to China. His family is traditional, and Akira initially believes in the values his family nurtures in him. After an attempt to continue his education in Japan, he returns to China happy because his experience has taught him that in Japan, he does not feel Japanese enough. In this, his character foreshadows Banks’s later experience as he moves to England.

In Banks’s memory, Akira is a headstrong boy, willful, determined, and adventurous, and he carries many of the characteristics Banks senses he is missing in himself. We can assume that, over time, Banks has supplied the remembered Akira with qualities he wishes he possessed, so Akira becomes a shadow twin to young Christopher, and the boys together function as a compatible duo. This is why Banks as an adult feels the need to find his friend again. However, he does not attempt to find him in reality, but through a series of glimpses that are more spiritual and psychological than realistic. When he is finally certain he has reunited with Akira, the young Japanese man appears in the guise of a wounded Japanese soldier who is clearly not Akira. Banks nevertheless projects onto this man the characteristics he believes adult Akira would have, and thus creates another shadow twin as a support for himself in the crucial moments of searching for the house where he believes his parents are. The “adult Akira” is wise and loyal, sympathetic and caring, and even though wounded, dedicated to helping Banks. Once the illusion that he will find his parents in the bombed warrens of Shanghai implodes on Banks, Akira again disappears into his memory.

Banks first notices Sarah Hemmings at various high-profile parties, at which she is a fixture. She is a young woman of a somewhat obscure past, and all Banks initially learns of her is that she was engaged to a famous composer and that she broke off the engagement because of the spectacular failure of one of his works. Ishiguro deliberately places this information to the forefront of the readers’ knowledge of Sarah Hemmings—it positions her as a figure that is distant and aloof, a woman who appears to be in pursuit of men of high import in the world. She rejects Banks at first because of his insufficiently illustrious occupation, but soon they form a bond because they are both orphans. Sarah, similarly to Banks, is trying to find meaning in her life by attaching herself to ambitious men whom she can aid in their efforts. During this time period, as a woman, it would have been very hard for Sarah to exercise ambitions of her own, and she feels a deep desire to be of use, to matter in the world. Ishiguro portrays her as having the same kind of central lack in her psychological profile as Banks, which leads her to marry the elderly Sir Cecil Medhurst, convinced she can help him attain new levels of achievement in China.

In later parts of the novel, Sarah is disillusioned with her efforts, and unlike Banks, she seems to have grasped the futility of her struggle. This is why she invites Banks to abandon China together and start a new life, free of their pasts and of their illusions. Banks is unable to follow through, but Sarah does leave on her own, and from then on Ishiguro places her “off-screen” in the novel, because she no longer represents a parallel to Banks’s desires. In her final letter to Banks, we learn that she has ostensibly found happiness in a marriage to a French Count. Banks disbelieves this, but her determination to reject the fantasies of her past gives readers hope that Sarah has learned how to be fully happy.

Although a side character, Ishiguro positions Uncle Philip as the main antagonist in the novel. During Banks’s childhood, Uncle Philip, who is not related but is a good friend of the family, is young Christopher’s hero, and his idea of a perfect English gentleman. Christopher asks him if he can copy his behavior so he can feel more English. Philip also works with Banks’s mother within the anti-opium trafficking movement in China. Banks remembers him as a highly successful man who always has time for him, even calling him by his family name, Puffin. Uncle Philip, however, betrays young Christopher and his mother by taking the child away from the house and allowing unknown men to kidnap her, even though he claims that he has taken the Christopher so that he will be safe.

As an adult, Banks again crosses paths with Uncle Philip, only this time the man is known under the code name the Yellow Snake, as he has become a traitor to the communists who previously helped him fight the government. Underscoring the futility of Banks’s fantasy of solving his parents’ disappearance, Ishiguro leaves it to Uncle Philip to explain the central mystery. His words are again mediated through Banks’s memory, and the reader can therefore choose how reliable Banks’s account is. Uncle Philip expresses remorse for his actions, but he also admits that he partly acted out of jealousy since he has loved Banks’s mother in vain for years. Handing her to the warlord Wang Ku was his revenge for feeling rejected. Uncle Philip tries to get Banks to shoot him so he can expiate his sins, but Banks refuses, and through this act of refusal, he obtains a level of dignity while robbing Philip of his. Philip’s further fate remains deliberately unknown, because as with most other people in Banks's life, he fulfills his purpose for him by revealing the secret of his parents’ disappearance. Serving the protagonists motivations, Ishiguro portrays Philip as a man of weak will and rather less agency than his history would indicate.