A Career Coach’s Take on David Mitchell’s Masterpiece
This wasn’t my dream. But it lives inside me.
Who is Orito — and why do I still see the scar on her face?
I woke up and realized: it’s still here.
A scent. A chill behind my ear. An unsettling emptiness.
I feel as if something important is about to happen. But I’m not there. And I never was.
I remember the island.
Small, oddly shaped. Surrounded by water, but not an island in the usual sense. It’s artificial. A dozen Europeans on it. Like an experiment.
Among them was Jacob. Not a hero, not a criminal. Just an honest Dutchman.
That’s the strangest part. In the dream, he kept trying to be honest—as if honesty were his curse.
He was writing down numbers, counting pages, catching others in lies—but didn’t know what to do with it. He had red hair. For some reason, that matters.
Beside him, a woman. Her name was Orito.
With a scarred face. Slim, strong, like a blade.
But the moment you begin to get used to her—she disappears.
They didn’t speak, but he looked at her as though she were a mirror of something within him. Did she reciprocate?
I don’t know cause everything suddenly fell apart: accounting turned into conspiracy, conspiracy into a monastery, monastery into a nightmare beyond words.
All these metamorphoses—as if the very fabric of the dream were woven from silk: light, delicate, tender, and… eternal.
All this in the astonishing novel by David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet—a story about honesty, choices, and that weird companion of humans - an elusive free will.
David Mitchell isn’t just a writer, he’s a cult figure: twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, named one of Time’s 100 most influential people, and hailed by The New York Times as nothing less than a genius. He’s a modern-day Chaucer—an epic storyteller, a master of blended genres, an encyclopedist in flesh and bone. He constructs his novels like intricate machines of time and memory, turning every detail into a living universe.
He recreates atmosphere with breathtaking ease and skill—the sounds, the temperature, the vistas—all spreading across the pages like morning dew.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was my #2 book of the past year. It takes Mitchell to a new peak in ambition and depth. I’ll reveal #1 in an upcoming entry. But for now—let’s return to Jacob.
He was sent to the island for a temporary stint. He thought it was just a trade mission. But the moment he stepped off the landing - he realized: nothing here is ordinary. He stepped into a cage. A theater. A trap.
The year is 1799. The setting: Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki Bay. Japan’s sole port, its only window onto the world. It’s the last outpost of the bankrupt Dutch East India Company—a prison-island where trade deals reek of fear and despair.
Jacob—a clever, devout young clerk—has five years to make his fortune, enough to return home and marry his fiancée—provided he actually comes back richer than the church mouse he once was.
One encounter changes everything: he meets Orito Aibagawa, a samurai’s daughter and midwife serving the powerful magistrate. She bears a scar on her face—and in her eyes, a defiance that unsettles his world.
As the lines blur between duty, profit, and desire, Jacob’s vision falters. He makes a promise—a rash pledge cast into the air. And the world around him begins to crumble.
Mitchell refuses to stay within the island’s borders—geographically or in tone. The story expands: beyond Dejima we confront conspiracies, sects, cannon blasts. There are even hints of magic—though it’s never clear if it’s supernatural or simply expertly staged illusion.
Jacob is resourceful, though naïve. He exposes thieving clerks, catches a Japanese interpreter deliberately altering translations for personal gain, and befriends Dr. Marinus—a righteous yet cantankerous scientist. But Jacob is blind to his supposedly virtuous boss, Vorstenbosch—hiring him to root out corruption while being the greatest fraudster of all. When Jacob refuses to sign a falsified ledger, he’s punished: barred from the next ship back to Holland. In effect, he’s sentenced to years locked on the island.
And on one hand, it’s terrifying – but on the other hand, there’s Orito, the woman he’s fallen for. She comes from too noble a family to be his lover, yet he gives her gifts, and their connection sparks unwanted attention. Just as Jacob becomes trapped on the island, Orito discovers her stepmother has sold her to a monastery to save the family from bankruptcy. Because of the scar on her face, Orito could never have counted on a good marriage. Jacob can do nothing short of trying to rescue her from a horrifying evil, devised and carried out a Japanese monk who drains life from living beings.
What chance does a lowly Dutch clerk have against a sadist who makes Cardinal Richelieu look like a saint?
Mitchell unfolds dozens of variations on the same theme – imprisonment, captivity, the inability to escape. But importantly, this captivity is almost always economic. Every character here is engaged in trade – either as a trader or as the traded. The Dutch have slaves, and one is brutally beaten when his long-promised freedom is denied again. But the Dutch themselves are not free: they’re locked on the island, dependent on the annual ship that may never come. One of the traders, as it turns out, is an Irish convict who escaped from Botany Bay, where he’d been sent for theft – betrayed by the very man who had instigated the theft.
The Japanese, in this sense, are no better: they are prisoners of an intricate system of rules governing their speech, actions, earnings. And within that system are women confined in the “House of Sisters,” who are not merely held captive but purchased like livestock. And there are dozens of such examples in the book, large and small. Everyone is either owning someone or trying to be owned.
At first, you think you’re watching trade, boring bookkeeping…
Then you realize you’re standing in the eye of a ritual. Ancient, cold—and razor‑sharp.
On one side are the Europeans, trapped in Japan like sardines in a can. On the other—the Japanese, bound by what they cannot say, by what they cannot know.
And then—it stops being a plot. Now it’s a wave. That sweeps over you.
You’re no longer standing on the island. You are drowning in it.
Here the genre vanished. Only the fabric remained.
Sometimes I feel I’m still in it. In that silk.
That when I walk out into the morning, I don’t step on asphalt, but on pages.
The air smells of Japanese incense and something Dutch—tangy, spicy, marine.
And Jacob? What about Jacob?
He returned to Europe—
to a world where he could once again count, pray, belong.
But one thought refused to leave him:
Could he have changed something?
If he had made a different choice. If he’d followed her.
If he hadn’t stayed silent.
If he had spoken—if only one word.
It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about honor.
It was about freedom.
Did he have it?
Are we truly free—or merely trained to choose exactly this, exactly that, following a script written long before us?
Jacob is left with that question.
And maybe, so are we.
This is the story of a nation coming of age—where the individual collides with the tribe, science challenges superstition, knowledge defies belief, and the self stands alone before society.
The book unfolds like a game of Go.
At one point, a character asks:
“Do you ever wonder if we’re not playing Go—but Go is playing us?”
We are all children of our time.
We like to think ourselves progressive—enlightened, unlike the dark 18th century.
And yet today, sailors are still abandoned on floating islands in even harsher conditions.
In 2024 alone, over 3,000 seafarers were stranded on some 230 vessels—often without food, water, or identity papers. The Sister 12, a cargo ship moored off the coast of Yemen for a full year. Its crew survived on saltwater, rust, and last year’s rations.
We often find ourselves in similar situations: entering a new environment, failing to read its hidden signals and unwritten rules—and freezing in place. Staying means enduring; leaving means sacrificing.
Maybe you’ve joined a new company governed by unspoken rules, trying to:
• hold your ground,
• avoid becoming just another cog in the machine,
• stay true to yourself and your freedom within a complex culture.
The choice is yours—but are you ready to read the signals, learn the hidden language, adapt without losing your core?
Jacob survived not just by being honest, but by learning the secret language of the island, noticing subtle signs, and seeing who truly held the power. He weighed his freedom—and decided what he was willing to give up.
If you feel like you’ve been left on an island and don’t know which way to go next—reach out for a consultation. Together we will:
• identify your own corporate “Dejima”,
• learn to decode the unseen signals,
• restore your sense of freedom and control.
Take action. Schedule your session—and discover your island, the one where you can breathe and be yourself.
