Suzanne Kamata

Losing Kei tells the story of Jill Parker, an American landscape painter living in Japan, a "fish out of water" who makes ends meet as a lowly bar hostess. When she falls in love with Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive gallery owner, she begins to feel she might finally be accepted in her strange and beautiful adopted culture. But among the myriad subtleties so easily overlooked by a foreigner, she discovers that in Japan, being the first-born denotes far more than order of birth. Yusuke is the chonan, an eldest son, responsible for the extended family's well-being and the upholding of tradition.

Sparks fly when this contemporary American-born woman is likewise expected to assume the role of servile Japanese wife and live under the watchful eye of Okaasan, Yusuke's mother, the mother-in-law from hell. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to assuage their difficulties. Divorce is certainly an option. But in Japan a foreigner doesn't necessarily have rights to custody and Jill must choose between personal freedom and abandoning her child.