BOOK REVIEW : THE SEVENTH STONE <i> by Nancy Freedman</i> ; Dutton, $20; 384 pages : Topical Novel Conveys a Message of Hope

This is a rip-roaring three-generational novel, old-fashioned in the best sense. It’s also madly topical, in that it deals with the on-going “war” between Japan and the United States, and the possibilities--if any--for any kind of real peace.

It’s filled with research the way a turkey gets stuffed with dressing; it’s crammed in every nook and cranny. But perhaps because it’s written by a Westerner, it’s more than accessible to the Western mind. Think back to Pearl Buck. She wrote about China from both within and without. Nancy Freedman does the same with Japan.

“The Seventh Stone” opens in 1945, in the last days of World War II, when Noboru, a young, brave husband--heir of a wealthy Japanese family--decides to become a kamikaze pilot, not, primarily, to end--or win--the war, but for his own complex personal reasons. (Actually, the story has begun a dozen years before this, when Noboru, the pampered darling of his family, is arbitrarily locked out of the house by his soft-seeming mother for a very minor transgression.)

Freedman is very good at constructing prewar Japan; a place of dazzling beauty and ceremony, iron rules and a concept of honor that is still hard for contemporary Americans to fully comprehend.

When Noboru rides his bomb into an American ship during the last months of the war, the social system of his country is about to be destroyed the same way he is. (Or is it?) Noboru leaves behind an extremely beautiful wife, Momoko, who, at about the same moment that her brave husband dies, gives birth to a furiously grumpy son, Aiko.

Noboru’s gesture--his journey to inevitable death in the jaws of equally inevitable defeat--has been done for honorable and, from the Japanese point of view, perfectly discernible reasons. Even in defeat, honor and bravery are possible.

From the American point of view, these kamikaze pilots, hurtling out of the sky to destroy themselves on American ships, represent a metaphysical last straw. (In one startling surmise, one of Freedman’s Japanese characters speculates that President Truman ordered the atomic bombs dropped because he expected such heedless and determined self-destruction on the part of each and every Japanese, when and if American soldiers invaded the Japanese islands.)

Aiko grows up in a force field of hatred. Although his long-suffering mother tries to mitigate his attitude, Aiko won’t budge. He hates America, his stepfather, his uncle, his illegitimate cousin and each and every member of his extended family.

Like the villain in every popular novel from the works of Wilke Collins to Taylor Caldwell to Monica Highland, Aiko is bad just because he’s bad.

Surrounded and bolstered in fictional terms by all manner of carefully documented detail, Aiko lives with fierce determination through his early years, when seppuku (ritual suicide) is the order of the day, to a seemingly modern society where fragrant aromas spout out of your alarm clock to speed you on your daily errands.

Japan is “defeating” the United States, and Aiko is in the forefront of this economic endeavor: He sees it simply as a way of continuing World War II until Japan finally wins.

But, in fiction, at least, the world doesn’t go well for villains. Aiko’s effete and decadent son plucks his eyebrows and is devoted to crack cocaine. Aiko’s brave and intelligent daughter, Miko, like her illustrious and traditional grandmother, is able to perceive a world vision which transcends petty nationalistic concerns.

With her knowledge of global business, high-tech industry and ability to ennoble human emotions, she illustrates the possibility that a team of smart women might ultimately turn war into peace.

Next: Constance Casey reviews “Love Junkie” by Robert Plunket (HarperCollins).