What is the major connection between Snow Falling on Cedars and Never Let Me Go?

I would argue the major
connection between both
of these texts is the impossible love that lies at their core. For
Ishmael
and for Hatsue, just as for Tommy and Kathy, both couples eventually have to come
to
terms with the fact that they are doomed to not be together. For Ishmael
and Hatsue, this is
because of the racial and cultural divide that prevents
Hatsue from ever marrying outside of her
nationality, whatever her own heart
might tell her. For Tommy and Kathy, their love is thwarted
by their identity
too, but in their case it is their identity as clones that condemn them to

having their organs harvested and facing an early death. Happiness for both couples is
fleeting,
although they do try to convince themselves that they could enjoy a
happier future together.
Note, for example, how Ishmael daydreams about the
kind of future he might enjoy with
Hatsue:

Sometimes at night he would squeeze his eyes shut
and imagine how it
might be to marry her. It did not seem so farfetched to him that they might

move to some other place in the world where this would be possible. He liked to think
about
being with Hatsue in some place like Switzerland or Italy or France. He
gave his whole soul to
love; he allowed himself to believe that his feelings
for Hatsue had been somehow preordained.
He had been meant to meet her on the
beach as a child and then to pass his life with
her.

Ishmael desperately tries to convince himself
that
he is "meant for" Hatsue, even though he realises that in order to marry
Hatsue they
would have to leave their families and move to a different part
of the world. His dreams can be
compared to when Tommy and Kathy go and visit
their former headmistress, Miss Emily, to chase a
rumour that they have heard
that a couple who is really in love could gain a time free from
having their
organs harvested. However, they realise that there is nothing special about
them
because of the school they went to, and they hear Miss Emily tell them
that they face certain
death and the end of their love:

Poor creatures. What did
we do to you? With all
our schemes and plans?

Both
couples
therefore are in love, but this love is hopeless, but for different reasons.
Although
both texts tease the reader with the possibility that this love can
achieve something of a happy
ending, at the end of both stories the couples
are irreversibly separated and have to accept
that their love was not meant
to be in the worlds in which they inhabit. This is the major link
between the
two texts: the theme of impossible love.