Malcolm Struan is the Tai-Pan to-be in the novel Gai-jin, learning business in the Japanese settlement of Yokohama, one of the few places in Japan foreigners were allowed to stay. He was raised by a Chinese servant, Ah Tok (rather than by his birth mother, Tess Struan) and his first language is actually Cantonese, although he speaks English fluently.
At the age of twenty, half a year before he could officially become Tai-Pan, he is cut down on the Tōkaidō by shishi, rebels against the Tokugawa bakufu. He is badly hurt and barely rescued. He falls desperately in love with the very beautiful Angélique Richaud, whose life he saved in the attack, and marries her against the wishes of his mother, Tess Struan, who doesn't want her son to marry a bankrupt French Catholic who didn't come from a "good" family. Malcolm Struan recovers very slowly. On his wedding night, at the moment of Clouds and Rain his internal wounds tear open and he dies a peaceful death, not knowing what's happening. Angélique tried to officially become his widow after his death, but her status as Struan's wife (and widow) are hotly contested by Tess Struan.
Many thought that Malcolm would have become a good Tai-Pan, and looked more like his grandfather than his father.