Obasan (1981) – Joy Kogawa

Structure: First person, present tense, from Naomi’s point of view.  The epilogue precedes a note from the author thanking those who provided documents and is from the Bible—“To him that overcometh / will I give to eat / of the hidden manna / and will give him / a white stone / and in the stone / a new name written.”  After the title page that reads simply “Obasan” the book opens with a poem that addresses silence and that uses imagery of stones that burst into sound.  The first chapter is dated August 9, 1972 and describes Naomi, Obasan, and Uncle walking their usual trail near Obasan and Uncle’s house—the coulee (valley).  The second chapter is dated September 13, 1972 and describes how Naomi came to find out Uncle had died (She was in her classroom in Cecil, Alberta—within easy driving distance to Granton).  Time alternates between the present and past—dictated by Naomi’s present thoughts.  At times it seems like a letter written to Aunt Emily (chapters 9 and 29).  When Japanese is spoken, it is always contextualized so the meaning is clear or it’s translated.  In chapter 38, the narrative is addressed to her silent mother.

Setting: The present time of the novel is 1972, but a past narrative is given through Naomi’s thoughts and memory and her interaction with Obasan, various pictures, Aunt Emily’s diary, and several documents gathered by Aunt Emily.  Starting with chapter 3, the main action of the present narrative only lasts about one 24-hour period.  The past is called upon by Naomi and at first seems to grab random points in time (i.e. description of a photo of Stephen’s birth prompts her to describe her family, thoughts of her mother, memories of Aunt Emily discussing injustice), but when she begins to read Aunt Emily’s diary, a solid narrative of the past begins with Naomi’s early childhood—at age 4 (probably in 1940) and ends in 1954 when Naomi is 17 and Aunt Emily had come to Granton for the first time with news of Naomi’s mother and grandmother in Japan.  The time between 1954 and the present is called upon throughout the book (and told in past tense), but there are two main stories: the present (1972) and the past story of Naomi’s childhood (1941-1954) (both told in present tense).

There are a few central locations:

• Vancouver, British Columbia – Naomi and her family have lived here for several years – Uncle and Obasan were born in Japan, but Naomi’s parents were born in the US.  Everyone in the family appears to be of upper middle class status.  Detention camps are set up at Hastings Park, and people are forced to live in stables.  A dense bureaucratic system determines who must go and when.  Naomi’s father (Mark) and Aunt Emily file for numerous extensions but are ultimately forced to leave.

• Slocan City, British Columbia – a small town in the mountains, where Uncle, Obasan, Stephen, and Naomi move after being forced to leave Vancouver.  They arrive via train (Naomi leaves her favorite doll—and her connection with her mother?—on the train).  The four live in a very small hut (with Nomura-obasan until Mark arrives) with no electricity or plumbing (there is a public bathhouse).   The school the children attend is Japanese-only.

• Granton, Alberta – In 1945, after the war ends, the family is sent by the Department of Labor to Granton to work on beet farms.  They live at first in a hut (smaller and in worse shape than the one in Slocan) located on the Barker’s beet farm.  The climate is much harsher, and their accommodations and working environment are miserable.  The school the kids attend is integrated, and all the Japanese-Canadians anglicanize their names.  About 1951, the family moves to a house in town.

• Other locations discussed:  Cecil, Alberta, where Naomi lives and teaches as an adult.  Toronto, Ontario, where Aunt Emily moves with Grandpa Nakane when forced to leave Vancouver.  Stephen moves in with Aunt Emily there after high school.

Characters:

Naomi (Megumi Naomi Nakane) – The narrator.  A school teacher in her mid thirties.  She is five in 1941.

Uncle (Isamu “Sam” Nakane) – Obasan’s wife, uncle to Naomi.  His death initiates the narrative.

Obasan (Ayako Nakane) – Uncle’s wife.  She had two children who died during childbirth.  She was 42 when Stephen was born.  She raises Stephen and Naomi.

Aunt Emily (Emily Kato) – Sister to Naomi’s mother. Trained as a teacher, she was unable to get a position and helped Grandpa Nakane in his medical practice.  Later she earned an MA and became an activist for Japanese Canadians.

Stephen Nakane – Naomi’s brother.  He does not like things that are too Japanese, preferring sandwiches in his lunch.  He enjoys music, and music is what allows him to escape Granton.  As an adult, he is not helpful.  When Naomi sees him, she hadn’t seen him in 9 years.

Mother – Naomi’s mother, who was born in Canada, but went to Japan with her mother before the war broke out to tend to her sick grandmother (Naomi’s Obaa-chan).  She was badly injured at Nagasaki and had to wear a cloth mask at all times.  She did not want her children to know what happened.

Father (Tadashi “Mark” Nakane) – Naomi and Stephen’s father.  A university graduate, he helped Uncle design boats, but he had a great interest in music.  He was sent to a labor camp when Uncle and Obasan and the kids went to Slocan.  He contracted TB, was in hospital at some point, arrived in Slocan momentarily, then they were separated.  He later dies, but no official word is sent.  His letters just stop.  Naomi thinks of him as a frog prince.

Grandpa Nakane – A boat builder and small business owner.  The first of Naomi’s grandparents to come to Canada.  Married to Grandma Nakane, step son is Isamu/Uncle, younger son is Mark/Tadashi (Naomi’s father).  He and Grandma Nakane were sent to Hasting Park Prison.  He and Grandma Nakane are later sent to New Denver (probably another internment camp).  He’s Buddhist and requests that Grandma Nakane’s ashes be sent to him.

Grandma Nakane – The widow of a cousin of Grandpa Nakane.  She married Grandpa Nakane and joined him in Canada along with her son (Isamu/Uncle).  Later gave birth to Mark/Tadashi. She was sent to the Hastings Park prison, and she dies after Naomi had moved to Slocan.  Naomi and Obasan attend the funeral in Slocan, where the body is burnt.

Grandpa Kato – A doctor, the father of Aunt Emily and Naomi’s mother.  He volunteers at the Hastings Park prison and sees Grandma Nakane.  He and Aunt Emily move to Toronto after they leave Vancouver.

Grandma Kato – Mother of Naomi’s mother.  Her mother is Naomi’s Obaa-chan.  When Grandpa Kato was a medical student, she left him and took Naomi’s mother to Japan.  She later returned, but she often went to Japan and took Naomi’s mother with her.  It was because of Grandma Kato’s letters to Grandpa Kato telling the truth of what happened during and after the war, that the family knows what happened.

Nakayama-sensei/Reverend Nakayama – Anglican minister who the family knew in Vancouver.  He was living in Slocan before they arrived and later moved in relative proximity to Granton.  He prays for the family just before they are forced to separate from Mark and move to Granton.  He also attends the family in the wake of Uncle’s death when Stephen and Aunt Emily have arrived.  He reads the letters from Grandma Kato and initiates the discussion with Naomi and the rest of the family about what happened to Grandma Kato and Naomi’s mother after the war.

Nomura-obasan – an older woman who lives with the family in Slocan.  She is mainly bed-ridden.

Key moments in text in chronological order:

• Contrast between her two aunts.  Obasan silent, Emily loud and searching to uncover everything.
• 38 – seeking invisibility
• 58 – Grandma Kato and Naomi bathe (past)
• 60 – it does not bear remembering vs. remember everything
• 68 – Story of Momotaro – it’s Canadian because it’s told by Canadians
• 77 – Old Man Gower abuses her, but she goes there unbidden
• 80 – her mother leaves for Japan – she imagines spending time with her mom doing all the things they’ve done before
• 84 – Naomi asks her father if they’re Japs, he says they’re Canadian
• 94 – Naomi and Obasan bathe (present)
• 95-130 – Aunt Emily’s letters and journal
• 132 – Romantic vision of Japanese-Canadians building the country
• 167 – Neighborhood Japanese-Canadian children are playing in the woods, and a King bird.  They say a King bird will cut out your tongue if you tell lies
• 172 – Rough Lock Bill tells Naomi and Kenji about an Indian brave who brought his tribe to Slocan (Slow can go) and how all but maybe one of the tribe are dead now.
• 177 – Kenji and Naomi go in the raft, Naomi almost drowns, Rough Lock Bill saves her
• 183 – Stephen almost fights with white kids who are taunting him, one of the Japanese-Canadian kids kills a chicken in the field on the way to school
• 186 – All the Japanese-Canadian teachers take very seriously their morning routine of showing how patriotic they are
• 188 – The girl with the white hair taunts Naomi about how she is supposed to get a kitten out of the outhouse.  Naomi hears the cat then doesn’t, so she assumes it’s dead.
• 197 – the incident at the public bath – Naomi is shunned because her father has TB
• 199 – Naomi feels that something is happening with her mother.  It is the day after V-J day, and only later do we discover that her mother was at Nagasaki.
• 201 – her father comes, but they are soon forced to leave Slocan
• 209 – Church service in their home
• 218 – Naomi (in the present) says she wants to break loose from the heavy identity
• 241 – The thistles at Granton are a metaphor for Naomi’s misery at school
• 246 – Naomi finds a frog with a broken leg (he later escapes from the house) and sees him similarly to her father
• 250 – Naomi recognizes that her father is dead.  The family move to town.
• 259 – Stephen says Aunt Emily is not like Uncle and Obasan (she is more Canadian, talks more, etc)
• 260 – Uncle asks if Emily will marry (when she visits for first time)
• 262 – Sakana fish is Uncle’s pidgin for Son of a bitch.
• 263 – Emily and Uncle talk about the letters from Grandma Nakane and whether to tell the children (Stephen is in college, Naomi is 17).  Obasan only sits in the background.  Then prays.
• 269 – Mr. Barker and his new wife come over (in present) to give condolences.  Both talk stupidly about “out Japanese”
• 273 – Naomi (at 17) has bad dreams about her mother.  Stephen says he had bad dreams too, but playing music in them made them go away.  (Image of how music allowed him to forget the past and move on).
• 274 – Sexual image of Grand Inquisitor understanding speech and silence
• 281 – letters from Grandma Nakane
• 290 – “We were lost in our silences”
• 295 – “Somewhere between speech and hearing is a transmutation of sound”
• 296 – Naomi returns to the coulee

Notes:

• Fairy tales are used: Rapunzel, Snow White, Goldilocks, Humpty Dumpty, Chicken Little, Momotaro (66) (a tiny child magically comes out of a peach, then grows up and moves away from his adopted parents), Ninomiya Kinjiro (62) (boy who read books while carrying firewood).
• The Nisei are second-generation Japanese, the Sansei are third-generation, and the Issei are first-generation (132).
• Time is woven together and eased back and forth and in between.  It is now always easy to figure out when everything is occurring.
• Nationalism is questioned in light of the loyalty to Canada and the Crown by Japanese-Canadians.  When Naomi can’t attend school at first in Slocan, Obasan has her make a scrapbook on the royal family.  When the family leaves Slocan, the reverend prays especially for the king and that they would be well governed (210).  The school for Japanese-Canadians in Slocan makes a show of singing the national anthem everyday.  In addition, the dialogue between Aunt Emily and Naomi presented in the past tense demonstrate a clear critique of the Canadian government during that time and the time since.  The book ends with a government document dated 1946 condemning the actions of the Canadian government since the war.
• The relationship among family members is highly significant.  Mother-daughter, Aunt-niece are the most significant, but so is family interaction in general.  The way Obasan takes care of Nomura-obasan and the relationship between grandmother and granddaughter for example.
• Language is a signifier for cultural difference.  Stephen is said to have made himself unfamiliar with Japanese (277) and Naomi views him very harshly for moving away from the family and his cultural roots.  Japanese is not often incorporated into the text—only snippets that are generally translated.  The phrase, “Kodomo no tame” (for the sake of the children) for instance (26).
• Imagery of silence, stones, and animals are predominant reflecting the need to express pain and to see representations of emotions characters are projecting (for example, the frog and her father, the king bird and a desire for an enforcer of morality?)

What Some Critics are Saying:

• The novels use of visuality (photos for example) to seek political rights associated with visibility (versus selective sight or invisibility).  A way of seeing events and experiences as history opposed to as stories.  This phenomenon is further complicated by the fact that her work is documentary or history, but fiction.  Balancing of family photos and official photos.
• “The plurality of narrative position this text employs signals both the writer’s refusal to adopt the terms of the colonizer and a sing, coherent, linear narrative in the retelling of the past” (Snelling 22).
• The book (along with others such as Mrs. Dalloway) attempts to resuscitate the past and bring it back with all it’s complexity and fullness.  The process that leads to her reaching the wholeness we see her represent at the close of the book is one by which she escapes the conflicts and contradictions inherent in time-bound phenomenal existence (Cook 55).
• The discourses of loss, mourning, and the victim were reshaped after the publication of Obasan (Goldman 363).
• Critics have argued that the silence in Obasan should be read in a way that resists the tendency to valorize speech unconditionally but rather nonverbal gestures are a form of articulate silence.  Attentiveness is also significant as either a cultural or maternal legacy.  Another critic focuses on Naomi’s attentiveness to touch, space, and time in terms of non-verbal lexicons that resonate when speech seems somehow insufficient.
• As a story about female ethnic kinship.  Reads the amniotic space is the literal and figurative center of the novel and that abortion of the potential ethnic reproduction is the central metaphor of the novel (Tourino).