Obasan

1
Obasan

• Chaps 1-4Racial Minorities as Enemy Alien
  Memories
• Chaps 5-14 -- Trauma and Survival in Different
  Languages

2
Racial Minorities as Enemies Alien
Surviving Trauma

• 1. Japanese Internment
• 2. Obasan Chaps 1-4
• Kate Liu

3
Outline

• Joy Kogawa Obasan General Introd.
• Japanese Internment
• Obasan
• Examples of Racial Differences and their
  Consequences
• Not Enemy Aliens
• Noamis treatment of the Past vs. Her Aunts

4
Joy Kogawa--Biographical Sketch

• born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1935
• relocated to Slocan and Coaldale, Alberta during
  and after WWII
• Selected Publications
• Obasan. 1983.
• Woman in the Woods. 1985.poems
• Naomi's Road. 1986. childrens lit.
• Itsuka. 1993. Someday the redress movement
• The Rain Ascends. 1995.
• a womans discovery of her missionary fathers
  being a pederast

5
Awards for Obasan

• Books in Canada, First Novel Award.
• Canadian Authors Association, Book of the Year
  Award.
• Periodical Distributors of Canada, Best Paperback
  Fiction Award.
• Before Columbus Foundation, The American Book
  Award.

6
Obasan--Family Trees

Grandpa Nakane 1942
Grandma Kato
Grandpa Kato
Grandma Nakane 1893 1945
Isamu (Sam) 1889-1972
Ayako (Obasan) 1891-
Mother
Nissei Emily 1916-
Father (Tadashi Mark)
Sansie Stephen 1933-
Naomi 1936-
stillborn
Ref. Family photo -- Chap 4 pp. 17-19 20
Discussed later
7
Timeline

• 1893--Grandpa Nakane arrived in Canada
• 1933 Uncle and Obasan got married.
• 1941--Mother returned to Japan (clue p. 20 )
• 1942--Vancouver Hastings Park prison
• 1945--the bombing of Nagasaki
• 1951--moved to Granton
• 1954--the first visit to the coulee (p. 2)
• 1972--narrative present--Uncles death

8
Japanese Internment in Canada

• The turn of the century early immigrants
• 1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor
• 1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei)
  from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement
  in the history of Canada (Obasan Emilys Diary
  e.g. 92-93)--21,000 people moved
• 1945-1949 deportation or 2nd relocation ? right
  to vote and return to B.C.
• More here

9
Differences between the States Canada

• U.S. 1913 -- California Alien Land Law
  prohibited "aliens ineligible to citizenship"
  (ie. all Asian immigrants) from owning land or
  property, but permitted three year leases.
• April 1942 -- The assembly centers, relocation
  centers, and internment camps were set up, and
  relocation of Japanese-Americans began.
  Internment camps were scattered all over the
  interior West, in isolated desert areas of
  Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and
  Wyoming.
• 1944 -- Executive Order 9066 was rescinded by
  President Roosevelt,
• 1946 -- the last of the camps was closed in
  March.

10
Differences between the States and Canada (2)

• Canada
• -- Dispersal of family members--men sent to road
  camps in the interior of B.C., sugar beet
  projects on the Prairies, POW camp in Ontario
• -- not allowed to go back to the West after the
  War
• -- their properties liquidated.

11
Differences between the States and Canada (3)

• U.S.
• 1980 -- President Jimmy Carter signed the Wartime
  Relocation and Internment of Civilians Act for
  investigation
• 1991 Bushs letter of apology
• Canada
• 1980s--redress movement
• 1988--formal apology to Nikkei 21,000 (Cdn.) to
  the survivors

12
Obasan Time Line Plot (1)

• 1972
• 1954

• Chap 1 8/9 1972 Present Cecil, Alberta
• --1954 Granton ? 1951(the bombing of Nagasaki)
  
• Chap 2 9/13, 1972 Uncles death
• Chap 3 back to Obasans house, question about
  the mother
• Chap 4 photos ? family histories (stone bread)

13
Obasan Time Line Plot (2)

• 1972
• 1941
• Vancouver Days

• Chap 5 Obasan in the attic, memory as spider
• Chap 6 nightmare
• Chap 7 Emilys packageher last visit and the
  question if Naomi wants to know everything
• Chap 8 Obasan lady of the leftovers
• Chap 9 starts to remember- from the photo to
  memories of the house p. 50
• Chap 10 Momotaro
• Chap 11 episodes of the white chicken and Old
  Man Gower
• Chap 12 separation startsthe mother first
• Chap 13 preparation to leave
• Chap 14 bath with Obasan Emilys diary (-110)

14
Discussion Questions

• How are Naomi, Obasan and Uncle, as survivors of
  the collective trauma of internment, presented at
  the beginning of the novel?
• How does Naomi start to remember?
• The importance of The Kato and Nakanes family
  photo presented?
• What can be the significance of the opening
  epigraphs?

15
Japanese-Canadians (1) Not Enemies Alien

• Uncle --Uncle Sam, Chief Sitting Bull) (1 2)
• -- adaptation to new lives and mixture of two
  cultures 3 p. 13 stone bread, margarine as
  Alberta
• Father like Mandrake the magician
• Obasan -- an old woman in
• Mexico, France, as the true and rightful owner
  of the earth.) (3 15)

16
Japanese-Canadians (1) Displaced, aging and
family life disrupted

• Uncle displaced from the sea and his fishing
  boats(313), forever severed from the sea (4
  22)
• Uncle and Obasan old and fixated
• (uncle --1, Obasan and Gramdma N 417
• the house is old) (3 15)
• Emily and Naomi no love life (2 8)
• Naomi-- tense (2 7)
• -- her thirst for knowledge (1 3)
• -- rational control over her emotion her mind
  separated from herself (2 9).
• Stephen in constant flight (3 14)

17
The Past Different Treatments

• How do the three generations each deal with the
  past differently?
• Obasan--issei
• language of grief--silence (3 14)
• ancient accepting death
• live with the past (311, 14-16 5 25-26 ),
• Emily--nisei
• energetic, visionary (2 8),
• To Naomi You have to rememberDenial is
  gangrene ?? (49-50)
• laterword warrior (32), white blood cells
  (34)
• Asserting her Canadian identity--This is my own,
  my native land

18
Different Generations on Language and Silence

• To the issei, honor and dignity is expressed
  through silence, the twig bending with the
  wind.The sansei view silence as a dangerous kind
  of cooperation with the enemy.
  --Joy
  Kagawa in an interview with Susan Yim

19
Historical Reconstructions more next time

• Three ways of dealing with memories
• Obasan ancient woman who stays in history
• --can be consumed by the past,
• --can make use of the leftovers
• Emily The past is the future p. 42
• Naomi Crimes of history . . . can stay in
  history p. 41

20
Naomis thirst and fragmentary memories

• Why do we come here every year? Why did my
  mother not return?
• -- her thirst for knowledge (1 3)
• Transferred to her uncle (314)
• Photographic memories
• Older relatives described with humor like
  advance guard
• Grandfather Kato the toes of his boots to "angle
  down like a ballet dancer's" (17)
• Grandmother Kato "nostrils wide in her startled
  bony face" (17).

21
Naomis Photographic memories

• Family photo
• Grandma Nakane's "plump hands" and "soft lap
• Grandfather Nakanelike Napoleon.
• "looking straight ahead, carved and rigid, with
  their expressionless Japanese faces and their
  bodies pasted over with Rule Britannia " (18).
• Mother beautiful, fragile Emily short waved
  hair
• The House chap 9

22
Naomis Photographic memories

• Family as a knit blanket, moth-eaten
• Uncle and Fathers the boat the relocation.
• Memories in a whirlpool of protective silence
  (end of chap 9) ? epigraph

23
Imagery of Stone Sea

• What is the significance of the stone imagery?
• The bible--a white stone--a new name written
• epigraph--The word is stone.
• Uncles stone bread
• the coulee/ the ocean/ uncle and Chief Sitting
  Bull/ the family as a knit blanket (24-25)

24
coulee - ??

25
Racism, Trauma, Survival in Different
Languages--

• Obasan Chaps 5-14
• Kate Liu

26
Outline

• Enemy Aliens vs. Survivors
• Discussion Questions
• Memory and Language
• Memory of Different Forms -- Aya Obasan, Aunt
  Emily, and Naomi
• Different Languages
• Family Togetherness vs. Fragmentation
• Wartime Examples of Racism
• Childrens Responses to Trauma
• Adults Emilys

27
Discussion Questions

• Memory and Language How do Emily, Naomi and Aya
  Obasan deal with their grief, and memories of
  separation and unfair treatments?
• Family and Fragmentation How is the extended
  Japanese family depicted? Where do we see them
  broken apart?
• Racism Examples of Wartime Racism? The
  governments justification and the responses to
  it of children or adults?

28
I. Memory and Languages

29
Obasan Aya

• Live with the past
• The house is old, items like her bodily parts,
  the house like 3 her blood and bones (15)
• the attic (5 25)
• her ancient body like long extinct vocalnoes
  (1478)
• The language of grief is silence. She has
  learned it well, its idioms and nuances. Over the
  years, silence within her small body has grown
  large and powerful (14)
• Protective Silence

30
(Aya vs.) Emily

• How different my two aunts are. One lives in
  sound, the other in stone. Obasans language
  remains deeply underground but Aunt Emily, BA,
  MA, is a word warrior. Shes a crusader, a little
  old gray-haired Mighty Mouse, a Bachelor of
  Advanced Activists and General Practitioner of
  Just Causes. (7 32)
• Emily wrote letters changed Japanese race to
  Canadian citizen (33)
• Were gluing our tongues back on. . . . We have
  to deal with this while we remember it. If we
  dont well pass our anger down in our genes.
  Its the children wholl suffer (36).

31
Aya vs. Emily

• Aya

• Emily

• Uncle Gratitude (742)
• everyone someday dies (8 44-45)
• Photos everywhere shows Naomi her mothers
  photo

• Presents her a parcel of letters, documents, her
  diary
• The past is the future (742)

Naomi -- Why not leave the dead to bury the
dead (42) -- memories are to be forgotten (45) --
All right, Aunt Emily, all right! The house
then(9 50)
32
Two Different Languages
One lives in sound, the other in stone.

• Obasan Ayas stony silence remains deeply
  underground
• Speech hides like an animal in a storm (3)

• Aunt Emily a word warrior, a bulldozer, with
  army, navy, air force of letters (32)

-- To attend its voice is to embrace its
absence. But I fail the task. The word is
stone. -- My fingers tunnel through a tangle of
roots till the grass stands up from my knucklesI
search the earth and the sky with a thin but
persistent thirst (3) -- Emily crusading still,
while the others seek the safety of
invisibility (7 32)
33
Two Languages of Eyes

• Grandma Kato, Obasan a stare is an invasion (47)
• Emily visually bilingual

34
Naomis Denial of History chap 7

• "The very last thing in the world I was
  interested in talking about was our experiences
  during and after World War II" (33)
• "Crimes of history,...can stay in history. What
  we need is to concern ourselves with the
  injustices of today" (41)
• "Why not leave the dead to bury the dead?" "Life
  is so short,...the past so long. Shouldn't we
  turn the page and move on?" (42).

35
Review Naomis process of remembering

• Performing yearly ritual without knowing why
• Photographic memories connected to the past
  thru fragments (53)
• -- of the two families, of the father and uncle,
• -- of herself and her mother ? two languages of
  the eyes, two cultures (9 47)

36
2. Family Togetherness vs. Fragmentation

37
The Past in Naomis memory

• Chap 9 Photograph
• two languages
• two spaces -- home and outside ? chap 11
• The house and life in Vancouver
• bathing -- burning but relaxing water Grandmas
  resourcefulness (48-49)
• a collage of images (50)
• Mother, father and Stephen Naomi and
  goldfish
• The pastdrowning whirlpool, Naomi as a fragment
  of fragments

38
Two languages of eyes ? Racial Differences

• Chap 11
• the mothers matter-of-fact eyes (59) negation
  of good in the past tense
• Old Man Gower episode
• Her powerlessness like a small animal cannot
  move, cannot say no. (63 snow white 64)
• Negative consequences of silence Noamis
  quietness
• Her complicity terror and exhilaration wecomes
  it (65)
• her sense of guilt
• Old Man Gower the one to take over their house
  (Chap 12 )

39
Question 2 the significance of the story
Momotaro?

• Both Canadian and Japanese
• family care and Maintaining honor in
  displacement
• The other fairy-tales
• Snow White end of Chap 11
• Humpty Dumpty end of Chap 15
• Goldilock chap 17,
• All revisions of the fairy-tales show the childs
  way of apprehending racism and displacement
• the chicken episode Chap 11

40
Other Influences of Racism

• The family dispersed
• Noamis sense of guilt and fear (13 73)
• Her repression of past memories
• Noamis dreams first one 6 28-30 second one
  11 59-

41
3. Examples of Wartime Racism

42
Wartime Racism

• e.g. Against Jews in Germany and everywhere,
• e.g. In-between mainland Chinese and Japanese

43
Canadian Governments Rhetoric

• 4/8 newspaper Japanese naval officers (94)
• Nisei as "enemy aliens"
• prison camps as "Interior Housing Projects"

44
Canadian Governments Rhetoric

• In 1944, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie
  King claimed that it was the sound policy and
  the best policy for the Japanese Canadians
  themselves to distribute their numbers as
  widely as possible throughout the country where
  they will not create feelings of racial
  hostility (qtd Miki 40).

45
Emilys Diary

• Confiscation radio, curfew, all of their landed
  properties
• Evacuation to work camp or Hasting Park Sam
  sent away the Morii gang 91
• 3/2, 1942 everyone has to leave curfew for
  Japanese, men sent away in unheated cars,
• Treated like animals 100 Jap images 101
• Emily bound for Toronto, Aya and the kids for
  Slocan 108-109

46
Different Responses

• Naomi and Stephens responses 80-81 89 Stephen
  limp
• Niseis p. 81 86 keeping faith to being bitter.
  Emilybecomes numb, lost, keeps writing and
  making sense of whats happening
• Mark s letter about music and flowers 105

47
Survival and Fragmentation

• Beginning of Chap 15
• We are the hammers and chisels in the hands of
  would be sculptors, battering the spirit of the
  sleeping mountain. We are the chips and sand,
  the fragments of fragments tha fly like arrows
  from the heart of the rock. We are the silences
  that speak from stone. We are the despised. . .
  
• We are those pioneers who cleared the bush and
  the forest with our hands, the gardeners tending
  and attending the soil with our tenderness . . .

48
References

• Japanese Canadian Internment http//www.lib.washi
  ngton.edu/subject/Canada/internment/intro.html
• A History of the Japanese-American Internment
  http//www.fatherryan.org/hcompsci/
• Analysis of two apology letters
  http//www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article_
  Detail.asp?Article_ID3267

49
References

• Japanese Canadian Internment http//www.lib.washi
  ngton.edu/subject/Canada/internment/intro.html
• A History of the Japanese-American Internment
  http//www.fatherryan.org/hcompsci/
• Analysis of two apology letters
  http//www.imdiversity.com/villages/asian/Article_
  Detail.asp?Article_ID3267

50
Note

• Kinjiro Ninomiya,???????????,???????????,?????????
  ??????,????????,?????,?????????,??????????????????
  ???????,?????????,????????,????,??????,???????????
  ????,???????

51
Japanese Internment in Canada

• The turn of the century early immigrants
  (beginning 800-1140)
• 1941, December 7--the bombing of Pearl Harbor
• 1942--evacuation of Canadian Japanese (Nikkei)
  from the Pacific Coast--the great mass movement
  in the history of Canada (Obasan 92-93)--21,000
  people moved (clip 2 1300 1730 confiscation
  clip 3 relocation)
• 1945-1949 deportation or 2nd relocation ? right
  to vote and return to B.C. (clip 4 2200-) (Also
  chap 14 of the novel)