世界英文文學首頁   /   作家  /  Joy  Kogawa  小川樂  /  作品
Obasan
作者Author  /  Joy  Kogawa  小川樂

    Obasan

     

    Image Source: Joy Kogawa page

     
     Kogawa: Bio and Work

     Interview with Kogawa

    A. Her writing and Ethnic identity  20

    B. The Writing of Obasan

    C. The Two Novels and Two Voices 30-31

    D. Knowledge and Ignorance 38

     Obasan: Chronology and Time Line 

     Obasan:  Characters

     Obasan: Central Issues 

                       A. Examples of Racism

                       B. Imagery: Stone (and Silence), etc.

                       C. Gender and Japanese Immigrant Identities

                       D. Silence

                       E. Memory and Different Attitudes towards the past

                       F. The Children's Fragmentary Identities: Stephen, Naomi and the other boys

                       G. Survival

                       H. Articulating the Silence and Survival

     
     Kogawa: Bio and Work
      --Biographical Sketch and Work

    -- 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.
    Naomi's Road. 1986.
    Itsuka. 1993.
    The Rain Ascends. 1995.
     

    TOP

     
     Interview with Kogawa
      Joy Kogawa Talks to Karlyn Koh: The Heart-of-the-Matter Questions." The Other Woman: Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature. Ed. Makeda Silvera. Toronto: Black Women and Women of Colour P, 1995. 19-41.

    A. Her writing and Ethnic identity  20

    Early stage

    . . .in the very first years when I was publishing [1960s] I was like the other people of my generation--I had virtually no consciousness, except in a negative sense, of Japaneseness. I would see myself as white. I wrote as a white person. I wrote, in fact, in a male voice initially. In that sense I was a mimic, I read and I wrote what I read.

    p. 21--her poetry

    the struggles that I had were struggles with questions of love and evil and death, and those are universal questions, so I didn't have any particular consciousness, again then, of race. I didn't associate my suffering as the suffering of a person who was a minority human being. I simply attached it to all suffering.

    TOP

    B. the writing of Obasan

    But even at that point, I was not thinking particularly of writing about Japanese-Canadians, I was simply writing out of my own life and writing it in some of the way I wrote poetry. . . . When I was at the Archives, though, in Ottawa, that's when I became aware of another voice that I was not conscious of being within me--Muriel Kitagawa's voice. To me, it was a voice from the outside, one that I had never encountered, and one that I could only report on. So Aunt Emily's voice was always outside of me throughout the entire writing of Obasan.

    p.26
    . . . In what I'm writing now the greyness and the fog and the confusion of not knowing very clearly can be a way to survive within a situation where the pain is too great, where the denial is necessary in order not to be blinded by the truth of the sun. So these days I'm doing a much more in-depth exploration of the fog, the mist, the confusion. I've discovered a lot of things. One of the things, I guess, is (laughter) --it's an old adage--but ignorance can be bliss. Not knowing can be a way in which one not just survives but thrives.

    TOP

    C. the two novels and two voices 30-31

    . . . after writing Obasan and in a way being forced into public situations, the Naomi character that was within me, who basically could not talk, and which is really the way I used to be, got more and more transformed, and the Aunt Emily voice came out. I found myself being more like Aunt Emily. And I think in Itsuka I was much more like Emily, but since I was writing in Naomi's voice, I had a problem because I didn't want Naomi to be transformed too suddenly. I ddin't know how to do that anyway because she didn't have a parallel experience to mine. I had had a public kind of attention that helped me to change and Naomi didn't have that. So Naomi had to remain the way that she was, more or less, although she could be changed a little bit through the redress activity. . . It was just that there was a stroy I had lived through, and I couldn't write about it while I was living through it.

    TOP

    D. knowledge and ignorance 38

    ...when you don't know what you don't know, it's not so bad. When you're in denial you can go on with your life--it's a great survival tactic, . . .And I look back and i see that I have lived my life in denial and that's what I write about. It enables me to thrive to the extent that I did.

    But the fog is denial, the fog is surviving.. . .it keeps us safe, it keeps the sun from coming through and destroying us. The sun is like the truth. I mean the truth is waht enables things to grow.

    But too much of it kills us. And so although one wants the sun, one also--...--puts up the show that protects us, that's denial. . . .You have to tear it away and that's the hard part. It means going in directly to the sun and/or into the flame and surviving that. . . .So that's what you do when you're no longer in denial: you go rushing into the thing, you get to the safe place.

    TOP

     
     Obasan: Chronology and Time Line 
     
    Japanese Internment
    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

    1945 -- end of WW II, the Japanese given a choice between repatriation and second-time relocation 

    1949--Nikkei allowed to return to B.C.

    1980s--redress movement

    1988--formal apology to Nikkei+ $21,000 (Cdn.) to the survivors

    differences from the relocation of Japanese-Americans: --dispersal of Japanese-Canadian family members--men sent to road camps in the interior of B.C., sugar beet projects on the Prairies, POW camp in Ontario

    Obasan is a novel about Japanese-Canadians' experience after Pearl Harbor during and after World War II. The Canadian government's internment or relocation of Canadians of Japanese descent broke up thousands of Japanese families, including that of Naomi's.

    Time Line and Plot Summary

    1893--

    Grandpa Nakane arrived in Canada

    August 9, 1972

      |

    Sept. 13, 1972;

     |
     |
    Chap 1-- Naomi and her uncle's yearly ritual to the coulee (--1954 Granton ¡X1951 [the bombing of Nagasaki]¡X)

    Chap 2--Naomi in her school; heard about uncle's death

    Chap 3--back to Obasan's house, question about the mother; Obasan

    Chap 4--memories of the family (stone bread) 

    Chap 5--Obasan in the attic (memory as spider)

    Chap 6-- first nightmare

    Chap 7-- Emily's package and Naomi's talk with Emily

    Chap 8 --Obasan, lady of the left-overs, including family photos
     

    1941
    |
    |
    Chap 9 -- starts to remember- from the photo to memories of the house p. 50 ¡X 

    Chap 10--Momotaro

    Chap 11-- episode of the white hen and chicks, and of the Old Man Gower

    Chap 12 -- separation starts, the mother first

    Chap 13 --preparation to leave

    Chap 14 -- bath with Obasan; Emily's diary (-110)

    ------------------
    1942 
    train to Slocan
    |
    |
    Chap 15-- leaving for Slocan

    Chap 16 -- the trip and arriving at Slocan; Stephen¡¦s reaction

    Chap 17 -- Nomura-obasan's illness and old age, goldilock

    Chap 18 -- Grandma Nakane's death and wake and cremation;

    Chap 19 -- Uncle's return; no news about the father; Stephen out of his cast
     

    1943
    |
    |
    Chap 20 -- growing vegetable garden; back to school, Rough Lock Bill Kenji and the red insect

    Chap 21--Kenji's raft and glasses, Naomi's drowning experience

    Chap 22 -- experience in the hospital, news about dad; death, chicken in school; kitten

    Chap 23 -- bathing,

    Chap 24 -- Father's back

    Chap 25 -- prayer before departure
     

    1945
    |
    |
     
     
     
     
     
     

    1950

    -------------------
    Chap 26 -- leaving Slocan (p. 179 --

    Chap 27 -- Emily's package (last year of the present)¡Xfacts about not having a choice, documents that show racism (send them back home)

    Chap 28 -- 1945 Lethbridge restaurant--Granton

    Chap 29 -- experience of fly and dust-v.s. documents

    Chap 30 -- Granton school p. 200

    Chap 31 -- the swamp; a frog with a broken leg; revelation of father's death

    |
    |

    1954


    Chap 32 -- start to talk about the mother -- must be dead, two government letters about admission,

    Chap 33 -- Emily's first visit in 1954 (Stephen leaves for Toronto in 1952)  "Kodomo no tame"; "they should be told"

    Chap 34 -- Mr. and Mrs. Barker's visit: their offensive sympathy; "Have you ever been back to Japan?"

    Chap 35 -- nightmare

    Chap 36 -- ought to tell  "Kodomo no tame"  
     

    1972
    Chap 37 -- revelation, listening

    Chap 38 -- presence without flesh; letters as bones, love sent through graves and underground roots

    Chap 39 -- going to the coulie

    Chap 40 -- the document

    TOP

     
     Obasan:  Characters
     

    TOP

         
     Obasan: Central Issues
      A. Examples of Racism

    Official Racism: 

    • Aunt Emily's analysis & resistance: pp. 33-34; 36

    • The government's letters: 

      1. chap 7 p. 37: letter by B. Good about the confiscation of Grandma Kato's property.

      2. chap 32 pp. 212-13  about admission of Noami's mother and grandmother Kato
          

    • consequences: evacuation "like dung drops" 118
      fragmentation--a loveless communion 182
      destruction of life 186
       

    • in Naomi's dreams: appear as (the British) soldiers, the Grand Inquisitor

    • in Stephen's dream: appear as a metallic insect

    Individual Persons

    • Old Man Gower

    • the children Stephen meets chap 22: want to beat him up

    • the while-haired girl Naomi meets: chap 22 accusing her of killing the kitten

    • Mr. and Mrs. Barker: chap 34;  offensive sympathy for and distance from them.

    Sexual Abuse and Racism
    Is Naomi completely defenseless in her experience with Old Man Gower?  Why does she go to him repeatedly later on?
    • With her limited understanding of the adult and outside world, Naomi cannot understand how other people can force her to do things.  She defends herself by not moving and not speaking, wanting to keep herself "whole" but in vain.
    • This is an experience of sexual initiation, though Naomi is forced into it unknowingly. 
    What does she feel about herself while being molested and afterwards?
    • Shame (regarding herself as a parasite over her mother; thinking that she is the cause of her mother's departure.)
    How is the Old Man Gower episode part of the overal racism/discrimination against the Japanese? 
    • Old Man Gower, ironically, is the one to take over Nakane's properties.
    • Similar incidents happen to Naomi.  Chap 12 

    TOP

    B. Imagery: Stone (and Silence), etc.

    What is the significance of the stone imagery?
    The bible-- "a white stone"--"a new name written"
    epigraph--"The word is stone."
    Uncle's stone bread (15-16) and his mug

    Discuss other images in the novel: 

    • the Uncle, associated with the coulee,  the ocean and Chief Sitting Bull
    • the family as a knit blanket (24-25)
    • Fairy-Tale Images
    • Images of Insects and Animals; of broken things

    TOP

    C. Gender and Japanese Immigrant Identities

    • How does Naomi describe herself and the two aunts and why?
    • Naomi--sansei--spinster, tense (9), numb (41)
    • Obasan--issei--ancient (14, 18-19), language of grief--silence (17)
    • Emily--nisei-- energetic, visionary (38),  "word warrior" (39), "white blood cells" (41)/ Canadian identity--"This is my own, my native land"
    • Mother--kibei--born in Canada, raised in Japan-- "yasashi kokro" (56) 

    TOP

    D. Silence

    To the issei, honor and dignity is expressed through silence, the twig bending with the wind¡K.The sansei view silence as a dangerous kind of cooperation with the enemy.¡¨                                                         --Joy Kagawa in an interview with Susan Yim
    • two kinds of silence: 
      • a silence that will not speak (protective silence) 
      • a silence that can not speak (silence about repressed memory and the unknown past.

    TOP

    E. Memory and Different Attitudes towards the past

    To remember or not to? 
    Three ways of dealing with memories: 
    1. Obasan: ancient woman who stays in history 
        --can be consumed, 
        --can make use of the leftovers
      2. Emily: "The past is the future"  p. 42
      3. Naomi: "Crimes of history . . . can stay in history"  p. 41
    How does Naomi start to remember?  What does she remember about the Vancouver house?
    • Stimulated by Aunt Emily, who says "Denial is Gangrene."
    • Given a photo of the past by Obasan. 
       
    • The past told in the present tense.
    • Chap 9: from Photograph to Naomi's awareness of two languages and 
      two spaces -- home and outside
       
    • the house in Vancouver: associated with bathing, and Naomi's contented body and silent self
      • bathing -- burning ("liguid furnace") but relaxing water; Grandma's resourcefulness in using the cloth; 
      • the house as a collage of images
      • Mother, father and Stephen   vs.       Naomi and goldfish

    TOP

    F. The Children's Fragmentary Identities: Stephen, Naomi and the other boys

    The Children's Responses to racism and displacement 
    1. As kids, failure to understand why they are both enemy and Canadian: A riddle: end of Chap 12;
    2. As kids, fear Chap 13; 
    3. As a kid, Naomi: sense of guilt; end of Chap 11; As an adult and a teacher, she has the social grace of a housefly chap 2.
    4. Naomi's nightmares, which she still has as an adult
      • chap 6: dream of the general situation of oppression of Japanese men and women (--persecution by the state machine; --silence as a forgotten language).
      • chap11: the solder's killing the seductive Oriental women (--persecution and mutilation
        --shame and self-contempt of the victim); related to her experience of sexual molestation, 
      • chap 24: between waking and sleep; feeling "something" and dreaming about mother.
      • chap 35 (pp. 227-39; 272-273): dream elements--the place of the dead, soldiers, flower ceremony, the Grand Inquisitor
        --Who is the Grand Inquisitor?  --the victimizer, the oppressor
        --Naomi with her questions (p. 228; 274)
        --Emily with her insistence on speech (pp. 232-233)
         
    5. As a kid, Stephen has unexpressed anger and violence
      • butterfly: end of chap 16--pp.122-23
      • chap 18: refusing to go to Grandma Nakane's wake p. 129
      • chap 33:
        • his identity as an adult  214-15; less surly, still irritable, non-communicative with Obasan; 
        • uncomfortable with anything too Japanese p. 217; 
        • "Sonuva bitch" mixed language, mixed identity p. 218
        • his nightmare pp. 219-20
      • chap 34: Stephen with Claudine p. 223
    Stephen and the other boys' violent ways
    1. Stephen (and the butterflies):  end of Chaps 15 & 16
    2. Kenji, his raft and his glasses: he is incapable of saving Naomi?  Or he does not care?
    3. The boys' (Stephen, Sho and the other boys)violence against the white Chicken Chap 22 
    4. The school's ceremony afterwards becomes ironic
      • national anthem: O Canada, our home and native land. 
      • the teacher is like a hen.. 

    TOP

    G. Survival

    Survival  From "dis-member" to "remember" to "re-member"
    Beginning of Chap 15 -- Their resilience is suggested early on at the beginning of their relocation. 
    ¡§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 . . . 
     
    The Adults' adaptation
    1. Rough Lock Bill Chap 21 slow can go p. 146
    2. The uncle's garden Chap 20
    3. Local community in Slocan:  Chap 23: stores, public bathhouse "like a hazy happy dream" (internal discrimination)
    4. The return of the father 

    TOP

    H. Articulating the Silence and Survival

      Different views about silence:
      1. Emily: Denial is Gangrene.
      2. Obasan: steadfast silence. inviolate (225).   "Kodomo no tame"
      3. Naomi: end of chap 35: "Her tale is a rose with a tangled stem.  All this questioning, this clawing at her grave, is an unseemly thing."
         
      4. Grandma Kato: -- "however much the effort to forget, there is no forgetfulness"(281)--release the burden of memory with writing
    • Different descriptions/images of the mother
      1. in the dream: a rose with a tangle stem
      2. chap 38:
        • tide rushing away from the shore,
        • Canadian maple tree
        • long black hair falling  --> Maypole Mother;
        • tree trunk, --> dead tree
        • chap 39 p. 244: a light piece of music, more sad than happy, but quiet and dignified, a gentle tune, hiding the cacophony life wrote in their bones.
        • scarecrow Grief with gentle eyes pp. 245-46


      Reconciliation and Survival: "The song of mourning is not a lifelong song."

      • remembering--personal memorial service to the dead (Mother, Father, Uncle--all the "absences")
        re-membering--two ideographs for love--愛戀--系--kei as in nikkei--family lineage--a symbolic act to reweave the family unravel by the war and to weave nikkei into the tapestry of Canadian history (King-Kok Cheung)
      • confirming two kinds of love and two languages
      • accepting the mother's quiet tune
      • Fill the emptiness of Grief with "flesh": the forest where colours meet, where there are berries, the coulie where there are roses and wildflowers.
         
      • Naomi in Aunt Emily's clothes.

      TOP

    I. Others: Fairy Tales

    The Use of Fairy Tales to express their sense of displacement and fragmentation.
    The significance of the story Momotaro? 
    • Cultural integration:  Momotaro as a Canadian story
    • quiet departure from the parents, keeping honor
    • Momotaro-- not born of biological parents. 
      The other fairy-tales: 
    • Snow White: end of Chap 11 -- Naomi as Snow White and Old Man Gower as the forest with all eyes.
    • Humpty Dumpty end of Chap 15; fragments which cannot be put back together. 
    • Goldilock end of chap 17: Is Naomi Goldilock whose house gets occupied by others or the little bear?
    • All revisions of the fairy-tales show the child¡¦s way of apprehending racism and displacement

    Back/TOP

    J. Others: Insects and Animals

    Animal Imagery: 
    1. the chicken episode Chap 11
      • It shows the mother quiet and sure way of solving the problem, not betraying Naomi nor blaming her directly. 
      • The white hen vs. yellow chicken -- will become symbolic of the positions of white oppressor and the Japanese under oppression.
      • It is Naomi that tries to put the chicks into the hen's cage, thinking (maybe?) that the formers should be the latter's kids.
    2. Naomi as a victim,
      • treated like an animal by Old Man Gower, 
      • drowned like a red insect chap 21,p. 140, 142  vs.  King bird
      • ill in the hospital and feels like a little chicken chap 22 (will grow white)
    3. Naomi's experience of death
      • Besides the drowning experience, she witnesses and killing of a white hen and the slow death of a kitten.
      • Later, she will have to face the death of first her father, and then her mother.

    Back/TOP

     
       
     

     

導讀
Copyright ©2009 國科會人文學中心 All Rights Reserved.