Obasan (3): Histories of

Community Fragmentation and Re-Building

(Obasan Chaps 31-end )

OutlinePlot Summary Consequences of Trauma: Bodily and Community

Fragmentation1. Naomi -- Haunted by images of death; 2. Alienation -- Naomi, the community Stephen The only Neighbors: the Barkers

Reconstruction Naomi’s education Accepting Silence; Letters: Facing the truths Listening to Silences Constructing the CommunityConclusion: Imagery, Structure, Kogawa

Plot Summary : Fragmentation and Reconstruction (chap 31-) Chap 5--Obasan in the attic; Chap 9: the House Chap 12: E’s Diary

Chap 26: leaving Slocan; Chap 27 -- Emily's package;

Chap 28:1945 Lethbridge restaurant -> Granton, the Barker farm;

Chap 29 newspapers vs. Naomi’s outburst of anger

Chap 31 – frog and the fact about father’s death Chap 32 –[a town house] questions about the mother -- must

be dead vs. two government letters about admission Chap 33 -- Emily's first visit in 1954 (Stephen leaves for

Toronto in 1952)  "Kodomo no tame“ vs. "they should be told"

Chap 34 – [1972] Obasan with the letters; Mr. and Mrs. Barker's visit: their offensive sympathy; "Have you ever been back to Japan?"

Chap 35 – Nightmare about the Grand Inquisitor Chap 36 – Obasan with the two letters Nakayama-sensei

—better to speak [rain]

Plot Summary (chap 32-)

Chap 37 -- revelation, listening Chap 38 – [Naomi’s reflection]presence without

flesh; letters as bones, love sent through graves and underground roots

Chap 39 – [Naomi’s action]going to the coulee Chap 40 – [Emily’s document] the Memorandum

Trauma: Physical Fragmentation

Chicken killing Old Man Gower severing from the mother as a tree trunk

Chicken killing drowning hospital nightmare [chap 22 end 158]; [chap24 watersnake 169]

Mother [chap 24: 167] [chap 37 239]

Consequences of Trauma: Fragmentation of Community --Naomi in Alberta

Chap 31 – Naomi near the swamp; focuses on taking care of her frog (Tad, Tadpole and Tadashi)

The father’s death 1949 last letter; failure of memory (of when she was told), awareness to knowledge and expression in 1951 (chap 32 pp. 209; 211)

A Consequences of Trauma: Alienation from his own culture -- Stephen

Used to departure p. 15 (O: keeping his letters) • Has wanted to get away from Granton – p. 219

(Obasan’s response: praying)• -- Momotaro going off to conquer the world (

Toronto Europe) (Obasan’s response: standing where he was for a long time

• --ready to run out the moment he is back (chap 36: 231)

uncomfortable with anything “too Japanese” (chap 33 p. 217)

Alienation from his own culture & his past: Stephen Mixture in his language “sukana fish” p.

218; With Claudine (“like the western movies?”

chap 34 223) --noncommunicative with Obasan chap 36

p. 231 (Obasan’s reaction--mending and cooking something that he would not touch)

-- chap 37: 235 Re. Parents: “They are dead now.” (Obasan: “everybody someday dies”)

Alienation from his own culture & his past: Stephen

After the letter: Stephen “glances up at [Naomi] then looks away swiftly” (240)

Naomi’s Reconstruction

(1) Of Community

(2) Of Self

Assertion of Japanese-Canadian Identity: the Barkers vs. Obasan chap 34

The Barkers: • ”foreign odor” (chap 34 p 224) • Suggests the Sunnydale Lodge (an all white old

folks’ home) • “icebreaker questions that create an awareness

of ice” chap 2 p. 7 The Japanese-Canadians chap 34 p. 226

• –like weeds--uprooted but survived; Obasan: outside this “clamorous climate,”

not dance to the multi-cultural piper’s tune, in her silent territory

Review: Naimi’s Education (1) Emily How does Naomi respond to Aunt Emily’s

documents?1) Chap 7 – Obasan gives N Emily's package --‘Some

memories . . .might better be forgotten” (chap 8: 45; the two letters) chap 9, All right, Aunt Emily, all right—the house then …(p. 50)

2) chap 14 – her diary train to Slocan

3) chap 27 – “Do I really want to read these?” – tired from the “heavy identity”—”What does it all matter in the end?”

“It matters to get the facts straight” Aunt Emily (talking to N “last May”) ; need to be educated (183-188) “I’ll read it[the memorandum] another time”; they do not touch us in Alberta(189)

4) Chap 29: p. 194 “Yes, I mind…” life in Alberta

Naimi’s Education (2) Obasan In silence and in silent grief --"surround[s] herself with a determined

kind of still-ness" (chap 7: 38). -- "The language of her grief is silence. She

has learned it well, its idioms, its nuances. Over the years, silence within her small body has grown large and powerful" (chap 3: 14).

Naimi’s Education (2) Obasan2. Obasan’s silent care and serving hands

• Care: to Stephen [ppt 4], who cannot bear “the density of [Obasan's] inner retreat and the rebuke he felt in her silences” (14)

• Expression of gratitude: End of chap 18 -- For those who helped with the cremation of Grandma Nakane--"Obasan puts her gift of food discreetly behind the second wood pile, where it will be seen after we leave" (131)

• Protective silence -- Speech hides like an animal in a storm (3) The hidden voice of the mother’s (in the two envelopes in the grey cardboard folder)

Naimi’s Education (3) Obasan + Emily The two letters presented by Obasan

• “Everybody someday dies.”

Read by Sensei.

Language as Lies or Self-Assertion

vs. “Silence” as

(1) repression and tolerance;

(2) non-verbal communication thru’ gesture, attentive care, thinking [interior monologue] and rituals.

Silence– (0) repression & tolerance Naomi: “We are the silences that speak from

stone.We a re the despised rendered voiceless” (111) Uncle: "In the world, there is no better place.... This

country is the best. There is food. There is medicine. There is pension money. Gratitude. Gratitude" (42).

Obasan's silence• Live in stone (p. 32); turns to stone (198)

• Endurance chap 34 -- 224 (inviolate); 226; Trapped in her memory

Silence– (1) a means of communication in the family e.g. the mother’s response in Naomi’s chicken

episode; Care taking in the family (chap 10) Naomi’s lack of resistance to Old Man Gower; learns of danger only as “whispers and frowns

and too much gentleness” (13: 73) father's illness, his coming back, and departure

166, 171, 179

Protective Silence– (2) for the sake of children N no more inquisition mother's silence -- the avenues of silence are

the avenues of speech (35: 228) Understand her thru’ dreams. Gentle mother, we were lost together in

our silences. Our wordlessness was our mutual destruction (38: 243)

silent communion with the dead: unity and distance at the end (39: 246-47) [more later]

Language: lies and expressions of racism official rhetoric and order

• --Nisei as "enemy aliens"; prison camps "Interior Housing Projects“

• Order-in-Council (end of chap 27)= hawk

"With language like that you can disguise any crime." (34)

Old Man Gower’s

Language (2): Aunt Emily’s

Vision: “write the vision and make it plain” Nourishment: Her documents as “the

mind’s meal” (chap 27), though they cannot touch N in Alberta for a while (end of chap 27)

Facing Reality: Pushing Naomi to talk about “facts” chap 27; pp. 183 -

Language + Silence The two Chinese ideographs for the word "love”

(end of chap 35)

愛 – heart and hand and action

戀— a long thread 系

Naomi’s Responses to her Mother’s Silence0) Questions

1) Nightmare

[Grandmother Kato’s Letters]

2) Listening to the mother

3) Physical apprehension of fragmentation and emptiness

4) Spiritual reconstruction of the community

(1) Nightmares

[about the experience in Alberta]“There are some nightmares from which there is no waking, only deeper and deeper sleep.” (29: 194)

The Dream of the Grand Inquisitor (chap 35) How will you interpret the dream? --dream elements--the place of the dead,

soldiers, flower ceremony, the Grand Inquisitor

Nightmare in chap 35 We die again and again. the Grand Inquisitor?

1. the victimizer, the oppressor2. Naomi with her questions (32: 211)3. Emily with her insistence on speech

Rose: 1. Mother’s heart-shaped mouth vs. Obasan’s dry

cave of a mouth2. mother’s story “a rose with a tangled stem”

(35: end) Dance as a slow courtly telling of love--

Naomi’s response: first breathless and deciding to let go.

(2) Letters: Trauma ＆ Memory

What are the functions of the two letters?

How does Noami respond to them? What do you think of these images --

the child with the “double wound” (38: 243) the letters as skeletons and bones of the past (38: 243)?

Trauma and Memory Grandma Kato—

• unable to talk at first • “however much the effort to forget, there is no

forgetfulness” (37: 234)--release the burden of memory with writing (236)--the reader as burden sharer (witness)

for Naomi—• The rain as an external projection of her feelings.

(end of 36)

Atomic bombs dropped in Japan "Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped

on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

"Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.

 Causes of damage: air pressure (wind), heat, radiation

The Canadian side-- 1944 Aug. 4 – King’s dispersal statement -- 1945 April Japanese-Canadians’ repatriation & Relocation started. (e.g. Mr. Nabeta, a school teacher becoming a farmhand in Toronto (source) -- Repatriation began in May 1946;1947 Jan. 24 – Deportation orders were cancelled, but 4000 were already exiled.

Canadian Prime Minister’s Perspective Atomic Bomb: greatest achievement in

science His diary: We can now see what might have come to

the British race had German scientists won the race. It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe. I am a little concerned about how Russia may feel, not having been told anything of this invention or of what the British and the U.S. were doing in the way of exploring and perfecting the process.(source)

Damages:A. Hiroshima

—1. wind: destroyed most of the houses and buildings within a 1.5 miles radius.

---2. death: more than 140,000 people died by the end of the year (including students, soldiers and Koreans who worked in factories within the city.) The total number of people who have died due to the bomb is estimated to be 200,000.

B. Nagasaki--70,000 people died by the end of the year

     1945, Aug. 15, Japan surrendered (treaty signed on Sept. 2). Taken over by the U.S.

Damages – described in the novel (air raids in Tokyo 8/9 1945 the deaths of

grandma Kato’s sister , her sister’s husband and their mother)

8/9, 1945 A. Destruction of the city (a burning city)

B. Physical destruction – skin hung from the bodies like tatter rags • grandma Kato’s niece –hair singed, eyes blown out

• Tomio and Chieko– rescued first by grandmother, but Tomio disappeared later (after drinking a lot of polluted water)

• A delirious woman asking others to save a dead baby

• River water red with corpses

• Mother … face disfigured, bald, forever wearing a mask -- [hibakusha ( 被爆者 ), Crazy iris … ]

No sadist pleasure in describing torture!!!

(3) Listening to SilencesChap 24—”She is here. She is not here. She is reaching

out to me with a touch deceptive as down" (167).

Chap 38 -- listen to mother (37: end 240); speak to mother (38: 241)--attending her wordless

word, empathizing, eulogizing and aware of consequences

• her isolation and displacement her Canadian identity

• Her powerful voicelessness not sharing the horror Mother, I see your face.

• Maypole mother sun dance (*)

• Compression of images (street corner, tree, dead tree, wound) our mutual destruction (243)

Reconstruction at the EndChap 39 -- Experiencing “the rotting of the flesh,” many betrayals…

feeling thirst and deeper emptiness. (39)

Why does Naomi visit the coulee again at the end of the novel?

“The body of grief is not fit for human habitation.” Let there be flesh. The song of mourning, not a lifelong song

remembering--personal memorial service to the dead (Mother, Father, Uncle--all the “absences”)

A burial ritual for the dead re-membering--two ideographs for love-- 愛 戀 -- 系 --kei

as in nikkei--family lineage--a symbolic act to reweave the family unraveled by the war and to weave nikkei into the tapestry of Canadian history (King-Kok Cheung)

Naomi’s Building a Community crossing the boundaries of life and death

• We have turned and returned to your arms as you turn to earth and form the forest ... Tonight we read the forest braille. See how our stained fingers have read the seasons, and how our serving hands serve you.

Naomi in nature – amidst the wild rose bushes, the tiny wildflowers and stream.

Also ready for action – Aunt Emily’s coat and the final document

Conclusion

Silence, Speech and Community

Silence and the Imagery of Stone & Sea

What is the significance of the stone imagery?

A. Messages in the stone • The bible--“a white stone”--”a new name written”

• epigraph--“The word is stone.”

• Uncle’s stone bread

• Emily's parcel; sound and stone (32)

B. the sea – home and connection • the coulee/ the ocean/ look homeward

• Voice in the amniotic deep

The Novel’s structure

Circular and multi-layered – • "a concentric pattern-container hidden within

container within container-creating a sense of mystery and tension" (Gottlieb qtd in Ueki 34)

• E.g. beginning and ending with a visit to the coulee; the question; the package, with a folder which contains two letters.

The folder structure of the novel

(Ueki 9 - ) – (1) connections among Uncle, Obasan and mother; (2) Mother – “enshrined in the folder which resembles Kannon's shrine” (13) --?

Kogawa’s own experience

1. 1960s -- Not asserting her Japanese identity first: “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. ”

Kogawa’s own experience

2. 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. . . .

3. 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, . . .. So Aunt Emily's voice was always outside of me throughout the entire writing of Obasan. “

Kogawa’s own experience

4. after writing Obasan; writing Itsuka ”the Naomi character -- 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 [though still writing in Naomi’s perspective]. . .

Reference Ueki,Teruyo. “Obasan: Revelations in a

Paradoxical Scheme.” MELUS, Vol. 18, No. 4, Asian Perspectives (Winter, 1993): 5-20.

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.

Note: Maypole Dance vs. Sun Dance of the Sioux

(Image source)