Citation

Naomi M. Kasumigaoka Review 2007; 13: 47-59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Fukuoka Women's University)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Joy Kogawa's Obasan (1981) powerfully protests the racial discrimination, describing the women's experiences in the evacuation camp during World War II, and contributes to the fulfillment of the Canadian redress movements in the 1980s. In Obasan, a journal, letters and family a photo play the important roles in protesting the evacuation and the war. Aunt Emily's journal, Grandmother's letters, and a family photo polyphonically reflect with each other, and complement the fragmental and Naomi's forgotten memories of the evacuation. One of the characteristics in Obasan is that the evacuation experiences are depicted in the form of fragmental memories of Naomi Megumi Nakane, who is a 36-year-old Sansei. She wants to forget the painful evacuation which causes family's disintegration ; her father's death and mother's stay in Japan are triggered by the evacuation, which results in her deep psychological trauma. Her memories of the past, however, are to be awakened by her Aunt Emily's journal, Grandmother's letters from Japan, and the family photo. They bring her consciousness back to the past that she has forgotten. Although all the private writing in Obasan plays the significant roles, the most influential writing is Aunt Emily's journal. It not only complements Naomi's memories but also revises the evacuation history ignored in Canadian historical cannon. The journal of Aunt Emily who is a Nisei activist revises the political process of the evacuation. It is impossible for Naomi to narrate the evacuation experience in the political dimension because she was 5 years old when World War II broke out. Instead of Naomi, Emily's journal, whose form is written in the epistle to Naomi's mother, fully uncovers the concealed historical facts: the aggravator of the discrimination in the beginning of the War, and the Canadian governmental policy of the evacuation, Japanese-Canadian Niseis' resistance against the evacuation, and family dispersion in the wartime. Such detailed historical reconstruction and powerful voices against injustice are not found in the works by Japanese-American female writers. Naomi, however, in the early stage, does not approve of Emily's journal, which protests against the unjust treatment of Japanese-Canadians. Though the journal revises what Japanese-Canadians undergo in the wartime, it does not reveal Naomi's personal experience before or during the evacuation. What arouses Naomi's dormant personal memories is an old photo which snaps very young Naomi and her mother. The photo awakens memories of her childhood, and it makes 36-year-old Naomi have symbolical nightmares. The nightmares incarnate what the war is ; namely the nightmares suggest the war is that the historical repetition of the national violence based on "greed, selfishness, and hatred" (238). It is Grandmother's letters from Japan that solve Naomi's doubt about the mother's absence. In the very end of the novel, when the letters that Naomi cannot read are translated for her, her mother's death is finally revealed. The letters reveal that Naomi's mother who leaves for Japan before the war is dead because of the atomic bomb dropped in Nagasaki. Then we can say that the letters play two significant roles ; one is to restore the split relationship between Naomi and her mother, and the other to reconsider the relation between victims and perpetrators at war, addressing the subject of the atomic bomb. The family photo, Emily's journal, and the letters are something like old fibers which are weaved into the new fabric. Obasan becomes not only the complement of Naomi's personal memories and the historical revision of Japanese-Canadians but also develops the universal war narrative.