Lists compose this slender volume by Julie Otsuka, starting with the Japanese passengers on a ship to America, women traveling to husbands whose marriages have been arranged through the mail. Their belongings, their backgrounds, their names are all dangled before the reader, but not one becomes the central character for us to follow. Initially I thought that was a problem, as I am a person rather fond of plots and characters who grow, but the poignancy of the scattered stories had its own unique power, and the growth of characters—or, rather, the collective of characters—certainly occurs.
This book of captivating paragraphs reads like both a prose poem and a fascinating history of the Japanese women who came to America to marry men they had never seen but through a photograph, often a deceitful one. As a history, it is marvelous, telling the story of the group in a powerful, lyrical, compelling manner. As a poem, it is rich, sharing a vast experience in its lines. As a novel, it offers a unique experience of a group rather than an individual: of the journey to America, of spousal rape, of labor in fields and in houses as servants, of infants who die and ones who live, of children and their growth and shame of their parents’ foreign ways, and of the forced removal of Japanese citizens to camps during WWII.
This is where Otsuka’s novel sings the most. The lists of how people reacted felt extraordinarily real: in a section of “leaving,” she writes:
“Katsuno left her husband’s laundry in San Diego mumbling, ‘Somebody wake me up, please.’”
And, my favorite for its poignancy:
“There was a boy from Parlier who left carrying a blue flannel blanket that still smelled of his room.”
In the final chapter, entitled “A Disappearance,” the narrator shifts. No longer is it the Japanese collective protagonist but the Westerners who remain behind, neighbors who valued the quiet and neat Japanese but never bothered to read the notices on the telephone poles. Their regret is clear, but never maudlin. And there is humor, too, such as when an assistant pastor’s wife opens a letter beginning, “Darling, am all right” and wonders who “Hatsuko” is. The eventual forgetfulness of those who remained behind is tragic, but chillingly believable. Rumors are heard of antique trains traveling over mountains, never stopping, in whose window a Japanese woman’s face was briefly glimpsed looking tired. And that is the final sight we have of the women we have followed.
I hope that Otsuka’s short novel is widely read, and widely discussed.
The structure of the book sounds unique. My heart breaks thinking of these women and what they endured.
It’s a shocking, yet sadly not uncommon, piece of history. The old adage seems ever true: only by understanding the past can we make wise decisions about the future. Could such forced removals occur today to another ethnic group seen as “the enemy” with a huge war as a backdrop? Is our country vocal enough and informed enough to prevent that? I hope that our society has changed, and that social media sources like Twitter will help it continue to be informed.