Transcript Obasan (3): From Second Relocation, Alienation to Reconstruction

Obasan (3):
From Second Relocation,
Alienation to Reconstruction
Outline

Fragmentation & Alienation
• – Naomi, the community
• -- Stephen
• --the Barkers
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Reconstruction
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Naomi’s education
Accepting Silence;
Facing the truths
Constructing the Community
Speech and Silence and N’s Movement towards speech
Second Relocation
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Pp. 180 chap 26 --fragmentation
 Told by Naomi while she reads Emily’s
documents (newspaper clips) and remembers what
she said about the Japanese’ deprivation and fights.
(e.g. chap 27)
 Chap 28
• – Lethbridge in the restaurant
• -- their hut
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Chap 29 (newspaper clips vs. the real experience)
 Chap 30 – loss of parents; experience of school –
children rejecting their Japanese names
Alienation: Naomi in Alberta
Chap 31 – Naomi near the swamp;
taking care of her frog (Tad, Tadpole
and Tadashi)
The father’s death  1949 last letter; 
awareness to knowledge and
expression in 1951 (chap 32 pp. 209;
211)
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Alienation from his own
culture: Stephen
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Has wanted to get away from G – 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)
Used to departure p. 15 (O: keepning his letters)
--uncomfortable with anything “too Japanese”
(chap 33 p. 217)
--ready to run out the moment he is back (chap
36: 231)
Alienation from his own
culture: Stephen
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Mixture in his language p. 218;
With Claudine (chap 34 223)
--noncommunicative with Obasan chap
36 p. 231 (Obasan’s reaction--mending
and cooking something that he would not
touch)
Alienation
the Barkers--enemy aliens--”foreign odor”
(chap 34 p 224) “icebreaker questions
that create an awareness of ice”
 The Japanese-Canadians chap 34 p.
226
• –like weeds--uprooted but survived;
• -- Obasan’s silent territory
Naimi’s Education
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How does Naomi respond the Aunt Emily’s
documents?
‘Some memories . . .might better be forgotten” (45)
chap 27 –tired from the “heavy identity” ; need to
be educated (183-188); not touched(189)
Chap 7 p. 50;
Chap 29: p. 194
Dreams and Nightmares
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“There are some nightmares from which
there is no waking, only deeper and deeper
sleep.” (232)
The Dream of the Grand Inquisitor
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third dream (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
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--What are the recurring elements in
her dreams? Who is the Grand
Inquisitor?
 --the victimizer, the oppressor
 --Naomi with her questions (274)
 --Emily with her insistence on speech
(232-233)
Trauma and Memory

What are the functions of the two
letters?
 How does Noami respond to them?
 What do you think of these imagery-the child with the “double wound”
(243) the letters as skeletons and bones
of the past (38: 243)?
Trauma and Memory
--for Grandma Kato--“however much
the effort to forget, there is no
forgetfulness” (281)--release the
burden of memory with writing (283)-the reader as burden sharer
 --for Naomi--attending the voice of the
voicelessness--an eulogy of Mother
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Naomi’s responses
In chap 38
 listen to mother 240;
 speak to mother 241
• asserting her Canadian identity;
• sympathizing with her
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last community 246 
Atomic bombs dropped in Japan
l "Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
"Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9,
1945.
l Causes of damage: air pressure (wind),
heat, radiation
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
 l
1945, Aug. 15, Japan surrendered (treaty
signed on Sept. 2). Taken over by the U.S.
The Ending

Why does Naomi visit the coulee again at the end
of the novel?
 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)
The Ending
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Why does Kogawa end the novel with
an official document?
 What kind of language is it written in,
as opposed to Naomi’s?
Silence– (1) a means of
communication in the family
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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
Silence– (2) for the sake of
children
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Obasan's silence
Live in stone (p. 32); turns to stone (198)
Endurance chap 34 -- 224 (inviolate); 226;
 Trapped in her memory
Silence– (3) no more inquisition
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mother's silence the avenues of silence are
the avenues of speech 228 ==233
silence and forbearance of the atomic bomb
victims 236
 lost together in our silences 243
 silent communion with the dead: unity
and distance at the end 246-47
Language: lies and expressions
of racism
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official rhetoric and order
• --Nisei as "enemy aliens"; prison camps
"Interior Housing Projects“
• Order in council (end of chap 27)= hawk
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"With language like that you can disguise
any crime." (34)
Old Man Gower’s
Language (2): Aunt Emily’s
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write the vision and make it plain
Her documents as “the mind’s meal” (chap
27); her words – not made flesh, not touch
N in Alberta (end of chap 27)
Pushing Naomi to talk about “facts” chap
27; pp. 183 -
Imagery of Stone & Sea
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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
Emily's parcel; sound and stone (32)
the coulee/ the ocean/ uncle and Chief Sitting
Bull/ the family as a knit blanket (24-25)
Kogawa’s own experience
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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
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2. the writing of "Obasan"
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“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
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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
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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.