Time to forget and to go

In short story “Obasan”(An Anthology of Canadian Literature. Ontario: Oxford University Press Canada 1980, 551-555.) Joy Kogawa describes Japanese Canadians’ bitter experiences during World War II in poetic expressions through a protagonist’s visit to her “Obasan”: aunt in Japanese. The theme suggests that although Japanese Canadians had unjust treatments from mainstream Canadians, thinking about the bitter past and seeking the cause and reason are useless; therefore time has come to abandon the horrible memory and painful trauma Joy Kogawa also indicates that there have been grateful love as well as bitterness in the experience.

“Obasan” is set in the narrator’s aunt’s house where the narrator has lived as a child with her during World War II, now the aunt lives alone after her uncle’s death. The house has Japanese commodities such as “soya sauce”(550) and “toothpicks”(550), a lot of memories of the narrator’s childhood and “life’s infinite personal details”(552) preserved by the aunt. In this setting, the narrator feels the difference between generations, remembers the obscure childhood, and finds parents’ generation’s love toward children that she couldn’t find as a child.

The central conflict in “Obasan” is that the narrator, as a child, couldn’t know the fact of Japanese Canadian’s situation during World War II such as the evacuation, the internment, and the confiscation, because of “protective silence”(551), which parent’s generation has given to children “[f]or their[children’s] sakes”(551). They have thought not telling the fact to the children wouldn’t harm children’s pride and feelings. Then, action rises when they “climb the narrow stairs”(552) to the attic, where the uncle’s remains are stored. They start exploring the past, which was hidden to the narrator.

In the attic, the aunt is “looking for”(553) something for the narrator, but she cannot find anything for her. This fact indicates that there is nothing worthy in the attic as the narrator’s cousin says “junk”(553). The story’s climax comes when the narrator finds “a letter from the Department of the Secretary of State”(554), by which the uncle has corresponded with the government to insist Japanese Canadian’s right. The narrator realizes that although the aunt and the uncle have never talked about their situation to the children during World War II and she hasn’t known the fact, they have been trying hard to recover their status as Canadian Citizens.

As a resolution, the narrator finds “our buried love”(554) as well as “our bitterness”(554). At this point, the narrator’s emotion comes to profuse gratitude. Then, “I[The narrator] holds her[the aunt’s] body upright”(554). Although it is an accident, it implies that the narrator want to hug the aunt from her gratitude, as she says, “My arms are suffused with a suppressed urge to hold”(555).

The conflict between the narrator and the aunt is that the narrator wants to abandon the bitter past, but the aunt, whose “[preserved] items are endless”(552), wants to keep every memory in her house. Action rises when the narrator asks the aunt to “come and stay with us”, but the aunt refuses to leave the house which has “tiny specks of memory”(552). This fact indicates that the aunt wouldn’t give up her memory. However, the climax comes when the narrator holds the aunt who has stumbled at the stairs. By this hold with “the edges of our flesh”(555), “the current flowing in and between us, between our generations”(554) increases the strength “to brighten our dormant neurons, to entrust our stagnant cells with movement and dance”(555). The accidental hug caused invisible influence on the aunt; as a result, she seems to have changed a little bit to abandon her memory and accept hopeful movement toward the future. For example, “she[The aunt] begins to scrape off the thick clay like mud that sticks to my boots”(555). “[T]hick clay like mud” implies the past and “my boots” implies their present lives as metaphor.

The major characters in “Obasan” are the narrator and the aunt. The narrator has grown up in west coast in Canada and experienced evacuation in her childhood as an “Enemy Aliens [of Canada]”(554) during World War II, as same as other Japanese Canadians. She feels her memories about the war experience is unclear, because her parents’ generation has hidden them “for their[children’s] sake”(551). As 3^rd generation of Japanese Canadian, she has different way of thinking and perspectives from the aunt or the uncle. For instance, she has “urge to hold”(555) as an expression of affection, but it has to be “suppressed”(555) because the aunt cannot accept it. The narrator is round and static character.

The aunt is “an old woman”(552) who keeps traditional Japanese lifestyle, as she drinks green tea that has “tiny twigs and bits of popcorn circle”(550) and she “is not one for hugs and kisses”(550). She preserves many things in her house that is not important in practical life such as “a daughter’s rubber ball”(552). She is also a woman with few words and keeps silence as an expression of grief, as the narrator says, “The language of grief is silence”(551). The aunt is round and dynamic character although her change at the end of the story is subtle.

The minor characters in “Obasan” are the uncle, his grandfather and others who were just mentioned. They are all flat and static characters. The uncle has died recently and “was disoriented for weeks”(550). As he would say, “We must go back”(551), he must have offensive feeling to the unjust treatment of Japanese Canadians and tried to recover their status. The grandfather was “Japanese craftsman”(550) who had made “hundreds of ... boats”(551) for “hundreds of fishermen”(551). He is the first generation who came to Canada.

The narrative point of view is first person. Through this point of view, readers can understand the Japanese way of thinking and what happened to Japanese Canadians during World War II; As a result, readers have sympathy to the narrator, the people in her parents’ generation, and the whole Japanese Canadians. Consequently, this short story and a following novel “Obasan” might have moved Canadian politicians when they apologized to Japanese Canadians after the novel had been published and become popular.

The tone of “Obasan” is pathetic. Along the story, the narrator describes what she thinks and what she feels in poetic words. Joy Kogawa uses many figurative languages and they help reader to evoke miserable images that Japanese Canadians had experienced during World War II. Especially, the “old [cob]webs”(552), implies the past, and “hollowed out inset”(552), implies a memory, gives reader fearful images. She also uses the foreshadowing; the aunt’s “falters”(550) at the beginning make reader expect the aunt’s “stumbles”(554) at the end, which causes the climactic hold between the aunt and the narrator. She uses irony, too. In the sentence “The other [grandfather’s] boats are towed away and left to rot”(551), off course, the purpose of confiscation is not “to rot”. However, she emphasizes the unreasonable injustice, which has suffered Japanese Canadians.

“Obasan” reveals the Japanese Canadians’ bitter experiences during World War II, which were hidden to the narrator, who was a child at that time. Through the visit to the aunt’s house, the narrator’s conflicts inside herself and between generations come forth to the resolutions: she finds the love from parents’ generations toward the children and realizes that seeking the past is useless and that the time they should abandon the curst past has come.