In class we were given the opportunity to observe the archives of Joy Kogawa in the UBC Rare Book Archives. I explored her thoughts through looking at old drafts, notes, fan letters, critiques she received and so on. They were all pieces of a collection from her novel Obasan. Obasan is a fictional novel that, through the use of invented characters, portrays the horrific events of WWII and it’s effect on Japanese Canadians and their families. I was not sure as to what to expect from these archives or what I should be looking for, but I discovered what I interpreted as the reason why Kogawa chose to write about two characters: Naomi and Obasan and the silence they shared while grieving the past.
I first looked at a file labeled “Rough drafts: Obasan.” It was noticeably a brainstorm session with many notes scribbled all over a piece of paper. She had written a brief page or two on the traditional idea of “Happily Ever After” that we so often see in fairy tails. She described a young girl alone in the forest who seemed to be being chased. She began with “snow white running through the forest, beautiful and pursued, the forest branches swaying seductively, their leaves falling down to surround her flight” and went on to say “a child is running through a thick forest. Snow white runs and runs and terror surrounds her. The theatre is dark as the forest.” This dark portrayal of an innocent girl lost in the woods being “seduced” and “pursued” seems to share a greater meaning with the main character Naomi Nakane in Kogawa’s novel. It was as if in an attempt to run away from her fears she ultimately found herself even more lost than before. She ends with the quote “But outside the home, even in the backyard, there is that other infinitely dangerous world.” This seems to allude to the fear of becoming vulnerable with the exposure of weakness.
In the novel Obasan Naomi chooses for most of the story to stay silent about the horror of her family’s history and her past. She doesn’t want to speak up and hear the truth out loud so she hides behind her fear and pretends it doesn’t exist. She stays silent even when her next-door neighbor abuses her. Through doing this she is denying the reality of the circumstances she was forced to endure. Kogawa expresses this in a response to some young children who were curious what happened to Naomi later in her life. “Dear children, Naomi’s road was sometimes very, very lonely all her life she wanted to learn why her beautiful mother did not come home to Canada from Japan. No one told her in this world there are many terrible and sad things.” This reflection on Naomi’s loneliness contributes to how Kogawa presented the story of Obasan through examining how one grieves in silence versus in speaking up, and how ultimately, Kogawa emphasized the importance of speech over silence.
That is a very interesting find in the drafts! That metaphor for Snow White I guess goes along with the ideas of purity and innocence that are intended to be seen through Naomi’s childhood. As far as why it was taken out, I assume that it painted Naomi’s character as possibly inhumanly virtuous in a way. I think this would connect with the letter you discussed as she didn’t want readers–especiallly children–to see the possibility of Naomi having a “happily ever after” life following the traumatic events of Japanese-Canadian internment. As the letter says, “No one told her in this world there are many terrible and sad things”. Although the use of Snow White as a metaphor for Naomi may create an original way to look at purity and innocence, by taking it out, Kogawa is furthering the message of her book as a whole, pointing out that more often than not there is no happily ever after. Especially after traumatic events take place, it can take years and years for life to truly get better, and by taking out this metaphor Kogawa includes that message in her book.