Last week, I finished the first literature review about the term national memory with my group and we come up with the definition of it: National memory is the way we commemorate the past and perceive events in history as a nation through private and public memories, and from there construct and form the identity of our Nation. This week we started the book named Obasam by Joy Kogawa. It is a novel that tells a story about a little girl, Naomi, a Japanese Canadian during the WW2 and the novel is written in a child’s perspective. Yet I have not finished the book, but I found so many connection between them already, especially about national identity.
At the beginning, we know this story happen during the WW2, which indicates the relationship between Japan and countries is not harmonious at all. At the same time, as a family with Japanese blood, their national identity have been chanlleged. At page 169, Kogawa brought up a piece of report about Canada’s Japanese repatriation plan. “670 solemn-faced Japanese…sailed out of Vancouver Friday night…..1000 of them will sail for Japan about June 15th”. This piece of news can fully demonstrate the relationship between Japan and Canada.The word I found interesting in is the Solemn-faced Japanese. Personally, I believe the word implies that those Japanese were not actually proud of their national identity during that time. Not a fair representation of the past because people share so many different perspectives based on their private memories, which may be altered and biased by your environment and personal experience.(Maggie Andrews) In this situation, negative representation and the environment of war has altered the memory about Japanese and also that memory of Japanese. As a result, the national identity is altered as well.
That piece of news implicitly indicate how will Naomi and Stephen be discriminately treated in the school as well. And at the button of page 67, there is an anecdote about Stephen. Stephen has been mocked because he has been recognized as a Japanese. However, when Stephen asked his father about his national identity, his father denied their Japanese identity. This part also represent the Japanese were not proud of their identity at the moment and Naomi’s father was trying to bend in by the identity of Canadian. Again, this is another piece of evident that shows the national identity will be altered by the unfair representation or the present environment. Moreover, the most interesting part I found is the riddle at the button of this page, mentioned by Stephen: We are both the the enemy and not the enemy. This riddle ironically describes the awkward situation of a Canadian Japanese. Because they have the blood of both countries and the relationships is not at all harmonious.
Reference
Kogawa Joy, Obasan. Toronto: Penguin, 1983. print
Andrews, Maggie, Charlie Bagot-Jewitt, and Nigel Hunt. “Introduction: National Memory and
War.” Journal of War & Culture Studies 4.3 (2011): 283-88. UBC Summon. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
This is a very interesting way to connect your topic of National Memory and Obasan. I particularly liked when you touched on the idea that they might be ashamed of their national identity at the time frame presented in the book. This lead me to consider a few questions surrounding that topic.
– Looking back on the event, which nationality (Japanese or Canadian) do you think would be more ashamed?– By considering themselves Canadian, is Naomi’s family declaring themselves as an enemy of the Japanese?
First of all, thanks for the comment and I am glad that you can grab something useful.
Personally, I think that no nationality should be ashamed of even though under that situation and I don’t think I made myself clear. What I was trying to express is that Naomi’s father was trying to help his children to bend in without arousing curiosity, in order to prevent Stephen and Naomi from thinking less of themselves and their country. Moreover, Naomi’s family was consider themselves as Japanese after all .
I agree with your ideas in this post. For some reason I am inclined to think that discrimination would always be one negative side effect of moving to a new locale. Everybody sees you as an immigrant, and if your former country is in serious conflict with your immigrated land, obviously people with fundamentalist views are going to point to you and start a series of systematic aggression. When humans see something, the brain will automatically try to simplify everything it sees, and this is exceptionally effective to classify people based on their race. Unless there is a sizable population developing (e.x. 49.7% Richmond population with Chinese background) this will happen in isolated occurrences here and there. What astonished me is the speed and ferocity that the Nakane/Kato family are trying to rid themselves of their Japanese ancestry, considering that Naomi and Stephen are only second generations. The book presented to us how bad they were treated whilst in Canada, but never once did it really actually say WHY did they leave Japan in the first place. I mean using the war as a justification would make sense back then, but is Japan as a country itself really that bad in the eyes of the Nakane family that made them emigrate from it?