Recently I’ve reading Obasan, a book telling the Japanese-Canadian history after the second World War from the perspective of a child. Compared to Persepolis and Running in the family, which concentrate on the relationship between personal memory and history, Obasan further the question of the people’s attitudes toward the history. In other words, we need to make a choice on the essential question: is it right to let the past just be past?
At first, before reading the book, I always put myself as a complete spectator of history; because for me, what had been done could just be in the past tense. “History” is a word which only occurs in the textbook: apathetic, without much emotions. So I believe that I can understand why Naomi doesn’t want to uncover the history and talk about it, and there may be several explanations. For one, the fear and discomfort brought by history, even just thinking about it, will easily limit ourselves in the safety zone. The past, especially filled with pain and misery, is like a wound, which just recovered. It will never hurt unless we try to touch it or hit it again. We offer ourselves a placebo, not trying to forget what have happened but escaping from what we have experienced. For another, it seems that if something has already been done to our ancestors, nothing could really be contributed by people like us living at present. But after witnessing how Naomi’s aunt Emily treats the injustice that had happened, I begin to wonder, in a real sense, if it is right to cover the misery or accept the history as something cannot be retrieved, something once lost and then lost forever.
In 1937, with the desire to occupy its regional neighbor, Japan began to invade China, also known as the Second Sino-Japanese War ( Teng, S., & Wu, H, 1956). Numerous cultural artifacts were damaged and destroyed by the Japanese army, and countless Chinese people lost their lives. A total nightmare for Chinese people. Even now when I’m typing down these words, I feel really upset; the dark side of history makes me hurt. One of the most infamous crimes done by Japan during the war is the Nanking Massacre in 1937 (John G. Magee). When Nanking was captured by Japan in December 1937, the disaster began. People at different ages had different fates, while all their destinies led to death. Women were raped no matter whether some of them were pregnant or not, children were killed without any reasons and most of the men were taken to the Unit 731 where vivisection was waiting for them. These related materials and articles show up in my textbooks again and again when I was in China. In order to escape from the fear and pain, I seldom think about or mention it. “Let the past be past”, I used to fool myself, pretending that I don’t care about it too much, in order to get some temporary comfort.
However, it is Emily’s answer “We are the country”, the response to the claim “But you can’t fight the whole country” made by Naomi that leads me to think about the following questions: can the past really be past? “I will never be hurt and nothing will happen if I keep hiding my sadness”, is that true? If it’s the case, how long can I insist on? The curiosity to discover the answers makes me realize that it’s time to make a change and remove the “barriers”. We can pretend not to see something but does it mean that there’s nothing? As long as it exists, someone needs to touch and feel it, then, why not us? The dark side of the history will never be corrected or resolved without examining it carefully. And what we cannot deny is that sometimes the “history” is still the problem or the fact at present. For example, the racism towards Asian people still prevails in western countries even if some tragedies including the one recorded in Obasan have been published for so many years. Therefore, the only way to prevent the dark side of history from happening, again and again, can only be achieved by facing bravely rather than hiding deeply.
When Zach and I talked about the torture our own countries suffered brought by the Second World War, both of us were amazed by the incredibly dark side of the history. He showed me the camps owned by Nazi Germany to imprison Belgian Jews as well as the grand library burnt down by Germany during the war. I can understand how he’s feeling because China has always been “the heaven for robbery” since the beginning of the 19th century. For example, except the Second Sino-Japanese War, another disastrous event is the Siege of the International Legations in 1900, and Zack found that Belgium was one of the belligerents against Qing Dynasty. (Okay, it seems that my neighbor was my previous enemy.. Anyway, just joking) However, at that moment, I wasn’t filled with anger but clearly realized the importance to face our history. The fact that we don’t feel very sad today in 2016 towards the war occurred hundred years ago doesn’t equal to our apathy and ignorance of it. On the contrary, as the descendant of the generations who had suffered before, we choose to take a relatively “silent” way to face it. Just like Obasan’s silence: it can be much more powerful than Emily’s anger which showed openly and loudly. I remember in 2002 many cars made by Japan were smashed by a group of emotional Chinese, who use an extremely irrational way to express “how much they love China”. I don’t want to make any judgments about their behaviors, but I’m really shameful of them. In this case, how to face the history may be much more essential than whether to face it.
Human’s memory is always selective, and it’s totally fine to forget something. However, not everything should be covered and forgotten consciously. Our future, different from the history which cannot be rewritten, is completely controlled by us. It’s our task to remember and talk about the past, especially the dark side of it because the real comfort will never the momentary one. At the same time, the rational way to face the history may bring more than our expectation, comparing to the emotional one.
Thanks for reading:-)
Bibliography
Teng, S., & Wu, H. (1956). Journal of Asian studies. Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies
John G. Magee Family Papers, Record Group No. 242, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.
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