Writers have to go through many drafts in order to end up with their completed, somewhat interesting, print worthy book; Joy Kogawa was no different. While scrounging through the Kogawa fond in the UBC rare books library, I was able to look at drafts, scribbled notes, editor’s notes and rejection letters written by or sent to Kogawa about her novel Obasan. While the finished product is something that will forever be looked at to remember the events of Japanese internment in Canada, there were many changes made by Kogawa and her editors.
The first editor’s note I found was one from Lester & Orpen Denny’s Publishers which read, “I can’t help feeling that when you get this you’ll start rewriting!” Which was then proceeded by lengthy notes on the back of multiple papers. There were notes about how repetitive chapters and pages could be and unnecessary details. This led to many pages and paragraphs to be crossed out. In those sections I found parts about the letters written to apply for Ms. Kato’s citizenry into Canada, more about Stephen’s Claudine, Naomi’s mother and father and more about how Naomi was treated by other children. It is a bit of a coincidence that these sections were crossed out when in a rejection letter Kogawa was told that her “… characters were shadows…” who readers could not identify with because there were minimal details about them. I have to wonder if I and others would have found the book more interesting if the characters were a bit more dynamic and there was a deeper story behind some of the characters.
This subtraction of pages also led to a rearrangement or loss of a chapter. In the draft I looked at, chapter 25 was changed to chapter 24 which means something that may have been a precursor of information to an event that would happen later in the book, or details of something Kogawa may have found important were cut. Another option would be that the chapter seemed to fit better later on in the book, or the details of that chapter were deemed unnecessary of their own chapter and were therefor spread into pre-existing chapters.
I feel like there may have been details that Kogawa left out of the book because to her they seemed mundane or unimportant. It is the same as when someone is telling you a story and they say something in passing that you find fascinating, but they have deemed it uninteresting because it was so normal to them. Therefor details that may have aided us in better understanding the living conditions and the depth of the segregation were left out. While we know about treatment and living conditions in internment camps, we know much less about how they dealt with having to move away from everything they knew and restart their lives. I saw bits of these accounts in the scrapped material which helped me to better understand the mentality of the characters during this time better than some of the metaphors used in the book.
My last observation of the drafts was how many times Kogawa would write sentences in English and then go back and modify them to include Japanese. This is interesting to me because reading the versions without the Japanese made the story and characters feel less authentic, less of an accurate representation of Japanese culture. By adding Japanese language into the book, I would argue that there is a promotion of cultural understanding between the non-Japanese readers and the Japanese-Canadians who endured internment.
I also had the chance to read the draft of Maya Ardahl’s theatre script of Naomi’s Road, the children’s version of Obasan. In the limited amount of pages I read, I was able to gather that we never learn of Uncle’s death, it is all based on Naomi’s childhood with no narration or viewpoint of the adult Naomi, and everything was very repetitive. Maybe it was to emphasize the point/ meaning of the book in the play, maybe it was to represent youth ‘properly’ in script and maybe it was to make the lines easier to remember, but either way it was different than the version our class read in Obasan. It did however make the information accessible to the younger audiences of both the children’s story and play.
The trip to the UBC Rare books fonds was very interesting and it helped to gain a better understanding of Obasan. Seeing the amount of research Joy Kogawa had to do to give an accurate representation of the events that affected Japanese-Canadians in WWII made the novel seem more like a biography; it made you realize that this is not just another fictional story but these events actually happened to real people. It is because of the attention to detail and passion that Kogawa put into the book that made it a true national technology of memory.
Hi Meghan,
I think you make a interesting point by discussing Kogawa’s lack of character descriptions. As I read the novel I felt frustration at the lack of description of all the characters, specifically with Stephen. I think Stephen’s response to the war as a juxtaposition to Naomi’s would have been very helpful in their development as characters. Kogawa’s choice to leave these specific details, and many other’s in the book, could have very well been because she felt they were mundane or unimportant. I suggest though she might have left details out to highlight the war’s effect on the characters inability’s to express their emotions. Their lack of strong emotional responses and personalities could have been a direct result of their repression.
In regards to your comment about her re-writings in Japanese, I agree with you that it makes the story feel more authentic. The use of Japanese phrases allows the reader to feel as if they are not just reading a translation or interpretation. Does publishing the novel in English dilute its authority and authenticity to the Japanese feelings of the time?
The first sentence of your latest blog actually rings me a bell. Writers do need to go through tremendous draft paper in order to publish a piece of work that to be remembered. This point actually resemble Degi’s. She also came across Joy Kagawa’s rejection letters which also reminds her the tough road for a great writer.
Meanwhile, you brought up the point that reading a version that is not in its original language will cause distortion. I felt the same way when I came across Joy Kagawa’s notes, which is in Chinese. The note is about a presentation of a prime minister in Canada. I don’t think Joy can speak Chinese, because I found there were few places that seem to be translated word by word from English to Chinese. Apart from that, in my daily life, it is quite common that we read some translated version of some books. It would be less authentic, like you mentioned. After all, this kin of distortions actually encourage us to do more first handed information research.
Megan,
Good observations on the drafts of Kogawa’s work, I never really gave much thought into how a novel was produce much less an important novel with an important story to tell. I also looked through the box in the Kogawa fonds with a letter from a different publisher, Oberon press. Inside the letter the publisher wrote that Kogawa’s novel wasn’t really a story but rather a vehicle to transport the events of the Japanese Canadian internment in the second world war. I believe the letter mentioned that Kogawa didnt really build up the characterization’s of her characters enough and that the content was always exciting. The excitement of all the events might have taken away from the development of the characters and I think that the mundane things you thought were taken out might relate to what the publisher at Oberson press was trying to point out.