We have been reading “Obasan”, a novel by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kagawa in our recent ASTU classes. In “Obasan” the Japanese-Canadian protagonist Naomi’s learns more about the nature of the Japanese-Canadian internment in WWII, which she and her family lived through. The novel may be considered very informative of this event in Canadian history.

As part of ASTU, our class visited UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC). We were given the opportunity to read and discuss selections from Kogawa’s fonds. The fonds included Kogawa’s drafts and outlines; official documents from Japanese-Canadian committees that sought redress from the Canadian government; letters of critique from unsuccessful prospective publishers; and letters from readers.

The visit to RBSC has changed my view and understanding of the relationship between historical novels and history itself. While my realisation goes for all artistic works based on history in general (e.g. historical novels, poems, films, TV dramas), I will focus on historical novels for the purposes of this blog post.

Our visit made me realise how historical novels can a trustworthy source to learn history – that they can present history accurately, reliably, and be taken seriously. The novel genre often holds associations that it is fictional, imagined by the author, dramatized, or romanticized. Hence, they are inaccurate portrayals of history. This commonly held belief is clearly demonstrated through a letter from one of Kogawa’s fonds. In response to Kogawa’s request that former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau should read “Obasan”, Trudeau wrote that he would read the novel during his holiday.

However, I have come to realise that events in a historical novel can be presented with great historical accuracy after seeing the documents that were part of Kogawa’s research. In the author’s note at the beginning of “Obasan”, Kogawa writes that she wishes to thank “Muriel Kitagawa in particular”, “whose material was used freely, especially throughout the writing of Chapter Fourteen”. Chapter Fourteen is the chapter of Aunt Emily’s diary-letter entries where she recounts in great detail their deteriorating standards of living in British Colombia. From Kogawa’s acknowledgement, it implies that much of what she wrote are tightly based on writings of a person (Muriel Kitagawa) who lived through the time. “Obasan” is where Kogawa weaves primary historical sources into a novel, but perhaps with minor edits. The interesting compilation of documents ‘from the time’ provides a very true idea of what the original documents are like even if the originals are missing. This loyalty to the primary documents, with minimal inventive input from the author, is what makes this novel such a reliable source of history about the Japanese-Canadian internment that even scholars can use with confidence.

In fact, “Obasan” reminds me of one of my favourite historical novels – “Beyond Shades of Gray” by Lithuanian-American author Ruta Sepetys. It tells of the deportation of a Lithuanian girl called Lina, along with her mother and younger brother, from her home country to a labour-camp in Siberia under the Stalinist regime during WWII. When interviewed, Sepetys revealed how the majority of the happenings in her novel were based on real-life stories told to her by survivors of the Soviet Genocide in the Baltic. This novel is similar to “Obasan” in two ways. Firstly, it tells of an aspect of WWII history that is not widely known. Second, and more importantly, the role Sepetys plays is similar to Kogawa in that they acted as weavers who incorporate multiple real-life stories into a narrative with minimal imaginative input. Hence, the narratives they tell stay relatively true to a group of people’s experiences and can reliably inform us of a version of history itself.

Yet, my discovery that historical novels can be “accurate” sources of history because they stay faithful to historical events should not be generalised to all historical novels. There is often a need to dramatize or imagine events because of insufficient rich historical sources, as a part of the author’s creative expression, or to gain viewers.

Nevertheless, regardless of how historically accurate or inaccurate a historical novel may be, I think that historical novels are an excellent starting point for further investigation of a given historical event or period. No matter how creative the work, historical fiction still informs us something of history – it introduces and acquaints the reader to key people, events, or customs from the period. Of course, the more it is closely based on historical facts and artefacts, the more one can take its word with confidence.

Learning about history is important – the past shapes the present, and often repeats itself. Historical novels are a powerful tool in transmitting this knowledge to a new generation.