Joy Kogawa’s Obasan covers the ways of coping with trauma by detailing different Japanese-Canadian characters’ responses to the years of internment and prejudice. In the early 1940s, thousands of Japanese Canadians were forced to move from British Columbia to Alberta to work on farms, providing labor for more than 60% of Alberta’s sugar beet acreage (Kogawa 231). The story in Obasan is told on behalf of Naomi Nakane, a teacher from Cecil, aged thirty-six (Kogawa 4; Vimalassery 201). Naomi revisits her childhood memories, including rather painful ones, by reading letters and newspaper articles sent by her aunt named, Emily. The events take place after World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Naomi’s trip through her memories cover her family’s suffering and separation and her mother’s tragedy. Despite common experiences and empathy for the family, Naomi and Aunt Emily are different in terms of communicating their pain, attitudes to the past, and a sense of unity with others.
Firstly, although neither Naomi nor Aunt Emily is indifferent toward their family’s issues, they feature extremely dissimilar ways of expressing their collective and personal psychological pain, including stating their feelings explicitly. As for the similarities, neither character could be accused of hardheartedness as they do not separate from the rest of the family and keep visiting Obasan and her husband (Kogawa 12). Naomi’s habit of keeping her pain invisible can be seen on multiple occasions. For instance, she hears a voice inside that tells her to “be still” and “sift the words thinly” when she learns of her uncle’s death (Kogawa 11). Deep inside, Naomi is scared as a hunted animal and keeps track of how the tiniest things about her lost mother cause painful sensations. She, however, still admires the position that something that is not seen “does not horrify,” which makes her avoid acknowledging and exploring her pain (Kogawa 54). In stark contrast to Naomi’s tendency to suffer secretly, Aunt Emily instinctively feels that giving her enormous pain a voice would be a better strategy compared to staying silent about one’s grieving. Apart from her endeavors as an activist for the rights of Japanese-Canadian citizens, Aunt Emily demonstrates this position by acknowledging her pain verbally. For instance, in a conversation with Naomi after a conference in 1960, Aunt Emily openly states that Naomi “should have been here” with her to explore racial discrimination against Asian Canadians (Kogawa 40). She then adds that she “had no idea how much I [Aunt Emily] still hurt” (Kogawa 40). Instead of promoting any weakness, such feelings seem to make her even more determined to struggle for the family’s future by problematizing prejudice and the consequences of unjust policies affecting the ethnic group. Thus, the two characters’ degree of emotional openness presents a crucial dissimilarity even though both of them are empathetic deep inside.
To continue, both the narrator and Emily are not from the Issei generation, but they are greatly dissimilar in their attitudes toward revisiting the traumatic past and perceiving it as a valuable source of knowledge. As the descendants of the Issei Japanese-Canadian group, Naomi and Emily have no first-hand experiences with immigration to Canada, implying that their degree of cultural assimilation is adequate to fit into Canada’s community (Kogawa 9). On different occasions, including a conversation on Milk and Momotaro, Naomi hears that the Nisei generation that Emily belongs to considers themselves actual Canadians and seems to accept this perspective calmly (Kogawa 68). Nevertheless, the two women exhibit almost mutually exclusive positions when it comes to exploring the unfortunate past. Emily, whom Naomi describes as a “word warrior” living in sound, is deeply convinced that openness to one’s past is central to learning as a large cultural group and preventing further mistakes (Kogawa 39). Emily’s obsession with compiling and disseminating data on her Japanese-Canadian peers’ suffering during World War II permeates her role in the novel and gives her a sense of purpose. In contrast to Emily’s determination and anger, Naomi’s preferred reactions to the puzzling details of her family’s past are avoidance and unending silence (Kogawa 278). For instance, Naomi feels “a strong urge to put everything aside” to avoid pain when she encounters Emily’s diary entries that talk about Naomi’s now-deceased mother (Kogawa 56). As opposed to Aunt Emily, Naomi does not reveal her position on digging into the past explicitly, but her immediate reactions to documents sent by Aunt Emily show a strong fear of learning too much. Naomi’s “peculiar sensation of pain” demonstrates her deep unpreparedness for facing the truth and reconnecting the fragmented pieces of her family’s story (Kogawa 56). Therefore, although both women generally accept the idea of being Canadians, their perspectives on studying the past are significantly different.
Moreover, as Japanese Canadians, both women deal with racist microaggressions, but their reactions to injustices range from silent individualism and dissociation to anger and taking responsibility for representing the entire group’s disappointment. As a writer, Emily frequently encounters racist expressions aimed at separating her cultural group from the white Canadians (Kogawa 40). Naomi also encounters the reverberations of racial prejudice, including her white acquaintances’ emotionless attempt to say sorry to “our Japanese” (Kogawa 270). Prejudice, however, does not encourage her to unite with Japanese Americans outside of her family, revealing certain passivity and dissociation from her cultural group. Specifically, before reading her aunt’s emotional work, Naomi suddenly remembers that she has no Japanese-Canadian friends (Kogawa 46). As if she tries to confirm her preference for a quiet and stoic way of reacting to trauma, Naomi repeats that Emily “cannot fight with the entire country” (Kogawa 50). Different from her niece’s silent acceptance of maltreatment as a fact of life that cannot be changed, Aunt Emily is bold enough to become one of the leading voices of her generation. Her anger finds reflection in how she portrays Nisei as a writer. In her clearly collectivistic “Story of the Nisei in Canada,” Aunt Emily reacts to the years of mistreatment in an emotional way and proudly describes Nisei’s endurance (Kogawa 46). She treats the Nisei generation as central to her self-identity (Kogawa 46). Naomi’s aunt openly distinguishes herself and the Nisei from another “Mr. Green or Mrs. Ralston,” speaking on behalf of the generation and expressing their pain and beauty (Kogawa 46). With her words sharper than swords, Aunt Emily instrumentalizes her talent of self-expression to show the human side of the second generation and heroize their daily experiences and moral courage, whereas Naomi remains skeptical.
On a final note, both characters are concerned about their family’s challenges, cannot fully understand the Issei generation’s issues, and notice numerous veiled instances of racism. Despite their common history, Aunt Emily and Naomi exhibit dissimilar behaviors with regard to expressing pain, the need for learning from the past, and the readiness to represent their ethnic group. One lesson that could be learned from analyzing the characters is that ideological divides within one family can create barriers to mutual understanding, affecting the exchange of experiences between different generations.
Works Cited
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Anchor Books, 1994.
Vimalassery, Manu. “Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism by Lyko Day.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 64, no. 1, 2018, pp. 198-201.