Widening the Lens in "Obasan" by Joy Kogawa

When I was introduced to the book Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Watasuki Houston and James D. Houston after college, the story of the United States’ Japanese internment camps was an eye-opening experience. So much of our history taught in our early years revolves around an ethnocentric greatness of our country. Isn’t that why the slogan “Make America Great Again” is able to be so effective? A children’s history of the United States is so narrowly focused on the values we said our country was founded on and so little focused on our struggles to uphold and live those values. To believe that America was once great and that United States greatness is not merely aspirational is to ignore the true history of the United States. It is to ignore slavery and the resettlement of Native Americans, it is to ignore a century of women being excluded from democracy and yes, the unjust internment of 120,000 innocent American citizens and residents during World War II. 

Yet, each time I get another glimpse into the realities of American history, like the fact that American citizens could be made prisoners in their own country without due process, I later discover I am still looking at the past through too narrow of a lens. Obasan by Joy Kogawa, a novel set in Canada, widened that focus from United States historical treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II to the North American treatment of people of Japanese descent during World War II and thus, to similar experiences under other Allied powers all over the world. 

An intricately beautiful and compelling novel, Obasan begins with the death of the narrator Naomi Nakane’s Uncle. As an adult, Naomi had tried hard to separate herself from her childhood experience in Canada during World War II which she lived through, but didn’t necessarily understand as a child. Drawn back to her old family home to help put her Uncle to rest, Naomi is pushed by her Aunt Emily towards a deeper understanding of her family’s and the country’s history. 

Through a deeply poetic narrative, Kogawa weaves the story of the fictional Nakane and Kato families’ past and present together to tell the story of how Naomi and her family were forced from their beloved home in Vancouver, near the sea where they made their living as fisherman, and moved inland to the remote rural town of Granton, Slocan in Alberta. Naomi’s memories are juxtaposed with the collection of documents Aunt Emily has sent, including letters from the government ordering the imprisonment of the men, city curfews, and laws restricting where Canadians of Japanese descent can live. Interwoven with their journey is the mysterious disappearance of the children’s mother who had traveled to Japan shortly before the war broke out to attend to her mother and then was never heard from again.

An extraordinary work of historical fiction, Kogawa brings to life the characters of Naomi, her musical prodigy brother Stephen, her sensitive and loving father, her justice minded Aunt Emily, and the ever resilient Obasan and Uncle, while educating the reader at the same time, often times like Naomi, despite ourselves. In Naomi’s reluctance the author seems to question the impact of this knowledge and her writing:

“All of Aunt Emily’s words, all her papers, the telegrams and petitions, are like scratchings in the barnyard, the evidence of much activity, scaly claws hard at work. But what good they do. I do not know—those little black typewritten words–rain words, cloud droppings...The words are not made flesh.”

For me, Obasan is another piece of the puzzle that shows the interconnectedness of our global communities for better or worse - how actions and policies in one country reflect shifts in attitude, politics, and democracy all over the world. No nation, no people live in isolation, but rather we’re waves of water in a great sea of humanity constantly creating ripples through the lives of people all over the planet. 

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