A Critical Study on Cultural Identity in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

R K Afrin,
III BA English,
St. Teresa Arts and Science College for Women,
Mangalakuntu, Karungal – 629 178
Email: sweetyrajakumar06@gmail.com
Dr. I Prabhu,
Assistant Professor in English,
St. Teresa Arts and Science College for Women,
Mangalakuntu, Karungal – 629 178
Abstract

Culture is the way of life for entire group of people that are passed down from

generation to generation. Cultural identity discusses an identification with a particular

community created on various cultural groups, including nationality, ethnicity, race, gender,

and religion. The Canadian Literature not deals with people of a specific culture but of many

groups who have settled there from different cultural backgrounds. The literature emerged

there is categorized by three different groups which include the colonizers of England, the

France who were settled in Canada and the native Canadians. The literature discusses here

widely dealt with the identity crisis, quest motifs, experience of isolation, social and women’s

problem. As a diasporic writer Joy Kogawa gives voice to the struggles faced by the Japanese

Canadians in search of their identities through her novel, Obasan. The novel speaks about the

sudden migration and brutality shown towards the Japanese of Canada by the Canadian

government. As a Canadian writer of Japanese ancestry, she writes about her own

experiences which she faced in Canada. The title of the novel, Obasan depicts a respectable

name for aunt which was called by the protagonist Naomi to her aunt, Ayako, who embodies

the Japanese traditions of silent suffering and endurance. The novelist uses themes of identity,

racism, struggling of a family, gender dynamics and clash of culture.

 A Critical Study on Cultural Identity in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan

Culture is the way of life for entire group of people that are passed down from

generation to generation. Cultural identity discusses an identification with a particular

community created on various cultural groups, including nationality, ethnicity, race, gender,

and religion. Identity depicts who a person is. It defines the qualities of a person or group that

makes them different from others. Identity crisis depicts the longing for identity and a search

for own identity. The immigrants from other country face a huge traumas and pains of

cultural clash as they won’t be completely accepted by the host country.

Canadian Literature is a literature of multicultural society. It deals with every theme,

character and issue the literature deals with, in connection to its land. Canada was colonized

by the English and the French and so it not only deals with the life of the native Canadians

but also deals with the French and English who later settled in Canada. The literature points

out towards the natives’ love for nature, clash of the culture, racism, fear of wilderness and

love and respect of species. Joy Kogawa is one of the most recognized Canadian novelists of

Japanese origin. As a diasporic writer, he gives voice to the struggles faced by the Japanese

Canadians in search of their identities through her novel, Obasan.

Joy Nozomi Nakayama popularly known as Joy Kogawa is a prominent Canadian

poet and novelist of Japanese descent. She was born in Vancouver in British Columbia. She

grew up in an ordinary middle class family. She faced huge traumas in Canada as she was

from Japanese origin. In 1986 Kogawa was made the Order of Canada and in 2006 she was a

member of Order of British Columbia. Kogawa was awarded with many doctorates. The most

recent was by the University of Victoria on June 12, 2017.

Joy Kogawa’s Obasan is a heart touching novel which is published by Lester and Orpen

Dennys in 1981. It chronicles Canada’s detention and oppression on the perspective of a

young child. It is an autobiography of the life of Kogawa herself. Kogawa uses strong

imagery of silence, stones and streams throughout the novel. Kogawa under the roof of the

name of the protagonist, Megumi Naomi Nakane, depicts various interesting dreams that are

carried throughout the novel.

The title of the novel, Obasan depicts a respectable name for the protagonist Naomi’s

aunt, Ayako who embodies the Japanese traditions of silent suffering and endurance.

Although Obasan suffered of discrimination by the British government as they were the one

who ruled Canada during that time, she had not reacted towards it. She accepted the

sufferings silently. She was a sole mother to Stephen and Naomi, after Naomi’s mother went

to Japan for education and died there. She also tried a lot to get an identity for her family, but

she had not reacted against government like her other family members, Naomi’s father

Tadashi and aunt, Emily.

The story of Obasan was set in the early 1970s. It was narrated by Naomi, the

protagonist who was a middle school teacher. She was a 36 year old Japanese Canadian

woman who reminces her childhood during the war. The novel begins with the death of

Isamu who was the uncle of the protagonist. As her uncle was dead, her aunt Ayako, who was

popularly known as Obasan, was feeling alone in the house. When Naomi reached her aunt’s

house, she was not able to communicate with her aunt. Although Naomi insisted her aunt to

take rest, she refused it and went to the upper floor. This revealed Naomi that her aunt did not

like to share her own sufferings with anyone. The main reason for this was because they were

Japanese Canadians and so they had no identity to expose themselves as they were

suppressed by the government. In the upper floor, a package which was sent by Emily, who
was the sister of Naomi’s mother, was found. The package fully consisted of journals and

letters which depicted the suffering faced by Naomi’s family during the Second World War.

The family of Naomi faced a huge harassment by the British government during the

war. They were often asked to migrate to different places allotted by the colonial government.

They were not able to show their identity as they were not fully accepted by the Canadians.

The government thought that these multicultural natives might harm them during the war and

so they took great measures in order to safeguard their country. For this, they had not given

Canadian identity to them. They were not considered Japanese although they moved to

Canada for about two generations.

In their native land, Canada, their homes were often looted by the natives and they

were always thought to be inferior to the other natives. The possessions of them were often

confiscated and they were not given permissions to take their possessions when they migrate

to other place. Although they had a home for their own, they were many times ordered to

move to labor camps. When they adapted a place and adjusted to live, they would be asked to

shift to another place. The neighborhood people did not accept them as they were from a

different race, showing the harassment of racism. Even the neighbor’s who talked to them had

shown disregard in their words.

The Canadians even tried to have physical relations with young Japanese girls by

showing their superiority over them through power. But, the Japanese were the once, who had

a great respect for emotion. Although they had no identity, they were satisfied within

themselves. Their silence has spoken everything as,

Mother removes the live chicks first, placing them in her apron…there is calm

efficiency in her face and she does not speak. Her eyes are steady and

matterof-fact –the eyes of Japanese motherhood. They do not invade and

 betray. They are eyes that protect, shielding what is hidden most deeply in the

heart of the child. (71)

These lines depict the love of the Japanese mother in silence. In the Japanese tradition, the

mother had a very protective mind towards her children. Naomi’s mother showed this

emotion not only towards Naomi and Stephen but also to her cousin’s children during the war

time in Japan. She also showed same love and care towards the native children. She showed

her resistance towards the oppressors with silence. As Banerjee comments,

The generally accepted reading of Obasan follows the surface of Naomi’s

telling to discover a therapeutic narrative in which a woman, pathologically

silenced by the multiple traumas of sexual molestation, mother’s

abandonment, political internment and the condition of the Japanese culture of

silence, finds her voice and comes to writing. (101)

But while comparing it with the native Canadians, they stayed silent and showed no emotion

towards others. They hadn’t even accepted the Naomi’s family as Canadians.

During this time, Naomi’s mother went to Japan for her higher education in medicine.

So, it was the responsibility of Obasan to take care of Stephen and Naomi. They were asked

to move to Slocan, a ghost village. Although, it was safer from their former place Alberta,

they didn’t get the necessity for living as that of Alberta. During this time, Obasan’s husband

and Naomi’s father were imprisoned by the government and so it was Obasan’s responsibility

to take care of the livelihood for the family. The main reason for this imprisonment was that

they were differently cultured and the government feared that they might support the

Japanese. Although, they want the identity as a Canadian, they were not given so because

they had the ancestry from a different place that is Japan.

 Soon, without any warning, the government declared that everyone living in Slocan

must relinquish the town and so they were forced to move to a single roomed town in

Granton. Isamu also joined them in migration. Although they were from an economically

good family, they were forced to do hard labor for their food and shelter. They were not seen

by the government, whether they were satisfied with the place and getting the needed

necessities. Even the children were forced to do those jobs for the family’s appetite. Thus,

they were not only given any identity by the government but also treated as a slave who has

to play according to their tantrums.

When Naomi’s father died, his body was not even allowed to be given to the family

members. They were not even given permission to attend the funeral. By then, the war began

to end. Slowly, peace began to flourish after the war and so the government asked to free the

Japanese Canadians and so they left the hut and moved to the town. By then only they got

recognition as Canadians.

Moving to present, on Isamu’s funeral, the priest began to read out the letters of

Emily. From those letters, it was understood that Naomi’s mother was dead. Although she

went for her studies, due to war, there were bombings everywhere and Naomi’s mother also

faced burns from bombings and was admitted in hospital. Obasan kept the pain in her and

was unwilling to tell the children about the death of their mother, “The language of her grief

is silence. She has learned it well, its idioms, its nuances, over the years, silence within her

small body has grown large and powerful” (17). Because, she in a letter to Emily asked her

not to tell these incidents to her children and soon after, she died. Knowing the incident,

Naomi felt a mother figure in Obasan who cared a lot for them from childhood.

The theme of Obasan includes memory and forgetting, prejudice and tolerance,

identity, justice versus injustice, racism, struggles of families, gender dynamics and clash of
cultures. Kogawa is able to portray these themes in a very essential way. These themes could

be seen throughout the novel. The Japanese Canadians are always treated different from other

Canadians. They are not even given identity in this contemporary world as a Canadian

because they are multicultural. They face problems not only physically but also

psychologically because of the lack of identity. It was because of them not having identity;

they were always harassed in the society.

Work Cited

Banerjee, Chinmoy. “Polyphonic Form and Effective Aesthetic in Obasan.” Canadian

Literature 160 (1999): 101-19.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York : Anchor Books, 1981.