A post that's been long overdue.
After reading Kokoro, Francis brought to our attention (not for the first time) that "there must be hope." Just as we've been seeing in Takaki, there must be hope - these people are coming to America and staying in America, despite hardship, and why? "There must be something good!" And so Francis's question was, "Where is the hope? What is the hope?"
Someone suggested that the hope within the work was the fact that Yasako was dealt a lesser sentence by the court, but that fell short. Someone else noted that there was hope in Yasako's decision to live rather than attempt suicide again.
I think the hope in the work is multi-faceted -- but I am aligned with Francis in questioning the "hope" of the American judicial system within the drama. And I have to say, it's my opinion that the hope has nothing to do with her punishment or the "leniency" of the jury. I think the hope is very personal and centers around Yasako herself, not the "system" that works upon her.
I think that the hope is really Yasako discovering a new identity for herself. In the beginning, she was a lost Japanese woman thrown into American society without much help from her husband at all. He scolded her for being so isolated, but didn't ease her trouble with starting relationships - it was like taking a plant from one garden and tossing it on top of the dirt of a new one, then telling it to grow its roots just as well without actually digging it in. At the end, Yasako makes her own decision for herself, and her identity grows and becomes more solid in this foreign land. She doesn't become totally "American" overnight and lose all of her honor and traditional dignity like Shizuko, but she becomes strong enough that she could survive. In a way, it's the hope of being neither the extreme "Japanese in America" nor the "American 'from Asia' ," but starting to integrate and be a part of the comfortable middle ground of "Asian American." There's the hope that it is possible to be both, you don't have to give up everything and demand all the more like Shizuko, you don't have to cut yourself off as a "stranger from another shore" -- you can be both and combine both.
Yasako ends up being strong enough that she is "to her husband's tastes" and she could keep him if she wants. He obviously does love her, but felt her traditional ways held him back - he wanted to be more American (which isn't really an excuse). He did go back to her from Shizuko and worked so hard to sway the people for her cause, probably being the biggest contribution to the lesser sentence. She could keep him to her now if she really wanted to. But Yasako's strength also enables her to let him go if she wanted to - she could survive emotionally on her own. It would be hard after everything, but she could do it. And there's related hope in that, too. She can make her own decisions for herself - not to fit to peoples' expectations of her, not to please the ancestors or blend in with an ethnic crowd (Asian or Caucasian), but to do what she wants to do for herself. There's freedom. There's hope.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Electric Rabbit Street
I am repeatedly incensed by the absolute stupidity of the claim that Asian immigrants are "unassimilable." The idea's whole "support" and "reinforcement" of its "truth" stemmed from white racism in the first place! The "strangers" were discriminated against just because they were not white and they were forced to rely on each other for anything, for opportunities and for protection. And then they were labeled as "unassimilable" because they had such clannish ways and weren't integrated! THEY WERE KEPT FROM INTEGRATION! This kind of roundabout "reasoning" doesn't get anyone anywhere and just reinforces hostility.
And then there's the question of the definition of citizenship in the late 19th century, early 20th century. For some reason, despite whatever other values or qualities of a person, citizenship hinged on whether or not one was Caucasian - or, at least, that was whenever one of Asiatic descent applied and brought the issue to court (see U.S. Supreme Court case Takao Ozawa v. United States). HOWEVER, after the Civil War, after being liberated from slavery, blacks were considered citizens.
White bigots of the time could argue that the Constitution "technically says" that all persons *born* in the United States were citizens and could vote, etc., and that Japanese-Americans *were* citizens, just not the newcoming immigrants. However, the point here is this -- if that is the true 14th Amendment, then where on earth does the color of one's skin come into play? It really doesn't, does it? One can't say you can't be a citizen unless you're white, but you can be a citizen if you're black - it's a blatant contradiction, and makes it even more obvious that the target was not just those who were "different," but those who were Asian. You can't have it both ways. Being Caucasian never was part of the criteria for citizenship as far as the backbone of American law goes in the first place.
On a final note - Theodore Roosevelt is such a fence-rider. He "personally favored the restriction of japanese immigration," has a number of prejudices, prevents persons immigrating from Hawaii to the mainland in California, "became increasingly shrill in his advocacy of Japanese exclusion" after leaving the presidency, AND YET despite all his personal issues with the Japanese and his personal support for their segregation in schools, in 1906 he recommends legislation to extend naturalized citizenship to the Issei "aliens" ! Is it just a "president thing" to try to have your cake and eat it too all the time? I can understand that a lot of the time he was trying to appease Japan and maintain peace between their country and the United States, but sometimes... even that's a stretch for some of his reasoning.
For anyone's personal enjoyment, p. 195 of Takaki's book has an allusion to Rime of the Ancient Mariner - or, rather, an allusion to another allusion. Abiko Kyutaro, publisher of the newspapaer Nichibei Shimbun, used the parallel that "as dekaseginin [sojourners], Issei were placing an albatross around their own necks" - or, that they were painting a bullseye on their chest as a target for "justified" discrimination for taking America's resources and then leaving, rather than coming with the goal of being an American and settling (how Abiko thought they could gain more favor in the country). Abiko was a very intelligent man to put this together. If only things actually worked that way - he was right, the whites claimed their anger and label of Japanese/Asian "unassimilability" came from the dekaseginin view; however, that evolved into a more complex, deeper aversion to Asian immigrants in general, and no matter how open such "strangers" were to assimilation, they would be barred from it and subsequently blamed for their failure by the same obstacles.
And then there's the question of the definition of citizenship in the late 19th century, early 20th century. For some reason, despite whatever other values or qualities of a person, citizenship hinged on whether or not one was Caucasian - or, at least, that was whenever one of Asiatic descent applied and brought the issue to court (see U.S. Supreme Court case Takao Ozawa v. United States). HOWEVER, after the Civil War, after being liberated from slavery, blacks were considered citizens.
White bigots of the time could argue that the Constitution "technically says" that all persons *born* in the United States were citizens and could vote, etc., and that Japanese-Americans *were* citizens, just not the newcoming immigrants. However, the point here is this -- if that is the true 14th Amendment, then where on earth does the color of one's skin come into play? It really doesn't, does it? One can't say you can't be a citizen unless you're white, but you can be a citizen if you're black - it's a blatant contradiction, and makes it even more obvious that the target was not just those who were "different," but those who were Asian. You can't have it both ways. Being Caucasian never was part of the criteria for citizenship as far as the backbone of American law goes in the first place.
On a final note - Theodore Roosevelt is such a fence-rider. He "personally favored the restriction of japanese immigration," has a number of prejudices, prevents persons immigrating from Hawaii to the mainland in California, "became increasingly shrill in his advocacy of Japanese exclusion" after leaving the presidency, AND YET despite all his personal issues with the Japanese and his personal support for their segregation in schools, in 1906 he recommends legislation to extend naturalized citizenship to the Issei "aliens" ! Is it just a "president thing" to try to have your cake and eat it too all the time? I can understand that a lot of the time he was trying to appease Japan and maintain peace between their country and the United States, but sometimes... even that's a stretch for some of his reasoning.
For anyone's personal enjoyment, p. 195 of Takaki's book has an allusion to Rime of the Ancient Mariner - or, rather, an allusion to another allusion. Abiko Kyutaro, publisher of the newspapaer Nichibei Shimbun, used the parallel that "as dekaseginin [sojourners], Issei were placing an albatross around their own necks" - or, that they were painting a bullseye on their chest as a target for "justified" discrimination for taking America's resources and then leaving, rather than coming with the goal of being an American and settling (how Abiko thought they could gain more favor in the country). Abiko was a very intelligent man to put this together. If only things actually worked that way - he was right, the whites claimed their anger and label of Japanese/Asian "unassimilability" came from the dekaseginin view; however, that evolved into a more complex, deeper aversion to Asian immigrants in general, and no matter how open such "strangers" were to assimilation, they would be barred from it and subsequently blamed for their failure by the same obstacles.
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