Whether it was America or South America, the main characters of modern Japanese overseas immigration were men. They flew overseas of their own volition in search of money and a better life. Some were married, but their wives followed their husbands. In other cases, the husband emigrated alone first, and then brought his wife and family over later.
The single men eventually married wives, hoping to find a partner among fellow immigrants, but many either returned to their home countries to get married and bring their wives back, or entered into "picture marriages," in which they chose a partner and married without ever meeting them, relying only on a photograph.
In any case, most women (wives) who immigrate are abandoning themselves to the path of life that their man (husband) has decided for them. Immigration is an adventure, but betting on the life of a man who has taken on an adventure is even more of an adventure.
"The Woman of Heigo" is a novel (fiction) depicting the life of a Meiji-born first-generation immigrant named Sayo, one of the many women who embarked on this adventure. It was written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, the same author of "Farewell to Manzanar" that we covered in our previous article.
To reiterate, Jeanne was born in 1934 to a first-generation Japanese immigrant father and an American-born Japanese mother. After the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, she was taken to the Manzanar internment camp in California with her family, where she spent three and a half years from the age of seven to eleven.
After the war, she majored in sociology and journalism at San Jose State University, then studied at San Francisco State University and the Sorbonne Graduate School in Paris. Her husband is the white writer James Houston.
"Goodbye Manzanar" was published in 1973 as a non-fiction book about her experiences as a girl, and 30 years later in 2003, "The Woman of Heigo" was published as a large-scale work of fiction spanning Japan and the United States, based on her experiences.
The original title is "The Legend of Fire Horse Woman," translated by Mao Torimi. In Japan, it is published by Kakuryosha (Sapporo).
The protagonist, Sayo, who is said to have been born in the year of the horse, is a woman of rare beauty and dignity, but after losing her parents and brother in a fire, she was raised by her aunt. She hides the fact that she was born in the year of the horse and marries the second son of an old Japanese family who lives in America.
However, her husband became addicted to opium and women, and they divorced shortly after the marriage. She decided to live on her own and opened a "tea shop" that mainly catered to Japanese customers. Around that time, she fell in love with a man of Indian descent, who was a friend of her husband, and they lived together and had a daughter.
However, he leaves home to help a tribe fighting against the state. Just then, a big earthquake strikes San Francisco, causing many casualties. This is based on an actual earthquake that occurred in 1906. He never returns, and is thought to have been caught up in the earthquake, and he has never been heard from again.
Time passed, and her daughter Hana married a Japanese man and had a son and two daughters. Her husband was a typical Japanese man who was easily angered and a patriarch, and he did not understand Hana's feelings. Hana herself had no choice but to accept the situation. She could not help but feel that her marriage was a failure.
Then the war begins, and Hana's family and Sayo end up living together in a camp that is suddenly built in the desert in the highlands of California. Hana's second daughter, 10-year-old Teri, gets along well with her dignified and thoughtful grandmother Sayo. Hana, on the other hand, somehow feels a distance between her and her mother Sayo. However, through the various events and relationships that occur in the camp, Hana also begins to grow closer to her mother. As the war draws to a close, the story reaches an unexpected and dramatic climax.
Sayo, Hana, and Teri. The story depicts Sayo's life on the vertical axis and the lives of the three people in the camp on the horizontal axis. However, the story is structured so that these vertical and horizontal axes appear alternately. While the setting is in the present tense, the story is given depth by constantly having the reader look back on Sayo's life.
At this point, the stage for the first half of Sayo's life is Japan. Perhaps due to the skill of the translation, even though it is an English novel by a second-generation Japanese author, it feels like Japanese literature.
The conflicts and riots that occur in the camp are the same as in the non-fiction story, but the theme that runs through these three generations of women, with historical facts as a backdrop, is love between men and women. Both Sayo and Hana are free in their own way, both are attracted to men other than their husbands, and both boldly go after what their hearts desire. This is depicted dynamically, including the depiction of their love affairs.
Sayo's words, "...our lives are made up of the dreams we have," are memorable.
What's more, the story's scale is expanded by the introduction of the world of Native Americans. There are Native American ruins at the site of the Manzanar internment camp, which served as the model for the story. The novel also includes a spiritual place just outside the camp, and a scene of Native American dance performed by the internment camp.
In literature dealing with the issue of wartime internment camps, the discrimination against Japanese and Japanese-Americans by the white-led American state and the anger that followed are often at the forefront. This is understandable, but some works seem to be too caught up in a victim mentality.
It goes without saying that blacks, Indians and other minorities have suffered oppression and injustice for many years.
The author's inclusiveness is apparent in the way he has portrayed the world of Indians as important characters and in the background of the story.
(Titles omitted)
© 2017 Ryusuke Kawai
