Co-Existing Cultures: Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Co-Existing Cultures: Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine Many modern-day United-States citizens identify with more than one culture, similar to those in the city of Berkeley in the spring of 1942. Otsuka begins the novel with a Japanese-American family consisting of a woman, a girl, and a boy as they learn about the new evacuation order placed on their families. After the traumatic attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed an evacuation order on all Japanese-American families, banishing them to internment camps dispersed throughout the United States. In these camps, Japanese families face racism, discrimination, and pressure to fully assimilate into the ideal American culture. Although many of these Japanese-American

Towards the beginning of the book when the woman is packing bags for the internment camp the narrator describes the multiculturalism existing in their house by saying, “ She carried the tiny bonsai tree out into the yard and set it down… She wrapped up his stamp collection and the wooden Indian with the long headdress he had won at the Sacramento State Fair” (Otsuka 7). Otsuka purposefully places the bonsai tree, which represents the family’s Japanese heritage, and the stamps and Indian doll, which represents the family’s American culture, next to each other to create a juxtaposition between the different cultures. In the moments before the internment camp, both cultures are present, in contrast to after the family’s return from the internment camp, where the two cultures separately appear to show how Japanese-American families were forced to choose between the two. In the chapters told from the children’s point of view, Otsuka illustrates the idea of assimilation as more of a

Many Japanese-Americans, like the woman from When the Emperor was Divine, got rid of their culture altogether to protect themselves and their families from racism. The woman does this by “[lighting] a bonfire in the yard and [burning] all of the letters from Kagoshima, … [burning] the family photographs and the three silk kimonos, … [ripping] the flag of the red rising sun, … [and smashing] the tea set of Imari dishes and the framed portrait of the boy’s uncle, who had once been a General in the Emperor’s army” (Otsuka 75). The woman urgently tries to erase evidence of her heritage, not out of embarrassment, but out of fear. After the internment camps, assimilation is no longer a choice, but a necessity for those who want safety and normalcy. Throughout the process of assimilation, a loss of identity and internalized prejudice can occur to those who experience it. After facing years of racism, the children have picked up on the public’s opinion of Japanese-Americans and begin to lose the sense of pride they once had in their culture. While the children are looking in the mirror they say, “We looked at ourselves in the mirror and we did not like what we saw- black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy”