‘Seventeen Syllables’ by Hisaye Yamamoto is a story of a Japanese family, pre WWI, living in California. The family runs a small tomato farm to get by and seem to live a rather simple life. Until Tome, mother to a young girl and wife to a traditional man, begins writing and publishing her haiku’s in local cultural magazines. While this happens, Rosie, a young girl, begins to blossom in newfound ways. Both women experience change, anger, and an inability to connect to each other. Much of the discourse surrounding ‘Seventeen Syllables’ is focused on Tome’s journey, Rosie’s journey, the Japanese culture, or the violent outburst of Mr. Hayashi. However, there were no papers or articles focused on the differences between Rosie and her mother. Not only are the two drastically different, but these differences keep them from connecting in a time where they could …show more content…
Her creative and passionate journey is short, but impactful. Writing haikus is extremely important to her. Rosie remarks that she “and her father lived for a while with two women, her mother and Ume Hanazono. Her mother (Tome Hayashi by name) kept house, cooked, washed [...] Ume Hanazono, who came to life after the dinner dishes were done, was an earnest, muttering stranger who often neglected speaking when spoken to and stayed busy at the parlor table” (paragraph 7). Clearly this is a new found obsession for Tome, as her daughter and husband are not used to it. Rosie says how she is used to going to bed early, but when her mother is composing, she stays up late. Not only are routines changing, but all of Tome’s interactions now become about haiku. When the family visits another Japanese family, husband and wife are split up and instead Tome sits talking about poetry while her husband sits awkwardly on the couch. This pattern is repeated in all of the mentioned interactions. It seems to always be Tome speaking of haiku, and her husband standing off to the side,