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Japanese-American Women In Sailor Moon

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Japanese- American culture has changed significantly since World War II, and in particular, the way the generations of Japanese women have been expected to behave and the way they are expected to live in their respective roles. Two novels hold a stark difference between Japanese-American Women in and after World War II and Japanese women of the 90’s and today. The first novel written by Joy Kogawa, titled Obasan holds that women are expected to be quiet and subservient to men and society during World War II and how the girls who lived after the war slowly began to test the waters. Whereas Sailor Moon, a graphic novel, written by Naoko Takeuchi which received an extremely popular reception of Japanese-American girls and young women in the 90’s, deals with these women breaking social constructs and promoting feminism for subdued women. Together, these novels chronicle the changing roles of Japanese-American women from silence to expression over varying generations of fictional women to reflect the expected behavior of women over time. …show more content…

She is a school teacher in Canada in the 1970’s. One day her uncle dies, and she goes to visit one of her childhood homes to care for her aunt, Obasan. As she stays with Obasan, Naomi struggles with resurfacing memories she tried to repress from her childhood, and goes on a search to find answers she was never able to ask for as a child. While she lived in a neighborhood where white people were prejudiced towards Japanese people due to racial issues, she experienced a turbulent childhood where her white older male neighbor molested her, her peers excluded her, her mother went missing with her baby, and part of her family was forced into internment camps, the novel clearly shapes the atmosphere Japanese women were forced to conform to (Kogawa

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Naomi finds herself unable to speak to her mother, Nesan, as a child about the sexual assault she is a victim of, which puts Nesan “on one side of a rift” and Naomi “on the other” (Kogawa 77). Naomi’s silence is representative of how the Canadian government acted as Naomi’s assailant did: “A man going out in public and presenting a public face of decency when privately there is atrocity” (Clayton). Kogawa comments on how citizens could have protested in the same way as Naomi’s Aunt Emily, who pushes back against the Canadian government so the family “could all stay together” (Kogawa 109). Instead, citizens attempted to show their loyalty by accepting the government’s conditions. Naomi’s obasan is one of those who accepts their grim situation and works to conceal their drab living conditions for the children.

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She is reminded of the violence that torn not only communities apart but families as well. How the social norms of the day restricted people’s lives and held them in the balance of life and death. Her grandfathers past life, her grandmother cultural silence about the internment and husband’s affair, the police brutality that cause the death of 4 young black teenagers. Even her own inner conflicts with her sexuality and Japanese heritage. She starts to see the world around her with a different

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