Symbolism In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine leads the reader through the journey of one family that represents many as they are placed in an internment camp for the crime of being Japanese. Otsuka brings to light the persecution of Japanese-Americans through her use of symbols prominent throughout the book. Some of the most important being the symbol of stains, their family dog and horses. Each has a double-meaning pointing towards the theme of widespread racism. Racism that led many Japanese-Americans into believing that they were guilty.

Stains are the predominant symbol in the very beginning of the novel. Stains are, by definition, things that are not removed easily. Early in the novel the woman goes to hardware store where Joe Lundy

The family, most prominently the young boy, is prone to falling into the trap of accepting racist stereotypes—despite being Japanese himself. When first arriving to the internment camp, the boy made the assumption that he was seeing his father everywhere. “…they all looked alike. Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth” (Otsuka 49). The boy is of Japanese descent but, for the most part, he has become Americanized. Thusly, he has absorbed and internalized racist beliefs. The boy even referred to them as, “inscrutable” (Otsuka 49). Most likely referring to the stereotype that Japanese people look the same and are hard to understand as they are different. They are the ‘them’ in the ‘us versus them’. When playing war with the other boys in the camp they say, “Kill the Nazis! Kill the Japs!”, Japs being a racist term for Japanese people (Otsuka 54). It is because the boy does not consider himself like the other people of Japanese descent in the United States. Later in the novel when trying on a military surplus pea coat, the boy looks at himself in a mirror. He “narrowed his eyes and stuck out his two front teeth” and said “I predge arregiance to the frag…Whatsamalla, shorty? Solly. So so solly” (Otsuka 87). By sticking out his teeth and narrowing his eyes the boy is most likely imitating propaganda and caricatures of Japanese people. According to Racism and Relocation, racist

White Dog is killed by the woman early on in the novel, which is extremely jarring as it is a gruesomely violent act in a relatively calm beginning. White Dog is completely complaint. When asked, the dog follows the woman’s instructions without question. When asked to roll over, White Dog rolled over. When asked to play dead, White Dog played dead. When the woman killed White Dog with a shovel, White Dog died without complaint (Otsuka 11). The woman did not give White Dog away, as she did with the cat—as White Dog has symbolic significance. White Dog represents freedom that the woman possesses. When White Dog initially approaches he, “came limping out of the trees” (Otsuka 10). White Dog is old and ailing; he is the woman and her family’s freedom, a freedom which is slipping away. By striking the fatal blow against the dog, the woman concedes that her freedom is dead. In addition to being the symbol of freedom and its subsequent death, White Dog also represents the family and all Japanese-Americans in the novel. When the woman sees the evacuation notices, she is calm. She does not riot, or fight the injustices laid before her. Instead, she packs as if the move was entirely voluntary. “She rolled up the Oriental rug in the living room. She took down the mirrors. She took down the curtains and shades” (Otsuka 7). Like White Dog, she is obedient. Most likely because she feared what belligerency would