The Significance Of When The Emperor Was Divine By Julia Otsuka

The novella when the emperor was divine by Julia Otsuka is about a Japanese family’s survival during the time of world war two and internment camps although their family has been separated from their father. They continue to keep living their life and surviving the treacherous times. The book further uses symbols to show many depictions of hope, discrimination, and disconnection between many peoples relationships. But most importantly, Julia Otsuka uses names to demonstrate the loss of identity, ultimately suggesting how the internment disconnected themself from their identities.

The effect of the internment on the family’s identity had changed from the beginning to the end of the novel. The father was heavily impacted as even his children

The beautiful wooden door was very small-the size of a pillow, say, or an encyclopedia. Behind the small but beautiful wooden door there was a second door, and behind the second door there was a picture of the Emperor, which no one was allowed to see. For the Emperor was holy and divine. A god.”(73) (Symbol)

“Twenty-five dollars, we later learned, was the same amount given to criminals on the day the were released from prison.” (118) (Treated poorly, racism, symbol)

“Then the train came to a stop and a small stooped man carrying an old cardboard suitcase stepped out of the last car. His face was lined with wrinkles. His suit was faded and worn. His head was bare. He moved slowly, carefully, with the aid of a cane, a cane we had never seen before. Although we had been waiting for this moment, the moment of our father’s return, for more than four years now, when we finally saw him standing there before us on the platform we did not know what to think, what to do.”(131) (Loss of identity)

“But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger’s backyard, out mother’s rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon night.”(139) (Hope,

Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth. Unknowable. Inscrutable.” (49) (Discrimination, Racism)

“Kill the Nazis! Kill the Japs!”(54) (discrimination, Racism)

“The door to the girl’s room was closed. Above the doorknob was a note that had not been there the day before. It said DO NOT DISTURB. The woman did not open the door.” (Relationship, symbol)

One evening, before he went to bed, he wrote his name in the dust across the top of the table. All through the night, while he slept, more dust blew through the

Walls. By morning his name was gone. (loss of identity, names)

We would join their clubs, after school, if they let us. We would listen to their music. We would dress just like they did. We would change our names to sound more like theirs. And if our mother called out to us on the street by our real names we would turn away and pretend not to know her. We would never be mistaken for the enemy again! (loss of identity, names, passion)

“We were just numbers to them, mere slaves to the Emperor. We didn’t even have

Names. I was 326.” (loss of identity, names, treated poorly)

Sense of