This book demands your attention, it can't be read casually throughout the day. The story is told nonlinearly and is jumbled. This seemingly disorganized storytelling characterizes Naomi as human, seeing letters that spark memories of her childhood and beginning to piece together what happened throughout her childhood. I read through this book twice to gain a deeper understanding, and I enjoyed it both times.

when i was recommended with this book from my english teacher for summer reading just because i'm asian, i was not excited about this book.. a story about a japanese family who lived in canada during wwii.. i heard stories about the time that japan ruled over korea from my grandparents.. i learned about wwii from history classes.. but when i read this book, everything changed.. not only it changed my view on japan and america but also on good and evil.. most people associate japan during WWII with evil.. they were the bad guys... we were the good guys.. but what many people don't think about is the stories of the people in the shadow.. people who fell victim to our abuse.. just because they were japanese.. cruel and inhumane treatment that was justified back then and that are not forgotten.. the story is absolutely unforgettable and haunting

In this time of bubbling racism and bigotry that percolates from the murky depths of hatred and narrow-mindedness, blinding Americans to the constitutional rights of citizenship and freedom of religion, it is a good thing to read of past mistreatment of minorities in this country (and in other countries as well). The forced internment of loyal Japanese Americans was a terrible blight on American history, and it is fairly familiar to most schoolchildren, largely because of books such as Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar. But the mistreatment of citizens of Japanese descent also occurred in Canada---in some ways parallel to that experienced in the United States, in other ways more severe and long-lasting. Along the western coastline, their property was confiscated (if not outright looted) and the victims were forced into holding facilities or to locations in the interior. Some could argue that it was necessary for wartime protection, but what happened thereafter was an even greater crime, as they were forbidden to return to their homes and farms following the war, and were made to disperse throughout the country or return to Japan. Their story is forcefully and beautifully recounted here (more a memoir than a piece of fiction), which has become her best-known work. Kogawa’s primary skill is poetry, and it shows in her prose. She lovingly, yet firmly, portrays the plight and resilience of a family as it deals with separation and loss, both of individuals and community (not once, but twice). An example of her prose is, “The dust, light-winged as soot, is swarming thickly across the flashlight beam. . . everything, I suppose, turns to dust eventually. A man’s memories end up in some attic or in a Salvation Army bin. His name becomes a fleeting statistic and his face is lost in fading photographs, the clothing quaint, the anecdotes gone. . . Potent and pervasive as a prairie dust storm, memories and dreams seep and mingle through cracks, settling on furniture and into upholstery. . .” Kogawa frequently shifts from the narrative into sidebars of near poetry. The story is told through the eyes of Naomi, a kindergarten-aged child, as she struggles to understand the loss of her parents (father was a doctor) and grandparents [as well as her encounter with a pedophiliac neighbor before the war], as her aunt (and later uncle) and neighbors are relocated to Slocum. The mystery of her mother’s fate, trapped in Japan when she goes just before the outbreak of hostilties to care for her sick parent and never returns, is slowly revealed. Her father manages to return, for a short while, but then likewise disappears from their lives. She is forced to live in a small home nestled near a mountainside, but at least they still have a community. After the war this community is destroyed and dispersed, and (as if they are being punished for their heritage) they are forced to labor on a beet farm (“perhaps some genealogist [sic?] of the future will come across this patch of bones and wonder why so many fishermen died on the prairies.”). Luckily, she has the loving care of her Obasan (aunt) and uncle (a master boatbuilder and carpenter), as well as her music-loving brother (determined to ignore his Japanese roots as much as possible). Although the story is sad, heartrending, there is also much beauty and love in it. I will likely try the sequel, Itsuka.

There is a silence that cannot speak.
There is a silence that will not speak.

When I started this book, I was hesitant. I struggled to dive into the book because of certain choices the writer made. I love detailed depictions, but it felt like the descriptions of certain events took away from the overall plot. I felt it almost lacked cohesion, I could not see an overarching point. Why depict what the author is depicting now?
But, as I continued something really shifted in me with Obasan. I understood how her insistence on description was utilized not to hinder the plot, but further it. I felt that the supposed “pointlessness” I felt before was because this story was meant to illustrate the sense of almost incredulity felt by the protagonist.
As I neared the end of the book, I realized its true power. Naomi’s feelings about her mother, her grappling with grief and the despair that can be felt so clearly was deeply moving. The emotion I felt as I finished this book is unparalleled. Never have I gone from such a sense of apathy about a book to such a strong sense of sadness and grief.
This book changed a lot in how I perceive stories and I highly recommend people to read it.

I am glad that I have read this book. It provides the perspective of what Canadian citizens of Japanese descent, from Vancouver, lived through during WWII. I have read other books placed during WWII, but usually in Europe. So this was an illuminating and interesting perspective.

Did not enjoy this. I felt REALLY disconnected from the characters, especially Nomi, the main character. Was really disappointed. I found the book very confusing, disorganized and dry.

I don’t know if it was the writing style, which left me often confused about what was going on, or the character Naomi’s (understandable) lack of emotions which kept me from being drawn into the story, but in any case, this didn’t work for me. I finished it because the history is so important and compelling and heartbreaking. The letters were actually my favorite part, and I would have better appreciated a book of just the letters.

Most likely this is a case of the right book at the wrong time for me, so I may try it again in the future.

A little heavy on the symbolism, but a moving story about the Canadian-Japanese experience during World War II.

2.5, read for contemporary women’s literature

i think this is an absolutely necessary and poignant issue to write about, but i personally did not like the fragmented/memory narration. i understand that it was purposeful, and the author has a poetic background, but i found myself lost more often than not, and it took away from my experience reading overall. i didn’t care for the characters or their experiences because the story was told in such a passive, removed way.

there were definitely parts of this novel that were amazing, and the prose was beautiful and engaging to a certain point.

this is just not the book for me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

“There is silence that cannot speak.”


Sometimes we come to a book late. For me, Obasan, published in 1981, is one of those books. It is historically based fiction that reads like memoir – a hybrid, better than either genre. I’m reminded of a line from Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil: “A work of art works because it is true, not because it is real.” Obasan is a work of art, a hard-as-stone story beautifully told.

Through Obasan, I travelled to another time, another culture, another horror of war and misguided political decisions. But Obasan is not a diatribe on political incorrectness; it is an intimate glimpse into people’s lives, love and loss, what was endured. In the end, insight and something that lurks between acceptance and forgiveness, a moving forward. à
The narrator, Naomi Nakane, knows that “All our ordinary stories are changed in time, altered as much by the present as the present is shaped by the past.” She struggles to understand her childhood from her adult view and to grasp what it all means now. Her childhood was protected to a great degree, but Aunt Emily’s life was altered, split-away, and she knew the depth of loss and fought it with letters, but to no avail. When Naomi is grown, she receives a package from her aunt. “The fact is,” she thinks, jarred by Aunt Emily’s clippings and notes, “I never got used to it and I cannot, I cannot bear the memory. There are some nightmares from which there is no waking, only deeper and deeper sleep.” Perhaps it is easier to leave the blinders on and to not remember.

Despite the story’s dark theme, Joy Kogawa’s writing is sprinkled with light and lyrical passages. In one passage that particularly touched me, Naomi recalls a walk with her uncle: “The laughter in my arms is quiet as the moon, quiet as snow falling, quiet as the white light from the stars.”

Obasan is an important story: culturally, politically, and artistically. It is a beautifully told story that takes readers into the heart of experience. It neither shies away from, nor dwells upon, the hard historical reality that tore people’s lives apart. Canada’s story, without Obasan, would be incomplete. It is hard to face political wrongs, but they must be faced in order to be whole, complete – for all parties. As Yann Martel wrote in Beatrice and Virgil: “Stories – individual stories, family stories, national stories – are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole.”

Please read Obasan and think about the “silence that cannot speak.” Kerri Sakamoto, in the preface to my edition of the book, writes: “It was the authenticity of those words that so shocked me; the distillation of shame and muted fury….In the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing, families – including my own – were taken from their homes, separated, and interned in camps simply because they looked like the enemy.” These words should haunt us all and make us think of their relevancy today as with others who come to make our country their own.

Post script: for lovers of Japanese-themed stories

Two other “Japanese” books that have survived weeding from my crowded bookshelves that I recommend are Epitaph for a peach by David Mas Masumoto, an American-Japanese story (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995) and Snow by Maxence Fermine, translated by Chris Mulhern (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Inc, 1999).

Epitaph for a peach tells the story of an ending in California – the end of the peach farm – by a “third-generation Japanese American farmer [whose] lineage in agriculture dates back centuries. The Masumotos are from a solid peasant stock out of Kumamoto, Japan, rice farmers with not even a hint of samuri blood.” The U.S. experience of Japanese-Americans living on the west coast during WWII differed from the Canadian; there may have been hardship, but not the expulsion nor the confiscating of property.

Snow is a seeker’s story. It takes us on a lyrical search by Yuko through snow-covered mountains to find enlightenment…colour…and it is also an exquisitely told love story. If you like haiku, its simplicity and complexity, you will like Snow.

On my “to read” list: The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. According to Martin Puchner (The Written Word), Murasaki’s “epic novel, The Tale of Genji, became a foundational text that influenced Japanese aesthetics for centuries to come.” Written about 1,000 years ago by an 11th century Japanese lady-in-waiting, The Tale of Genji is a story Puchner compares to the Iliad and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Puchner says, “Murasaki’s diary felt to me like a turning point in the history of literature—it sounds so recognizable, so intimate, so modern.”

“The fact that someone living in an extremely different time, halfway around the world, a thousand years ago, could whisper in my ear in that way—it’s magical. That experience is part of what draws me to world literature in general, a reminder of the power writing has to transport a voice across time and space.” (Quotes from a January 23, 2018 article by Joe Fassler, “The Technology Shift Behind the World’s First Novel, The Atlantic online.)

This book was beautifully written and extremely educational about Japanese diaspora culture and the racism and discrimination they faced in Canada. It should be required reading across HS and colleges. Naomi’s story was extremely moving, and I thought it was a powerful narrative structure to have the WWII sections be interspersed with adult Naomi, because we experienced discoveries and realizations alongside her. The prose was carefully constructed and anyone in the reviews saying it was boring lacks empathy and understanding.