When The Emperor Was Divine (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
“But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger’s backyard, our mother’s rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light.”It's easy to make a story like this melodramatic, moralistic, overwrought with feelings. A less skilled writer would have done it. A story of an unnamed Japanese-American family banished from their quiet life in Berkeley to spend over three years in an internment camp for a simple "crime" of being Japanese in the US during World War II is, after all, a story that comes with built-in pathos and anger - a collision of emotions that in the right hands can deliver a perfect punch. “Keep your head down and don’t cause any trouble, we’d been told, weeks before, in a mess hall lecture on “How to Behave in the Outside World.” Speak only English. Do not walk down the street in groups of more than three, or gather in restaurants in groups of more than five. Do not draw attention to yourselves in any way.”But Julie Otsuka does not take the easy and obvious path. She stays away from the obvious heartstrings-tugging a lesser writer could have settled for. Instead, she delivers a subtle but remarkably powerful story; a crisp and precise and yet muted and subdued, understated and somewhat detached narrative with nevertheless a documentary camera lens-like clarity. She does not tell but shows, letting us experience and make our own conclusions through the eyes of the family members - the mother, the girl, the boy, then the combined "we" of the children's perspectives, finally ending on the shortest and the most charged viewpoint of the father. The tragedy of the casual crime of the country against some of its citizens carries a heavy weight. But still, the conclusions are left to be your own. “They had all seen us leave, at the beginning of the war, had peered out through their curtains as we walked down the street with our enormous overstuffed suitcases. But none of them came out, that morning, to wish us goodbye, or good luck, or ask us where it was we were going (we didn’t know). None of them waved.”The powerful parts for me were not the internment chapters but the return - back to the 'normal' world, into the lives forcibly left behind years ago, without an acknowledgement of the wrongness done but instead with a measly payout equal to those released criminals get, expected to act like nothing had happened but to cautiously "behave", accept the injustice as necessity and move on, blend in, not make any waves, pretending that they don't know who used to own the bits of life pilfered by your own neighbors. And eventually you may learn to accept the belief that somehow you must have been at fault - otherwise how can it all make sense? “We looked at ourselves in the mirror and did not like what we saw: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes. The cruel face of the enemy.We were guilty.”It's a short book, and every page in it is essential; there's no filler, only the bits that are necessary to build the intricate picture of the events that should provoke anger but - since there's little choice for those swept away by them - have to be met with resignation and attempts to preserve dignity while inevitably stripping away the bits of self that are found to be inconvenient for those wielding power. It's a wonderful book. “So go ahead and lock me up. Take my children. Take my wife. Freeze my assets. Seize my crops. Search my office. Ransack my house. Cancel my insurance. Auction off my business. Hand over my lease. Assign me a number. Inform me of my crime. Too short, too dark, too ugly, too proud. Put it down in writing—is nervous in conversation, always laughs loudly at the wrong time, never laughs at all—and I’ll sign on the dotted line. Is treacherous and cunning, is ruthless, is cruel. And if they ask you someday what it was I most wanted to say, please tell them, if you would, it was this:I’m sorry.There. That’s it. I’ve said it. Now can I go?”
As of this moment, there are various rules and regulations being pushed through the US government regarding the formation of internment camps for refugees fleeing through the US-Mexican border from the drug wars of the USA's creation. There's nothing new under the sun here, nothing beyond the standard protocol of a country that has been at war for 214 of the 235 years of its existence and has only increased the size of its playground over time. What that last part translates to is the fire and the frying pan, friends I've made who thought US imperialism had to be better than Chinese communism, targets of hate crimes who cannot "go back where they came from" if they don't want to be killed by drones, each and every person who both knew and had no idea what it takes to live in this land depending on the color of skin and the mode of accent and history. Always the history. The average citizen may not know the name of every president, but the pecking order they have, are, and will continue to bequeath is inherent.Military industrial complex. What this means is ads for the Navy before Pixar movies (as many little lights as there are stars as there are threats on the globe, and that, my friend, is everywhere), minuscule reservations for 562 indigenous nations in one of the largest spans of terrorism the world has ever seen, a continual us versus them in entertainment, school curriculum, the percentage of translations allotted in the literature market (not the subtitles! anything but the subtitles!) and the number of white people teaching yoga, karate, and whatever else the fads of cultural appropriation has spat up over the centuries. This book talks about Pearl Harbor, my times talk about 9/11, and anyone who wants to argue for why what came after was made acceptable by those events needs to read, read, and keep reading the promises being made in never ending payback. The moment you cannot keep looking at the genocides being wrought in the name of that particular much named event is the moment you need to ask yourself what the actual fuck is going on.Culture clash. The US versus Japan. Those caught and balanced between two countries that each in their own way loathe the Other within their land and that is the last thing I will say about the latter of the two cause, trust me, my side's got enough with the slurs, the rape fetishes, the white scholars making bank off of Orientalization, the concentration camp histories gone over in this tome and the military bases in Okinawa. It is one of many power plays constantly calculating how far the white US citizen can go in their treatment of this country, that religion, those people, their face, taking what they please and shaming what they know because there're few things in this world that make money faster than fear. I told you. It's an industry. Look at the correlation between when non-European countries gained their independence and when European countries got poor; then dwell upon colonies, settler states, and Manifest Destiny.Berkeley and Bay Area co.'re popularly known as the liberal bastion of the US, home of the multicultural friendlies and open minded folks and a UC that can't seem to take the rapists on its campus seriously despite multiple lawsuits and the governmental like. Between that and this and what is yet to come in the policies of the foreign and the domestic and the Idol of Enemy Number One, what is there to be done?
What do You think about When The Emperor Was Divine (2003)?
With already so many wonderful reviews -- I'm going to just add one quote I thought about (something Jewish people often think about)"You can't remember everything", she said."And even if you can you shouldn't", said the girl"I wouldn't say that", said her mother"You didn't", said the girlnote: Sometimes ....you find yourself reading a novel --its taking a lot of your concentration -- then you see a Goodreads friend post a beautiful review of a book you 'must' read....(you might even own it, which was the case with me) ....You feel so inspired --moved -So why wait?I didn't any longer --Very Powerful -- touching - devastating!
—Elyse
A little book that packs a big impact. We don't learn the names of the Japanese family who are forced to leave their Berkeley, CA home to live in stark barracks behind guarded fences. But their story is told in such a way that we feel we know them. This family is lucky to be able to return to their home, but their lives are ne'er the same. What a shameful episode in our nation's history. I didn't even know it happened until I was an adult in my Forties. I was pretty small during the war years and going to school in the Midwest, textbooks didn't include this part of our history. I was first exposed to what happened in a class where we were required to read Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. I highly recommend this book for a more detailed description of the life some Americans were forced into just because they were of Japanese descent. I was so taken with the story that my husband and I made a trip to see the Manzanar camp in eastern California. There is a great museum and the entire space has been preserved so we can see a little of what it was like.
—Judy
I loved how different this book is from many others I've read. It's written from the point of view of several characters, whose names are never mentioned. It almost seems like the author excluded the names to make them appear generic, as if they could be any Japanese person living in America during World War Two.This book explores the thoughts and feelings of members of one Japanese family before, during, and after they've been shipped off to a desert camp during WW2. I was left at the end with feelings of both intrigue and satisfaction.I've always wondered why this book hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize lol.
—Dana Melinda
