52 pages • 1 hour read
Monica SoneNisei Daughter
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Issei and Nisei Experiences of Life in America
In his 1979 introduction to Sone’s memoir, Miyamoto makes a distinction between the Issei, first-generation Japanese immigrants, and their children, the Nisei, second-generation Japanese immigrants. The Issei organized a Japanese community in Seattle, with Japanese shops, schools, newspapers, and associations. They also clung to the manners customary in Japan, as “on the streets when two Issei met, one would see much bowing and hear the soft modulations of the Japanese language” (x). Given that the Immigration Act of 1924 prohibited further immigration from Japan, there was sharp differentiation between the Issei and their children, the Nisei, who “were Americans” not only in possessing the citizenship denied their parents, but also in their preference for the English language, casual American manners, and pop culture (xi).
In Sone’s memoir, the difference between Issei and Nisei attitudes is a consistent theme. For example, American-born Sone idealizes dancers, who by the 1920s were respectable figures in American society, whereas her Issei father retains his Japanese cultural reference point, objecting to her wish for ballet lessons on the grounds that “in Japan, dancing was associated with geisha girls and he would never consent to his daughter entering that profession!” (44).
The Issei/Nisei division can also be seen following the Pearl Harbor invasion, when the Nisei generation of the Itoi family condemns “Japan’s aggressions in China and Manchuria” while the Issei condemn “Great Britain and America’s superior attitude toward Asiatics and their interference in Japan’s economic growth” (148). Whereas the Nisei align themselves wholeheartedly with America, the Issei still retain their ties with Japan, and have an interest in their old country’s growth. The Issei, who have never been naturalized, also seem more willing to acknowledge that Asiatics are second-class citizens in the United States and therefore cannot fully align with a country that has not accepted them on the same terms as white immigrants.
While the broad differences between the Issei and Nisei generations hold, Sone’s memoir also shows variation between the two generations. For example, Benko’s immigration as an adolescent 17-year-old who was curious about this new country and its customs means that she shares many traits with her Nisei children. Benko’s love of fun and spontaneity “rattled the sensibilities of the more correct” Issei women in the neighborhood (48). Unlike the more traditional Mrs. Matsui, who generally avoids the company of non-Japanese and retains only a “rudimentary” grasp of English well into her immigration, Benko does her best to communicate, even if she does not understand everything that is going on (153).
Similarly, the division between Issei and Nisei is made less distinct in the climate of increasingly hostile American attitudes toward the Japanese. However, as much as the Nisei feel like American citizens, their Oriental features give them the appearance of enemy aliens. Issei and Nisei alike are referred to by the derogatory term “Japs.” When Sone notices people’s contemptuous stares and is excluded from certain privileges on account of her race, she begins to feel “the terrible curse that went with having Japanese blood,” something she has no control over (118). However, when it comes to evacuation to the internment camps, the Issei are often more stoic and accepting of fate than the Nisei, who feel that their country has betrayed them. For example, the Nisei George Sawada is “stricken with bitterness” on Evacuation Day, whereas his Issei father, Mr. Sawada, tells him “it is for the best. For the good of many, a few must suffer. This is your sacrifice. Accept it as such and you will no longer be bitter” (235). Paradoxically, an Americanized Nisei is able to better accept his fate by adhering to the Issei generation’s preference for the collective good above that of the individual. The fact that traditional Japanese attitudes can be an aid to life in America leads to Sone’s conclusion that the two cultures are not incompatible.
Struggle, Resilience, and Optimism in America’s Japanese Immigrant Community
One of the most striking features of Sone’s memoir is its optimism. Adverse circumstances, such as the poverty and low status of new Oriental immigrants, increasing prejudice, and internment in camps are surmountable obstacles. When one dream goes awry, another can always supplement it.
For example, Mr. Itoi sails to the United States as “an ambitious young man of twenty-five, determined to continue his law studies at Ann Arbor, Michigan” (5). However, Itoi’s dreams are stalled when the sundry odd jobs he finds in Seattle never amount to a fortune and “with each passing year, his dream of Ann Arbor grew dimmer” (5). While the American Dream myth dictates than anyone who works hard enough in America can realize their wishes, Itoi finds that he has to sacrifice his dream in order to stay in America. As an immigrant, he starts out at the bottom, and though he is highly capable, prejudice against Asiatic people means that his capacity to rise is limited.
When he buys the crumbling Carrollton Hotel, he and his wife rejuvenate it; with “patience and care, they began to patch the aches and pains of the old hotel” (9). He does the same with the customers he puts up, men who are often old, lonely, and broken. Years later, when evacuation to the internment camp means that Itoi has to part with his business, he has to relinquish the dream of a comfortable retirement and the ability to pay college tuition for his three children. However, he channels his frustration into building furniture and making the family’s existence in the camp more comfortable, accepting his fate with the stoicism typical of the Issei.
It is only at the end of the book, when the Nisei children have left and Itoi contracts pneumonia, that Sone suspects that his spirit has broken. She says goodbye to him “in his old navy pea coat” and thinks that he looks like a “wistful immigrant” (235). The wistfulness suggests sadness and a sense of permanent loss on Itoi’s part—too many dreams have been taken away from him. However, Sone retains her optimism and looks forward to a day when her parents will become naturalized citizens. “In America, many things are possible,” she concludes, placing her hopes in the founding ideology of the United States (235).
Sone’s optimism stems from her faith in America and what the nation stands for. Though she acknowledges the adversity and prejudice she’s faced, much of her memoir is punctuated with reiterations of her sense of hope and belonging in America. When Sone is being persecuted in a country of immigrants for being the wrong type of immigrant, she finds that the fault is not with America, whose “ideas and ideals of democracy” are based on the Christian “religious principles” that she increasingly gives credence to, but with the people’s lack of faith in those principles (237). Instead of blaming the government for her family’s woes, Sone comes to believe that every American individual, including her, is responsible for keeping the faith in America’s ideals. She claims this responsibility “makes [her] feel much more at home in America,” as she feels that she has a role to play in creating a country where a person’s ethnic identity can contribute to their status as a full American citizen (237).
Japanese and American Models of Femininity in Sone’s Personal Development
Sone continually finds that Issei expectations regarding feminine behavior conflict with the realities of life in America. While Mrs. Matsui and Mr. Ohashi feel that they can “gradually mold” Sone into “an ideal Japanese ojoh-san, a young maiden who is quiet, pure in thought, polite, serene, and self-controlled,” she feels that life in America is “too urgent, too exciting” for this type of behavior (28). The environments of her Japanese school, Nihon Gakko, and Mrs. Matsui’s house, where she is expected to sit quietly and refuse second helpings of delicious food, seem rarefied and somehow apart from reality, whereas the environment at the bustling Carrollton Hotel was “the only real one to me” (28).
Sone seeks to develop in consort with the environment she finds real, and she does not hesitate to entertain bold dreams of becoming a detective and a dancer. She admires Western dancing for its kinetic qualities, and in imitation of a ballerina, Sone “whirled excitedly around the parlor” (44). When her parents take her to see a Japanese odori, she claims that the “girls don’t even move a muscle,” finding the static dance where the dancers’ face is “masked in deathly white rice powder, with jet black eyes and eyebrows, and a tiny red dot of a mouth” both strange and dull at the same time (45). Once more, the Japanese dance fits into a set of cultural expectations that Sone has inherited, though they do not feel properly her own.
As Sone grows to become five feet six inches—a whole half foot taller than is stereotypically desirable for Japanese women—and fails to learn the domestic skills her peers have mastered, she sets her sights on realizing a modern, American type of womanhood. While Sone’s mother entertains Mrs. Matsui’s performance of showing Sone a photograph of a potential groom, both mother and daughter know that it is a charade designed to not offend Mrs. Matsui. From the example of her sister, Yatsuko, who married a man her father chose for her and drowned herself to get out of it, Benko knows that picture marriages are an outdated custom. Sone, who has never been able to restrain her feelings in order to not give offence in the desirable Japanese manner, responds with “a big foolish smile” and raucous laughter (136). There is a sense that the family’s immigration and Sone’s naturalization in America have made her unfit for Japanese expectations of womanhood.
Sone finds that she has to look outside of the Nisei community for female role models, and they are found in the unlikely place of North Pines Sanitarium. Rather than stoically accepting that they have tuberculosis, the young women at the sanitarium put up a fight against their disease and entertain each other. Moreover, instead of conforming to an expected model of femininity, the women at the sanitarium are bold individuals. There is eccentric Hope, who makes tuberculosis into a point of conversation; the dashing young divorcée, Wanda, who is “even more startling, from a Japanese point of view” for her scurrilous talk and the way she does “violent hip-reducing bicycle exercises”; and the humorous Chris, who becomes Sone’s best friend (138). From Chris, Sone learns to shed the last vestige of her Japanese demureness and relinquishes the aim of being the most polite in favor of being interested and friendly.
While Sone’s development into a modern, American young woman is hindered by her internment, she soon gets back on track at Wendell College, a heterogeneous campus environment where she finds that her bi-cultural experiences are an asset. Rather than worrying about conforming to a particular stereotype of femininity, Sone can now focus on being herself.
