“One Foot in Either Door”
Japanese-Americans
and the Constructions of Identity in Julia Shigekuni’s
A Bridge Between Us
This paper analyzes the constructions of the identity
of four Japanese American women in Julia Shigekuni’s A
Bridge Between Us. These characters are studied in terms of their distance
from their Japanese origins in an attempt to determine how influential to their
lives is their being second, third, and fifth generation Japanese Americans. Some
studies of Japanese versus American constructions of self in order are used to
determine the American-ness or the Japanese-ness of these characters in
relation to each other.
The novel begins with Reiko, a second generation
Japanese American, telling her own story that is made of the lies her father
constructed around her. We understand
from this narrative that Reiko’s parents left Tokyo to San Francisco in the
late 19th century and at an early stage in Reiko’s childhood her
mother leaves. The father chooses to
comfort his daughter for her mother’s loss by indulging her in the fantasy that
her mother will be returning soon. The
child of course grows up believing this lie rather than distrusting her father:
“[w]hat obedient child would doubt the
hopeful tale of her father, a tale that her father himself believed? (5) So she
prays for her mother’s return and waits for her by the docks everyday. Eventually this futile waiting develops in
her a hatred for her mother for shaking the world of fantasies that the father
built for his daughter. “On the docks
there was no room for fantasy. . . It was on the docks that I realized a
sadness I had never known. On the docks
that I began to hate my mother ” (8). So she chooses to hate
an absent mother rather than blame her father, the only parent remaining to
her.
To justify her mother’s absence and to further indulge
his daughter into this fairy tale, Reiko’s father tells her that her mother is
actually a princess visiting her own mother back in Tokyo. Accustomed to these tales, Reiko eventually
expands on them herself explaining to her friends that being a princess, the
San Francisco weather did not agree with her mother’s “delicate skin,” who
therefore had to return to Tokyo. And
also that her mother missed her own family who couldn’t leave Japan because
they were royalty (18-19). Reiko’s
fabrications begin to resemble her father’s attempt at finding reasons for his
wife’s abandonment.
In terms of Reiko’s Japanese versus
American identity, being second generation Japanese American her Japanese
ethics are colored by American ones.
Reiko learns the Japanese writing by going to Japanese school after
regular school hours, so she may be aware as early as that stage that her
Japanese-ness comes second to her American-ness. Nevertheless, she celebrates her Japanese
part because of her alleged social status that allows her a special treatment
in this Japanese school as, according to Japanese customs, her teachers use the
honorific pronoun “sama” to address her while other students are only
privileged with “san:”
In Japanese school, my teachers
showed me favor by adding the honorific –sama to the end of my name, while
referring to other students simply as –san.
In turn, I earned the respect of my teachers by my ability to learn and
by the good manners taught me by my father.
I am proud that my father raised me according to Japanese tradition,
even though I have never set fool in Japan. (13)
Because in the public school “each
student was treated the same”, Reiko prefers Japanese school and its use of
formal address in which she is elevated above her classmates (12).
However, although Reiko claims to have been raised
according to Confucian ethics, there is a form of independence in her that
speaks not of Confucian ethics of self but more of American ones (26). Reiko
argues that it is “fortunate that my
father raised me to be so independent in my actions” (24).
Confucian ethics posit a “group-centered existence” that relies on dependency
as opposed to the American “exaltation of independency and self-sufficiency”:
Discussions of Japanese socialization
often refer to the concept of amae . . . amae is based
upon the verb meaning to depend and presume upon another’s benevolence. [Japanese psychiatrist Takoe]
Doi believes that the complex mixture of passivity,
mutuality, and “feelings of dependency coupled with the expectation of
indulgence” that comprise amae are at the core of the Japanese psyche. He also argues that the concept is quite
distinct from “love” in the Western sense and is in fact alien to Western
thinking, “with its exaltation of independence and self-sufficiency.” (Boocook 174)
But
what if dependency and self-sufficiency are not always antonyms and a person
can fluctuate between the two?
Reiko
can be both independent and dependent; to rely both on her own self and on her
family or society. When her daughter Rio
is dying, Reiko is struggling to “depend and presume upon another’s
benevolence.” But is this necessarily a
contradiction to her earlier assertion that she is independent? Not if we understand that both dependence on
self and on society can coexist. The
Western mindset may force us to see dualism in place of difference, thus self
and society become antonyms:
a set of dualisms formed around a
radical separation between inside and outside that developed out of the
scientific revolution in Europe. . . Thus the ordering of the Newtanian universe was based on a delineation of dualities
that separated both nature and self from the social world” (Bachnik
21)
Therefore
any sense of independence or self-sufficiency would necessarily indicate, in
the Western mindset, a non-dependency on society (19). When society is divorced from the self, to be
independent means to rely on one’s own self, which is separate and different
from relying on the society’s help. But
the Japanese ideology, according to Backnik, sees
self as social:
The Japanese perspectives on self
and social order, which were considerably influenced by China, form a distinct
counterpoint to those of the West and reveal a perspective on human nature that
defines society as profoundly human, and self as quintessentially social. (21)
Therefore
to be independent may be a trait that does not necessitate an absence of
reliance on society’s benevolence.
Reiko’s character, which might appear to be paradoxical, may actually be
quite in accordance with the Japanese thought that sees self as social. Reiko’s assertion of her independence, if
seen as a Japanese construct, does not contradict with her need for attention
from her family and her dependence on their benevolence.
Yet
Reiko sways from this Japanese culture in other instances also. The funeral she arranges for her father
provides one example of the American part in Reiko. Her husband informs her that she is not
following Japanese traditions in the funeral and she responds by telling him
that they’re not in Japan anymore (11).
What happens here is that Reiko tries to adjust her Japanese heritage to
her American culture. She follows the
same line of logic in her insistence on speaking only English with her husband
because she feels responsible for insuring his proper assimilation in the
culture of the country they live in (12).
Reiko’s identity, then, appears to be mostly influenced by her Japanese
origins though she understands that she has to make some minor adjustments to
it.
Tomoe,
also second generation Japanese American,
comes from a family of seven sisters and has her own two daughters to
care for. Like her mother before her,
Tomoe’s priority is for her daughters.
Having a big family forced Tomoe’s mother to lay aside her own needs and
feelings so that she could care for her family.
When Tomoe’s father disappeared at sea, her mother didn’t have time to
feel sad as she has a family to care for:
I don’t remember Mama ever mourning
him—maybe it was the shock of his sudden disappearance, or the fact that her
life became easier once he was gone. Of
course there was the problem of money.
Mama must have worried where it would come from, how she would feed and
clothe herself, my seven sisters, and me.
Those difficulties would outlast my father . . . it was only a matter of
work and making do. (61)
And to
be able to make do, Tomoe’s mother had to let her own self be neglected and
concentrate on raising her eight daughters.
Likewise,
Tomoe has a family of her own. Not only
is she responsible for her two daughters and husband, but she also has her
husband’s parents and his grandmother to add to her burden. We see a picture of her waking up in the
morning, thinking about her own mother, and deciding to call her. But before she’s able to do so, her younger
daughter walks in and Tomoe has to tend to her.
Then Tadashi, the father-in-law comes, and Goro,
the husband, both expecting to be fed.
After this Tomoe has to tend to Grandma Reiko who stays in her room and
has breakfast brought up to her. She
then rushes to the hospital to check on her mother-in-law (61-79). With all these duties to carry, Tomoe has
little time for herself and, like her mother; she needs all her energy saved to
care for her family.
When Tadashi suggests that she might want to do
something for herself she wonders what it means to “Do something for yourself:”
“Do
Something for yourself. What would you
like to do. His words force me to imagine what my life will be
like when my children are grown and gone.
They will have their own lives one day.
They will marry and have children, and they will grow further and
further away until one day I may not even recognize them as my own” (75-6). But
when Tomoe tries to think of doing something for herself, she ends by thinking
of other people’s needs and of sending her mother on vacation to Japan, thus
proving her groups-centered ethics which she inherited from her Japanese
mother.
Tomoe’s concern for her family is,
to her, the right thing to do. She grew
up seeing her mother caring for her family and she understands it as her
responsibility to care of her own. For
Tomoe, anything less is selfish. So when
her-in-law tries to kill herself she sees this as an escape from her
responsibility towards her family:
Mama taught me to respect life;
that Rio tried to take her own life shows disrespect for her family. If she ever stopped to consider her son and
grandchildren, what such behavior would do to them, let alone what it’s now
doing to me, none of this would be happening.
But Rio is selfish and so it’s hard to know what she could have been
thinking that morning, or what she’s thinking now. (72)
When
contrasting the way she was raised to the way her husband Goro
was raised, Tomoe sees that to her doing something for yourself means caring
for your family while for Goro caring for himself is
enough: “[t]he point is that I was raised to believe that doing something for
myself means caring for other and Goro grew up
believing that caring for himself is enough” (76). Being raised by her mother
might be another factor that adds to Rio’s difference from Reiko. In early Japanese communities in America the
woman’s role was important in insuring that the cultural heritage passes from
one generation to the next. The Japanese
American women were responsible for “holding families together, building
communities, and maintaining the cultural traditions of the old country in
their homes” (Kim 249). Risking a sexist
remark I would say that it appears that the Japanese father prepared his daughter for life outside the house by allowing
her to develop an independent self, while the mother prepared her daughter for the life of a housewife whose role
would be caring for her family.
Therefore it seems that the ethnic heritage of these characters, though
contributing to their sense of individuality and/or community care, is not the
only factor as the sex of the parent also bares its weight here.
And
although Rio was also raised by her mother, like Tomoe, the two characters do
not share similar values since Reiko, lacking is Japanese ethics herself, did
not seem to encourage in her daughter any sense of community care, or any other
type of care for that matter. Reiko’s
relation with her daughter is devoid of any love and caring as is evident in
her refusal to see beauty in her daughter.
In
Reiko, we see an image of a confident woman who is certain of her ability to
take care of her father’s barber shop.
In contrast, in Rio we see a woman who is completely self-critical, a
woman who “did not believe in [her]self” (98).
One study that looks at such images of self-esteem versus
self-criticism, finds the former intensified within Americans and the latter
within Japanese. It seems that for the
Japanese the way to improvement is self-criticism which opposes them to their
American counterparts who find a possibility of improvement in their success,
thus resulting in self-esteem (1246).
Rio,
therefore, becomes an embodiment of what the study shows as Japanese
construction of self when she finds fault with her actions. She blames her failing marriage and her
troubled grand-daughter on herself (136), thus exhibiting the Japanese ethic of
self-criticism as opposed to its American counterpart of self-enhancement. And
because she is lacking of self-confidence she chooses to change her name when
she meets a man she loves. She sees in
changing her name a way for her to assume a different character from the one
she seems to criticize, a character who is successful in contrast to her image
of herself as a failure (153).
The
third character I analyze is Nomi, Rio’s grand-daughter. Nomi’s life begins to resemble that of her
grandmother starting from the time Rio tries to kill herself. Rio’s attempted suicide lead to an event in
Nomi’s life that might have shaped her whole life afterwards. Trying to comfort her grandfather for the
near loss of his wife Nomi is forced to assume the position of that wife in
more ways than she can handle as her grandfather uses her comforting gestures
to satisfy his sexual perversion. By way
of living through this abuse Nomi develops a connection with her grandmother by
talking to her own reflection in the mirror (48). This connection develops negatively when she
tries to mimic her grandmother’s suicide (49).
As
Rio tried to reinvent herself by giving herself a false name, so Nomi tries to
forge for herself another personality by developing what resembles a
schizophrenic other. She contrasts her
hard and flat image in the mirror with the weakness she feels inside her: “The
image I touch is hard, flat, impenetrable, but inside I am mush. I am miserable and I don’t even know why”
(87). And while her mother Tomoe
constantly refers to her wish to develop in her daughters an appreciation for
how things appear and a need to avoid looking deeper into things but to trust
their appearances, Nomi seems to fall into the trap of a split-personality as
she tried to look deeper into her image.
The
bathroom scene in which she talks to an imaginary grandmother develops further
into a form of second self, a self she invents which can better deal with the
events of her life: “You begin as a sudden conception of myself, except older,
and everything I want I already have” (83).
That this alter self is older leads one to think that she is forging for
herself a personality like her grandmother’s.
This second self appears whenever Nomi wants to detach herself from her
reality: “And so you begin with Eric. At
first you are Eric. You are the one so
close to me who is not me. You begin as
the thing I have hoped for, to travel outside myself and far away” (85). Because
this second self is linked to Rio, Nomi depends on Rio to enable her to develop
that self. She asks Rio where she would
like to go if she could and Rio answers: “it would have to be somewhere I
haven’t been. Somewhere familiar but far
away” (92). And because there’s a
picture of a geisha on top of Rio’s bed, Nomi thinks of Japan as that place
which is familiar but far away: “From the start Japan and you are linked into
one: Japan is the dream that keeps me sticking my head into the ice cream case,
and every time I come up holding another round scoop you are the promise of
life beyond my grandmother, my mother, my father, my sister Melodie,
and everyone else I know” (94). And the trip to Japan becomes the unmentioned
pact between Rio and Nomi, a pact that Nomi felt she had to fulfill in order to
help her grandmother. Unlike Reiko, and
like her mother, Nomi finds in helping others the only way to help herself, so
she makes herself responsible for her grandmother’s well-being and by going to
Japan she is helping Rio in her life (119).
The
need to help others puts another burden on Nomi that is also similar to her
mother’s: she becomes self-critical. As
early as the age of seven when she hears her parents talking she assumes they
are talking about her and that she has done something wrong. Although guilt over her grandmother’s
attempted suicide does not seem to cross her mind at first, a remark by her
mother immediately sets her into this train of guilt:
That night as she pulls the sheet
up to my neck my mother asks if I am upset about Grandma. “No,” I lie.
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
It hasn’t occurred to me that it
is, but the instant she says these words I know I am to blame. (49)
This
guilt grows with Nomi from guilt over what happened to her grandmother to guilt
over what happens to her. When she first
suspects she’s pregnant she refuses to lay any blame on her sexual partner and
tells herself that it’s her fault. This
guilt strikes the strongest when she leaves her child in Japan and for Nomi the
only way out of this guilt is through her grandmother. The novel ends with Nomi wishing for her
grandmother’s forgiveness and we see here an image of Nomi that is similar to
her mother. Returning to the study of
Japanese and American constructions of identity it begins to appear that Nomi’s
self is closer to her Japanese heritage than it is to her American one. Her concern for other, and her self-critical
attitude lean her towards the side of the Japanese self. Although she associates with Rio—and in terms
of generations, her matriarchal line would situate her on the third level,
similar to Rio—there is no doubt that Nomi’s character is shaped in her
mother’s form.
But
Nomi is not as comfortable with her familial obligation self as her mother
appears to be. While Tomoe accepts her
life as a responsibility that she has to carry, Nomi struggles with this life
and decides to change it by leaving it behind.
When her father tries to dissuade her from leaving to Japan she sees in
him an ignorance of her situation:
He still chooses to ignore the
importance of place in determining destiny.
He will not bow to the strength of the human will or believe in the
potency of desire . . . But I was not about to give up my life. I’d seen my grandmother and mother give
theirs up to depression and a family that couldn’t appreciate them. I wanted no
more of that history and I was bent on proving my father wrong. (191)
Nomi
and Rio both want to change their lives, and while Rio resorts to suicide, Nomi
chooses to develop an alter-ego that helps her carry on.
The
resemblance and differences between these four characters are plentiful, and
the reasons for their clashes are also plentiful. Although the distance from their Japanese
heritage plays an important role in these characters, this analysis proved
other factors to be just as important.
At first glance, the novel seems to provide personalities that were
constructed differently because of how far they were from their Japanese
heritage. I contrasted Tomoe’s care for
others with her daughter’s apparent detachment from her family and I started
building a hypothesis that stated Tomoe’s Japanese self versus Nomi’s American
one. But Shigekuni’s
characters are not as flat as that hypothesis assumes. This is not an either/or situation in which
the person has to be either Japanese or American. The character’s identities are formed by a
mixture of these culture. Nomi explains that she is “Japanese-American, meaning
one foot in either door”, and her
identity, like the other identities in this work, is shaped by a mixture of
these two culture (243).
Although
both Reiko and Tomoe are second generation Japanese American, this study shows
that their identities are different as they were forged by a father in the
first instance and a mother in the second.
But it is not just the parental sex that determines these
identities. Nomi proves a self that is
constructed by a variety of factors ranging from ethnic heritage, to parental
figures, to personal event, and also personal choices of life. Nomi’s choice to leave her child in Japan
shaped who she finally becomes, Rio’s attempt at suicide shaped her life and
the lives of people around her, even Tomoe and Reiko made choices in their
lives that contributed to its eventual outcome.
Although the studies of Japanese and American constructions of self help
in understanding the reasons behind some of the character’s actions, they are by
no way determinant of what these characters develop into as a result of their
interaction with other characters in the novel.
The selves are constructed by a variety of factors ranging from racial
to sexual to environmental ones. Though
this is the story of Japanese Americans, the characters are distinguished by
many other criteria that make the label Japanese-American seem limited.
Works Cited
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Jane M. Introduction. Situated Meaning: Inside and Outside in
Japanese Self, Society, and Language.
Ed. Jane M. Bachnik and Charles J. Quinn
Jr. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1994. 2-24.
Barnlund,
Dean C. Public and Private Self in
Japan and the United States. 1982
ed. Tokyo: The Simul Press, 1975.
Boocock,
Sarane Spence. “The Social Construction
of Childhood in Contemporary Japan.” Constructions
of the Self. New Jersey: Rutgers UP,
1992. 165-188.
Kim,
Elaine H. Asian American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1982.
Kitayama,
Shinobu et al.
“Individual and Collective Processes in the Construction of the
Self: Self-enhancement in the United
States and Self-criticism in Japan.” Journal
of Personal and Social Psychology.
June 1997, 72:6. 1245-67.
Shigekuni,
Julie. A Bridge Between Us. NY: Anchor Books, 1996.