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.
Symbols & Motifs
Shoes
The Japanese community’s approach to footwear is symbolic of their social-minded, conformist attitude, as well as their attention to detail. In preparation for the annual undo-kai picnic, all of the parents buy new clothes for their children, and there is a “terrific run on children’s tennis shoes in the Japanese shoe stores” (71). The shoe specification for each gender is as follows: the girls are to buy “snowy-white canvas rubber-soled shoes with a single strap buttoning across the instep and a demure white bow at the toe,” and the boys “ankle-high black and white canvas shoes with thick, black rubber soles, guaranteed to transform even a plodding turtle into a bounding hare” (71). While both genders’ shoes are made with attention to detail, the boys’ thick soles have a utilitarian function, whereas the girls’ dainty bows are more decorative. The white color is also impractical, given that the shoes are intended for a race, but symbolizes Japanese attitudes to girlhood as being something pristine and unspoiled.
At Camp Puyallup, where there are menacing amounts of mud, aesthetic considerations are secondary, as the inmates’ concerns are with keeping their feet clean and dry. While Sone is proud of tracking down a pair of galoshes from her friend Chris, the Issei have other ideas about how to wade through the mud, and a “craze” for getas, Japanese wooden platform shoes, sweeps through the camp (181). Thus, once again, Sone shows how Japanese traditions and artifacts can help immigrants deal with the realities of life in America. Sone also admires the getas because they are not only functional, like the galoshes, but also beautiful, and she gets a pair made for her in red. In her getas, Sone is happy to forgo the American habit of wearing uncomfortable nylons. This is symptomatic of how Puyallup becomes a self-contained Japanese community that neglects American customs.
Etiquette
Etiquette is a crucial motif in Sone’s memoir. Ingrained in the Issei’s psyche is the desire to please others and not offend or embarrass them. Therefore, rather than going about their business in the most direct way possible, the Issei take a subtler approach. This clashes with the direct American style that Sone feels is more natural to her surroundings. Although Benko knows from her sister’s tragic suicide that picture marriages are a bad idea and wants to refuse Mrs. Matsui’s services when she thinks she has found a prospective match for Sone, she “could not do so very well without offending her old friend deeply” (135). Therefore, Benko prefers to entertain the charade of Mrs. Matsui coming over with a picture of Sone’s prospective groom, with a face that gives away “nothing,” while her Americanized Nisei daughter laughs in Mrs. Matsui’s face (136). For Sone, it becomes more important to get the message across than to worry about the impact it will have.
Other aspects of Japanese etiquette are respect for tradition and precision. While the Itoi children think they can get away with an improvised nod of the head as a greeting prior to their Japanese school education, Mr. Ohashi states that their efforts have not produced an ojigi, a legitimate Japanese bow, and with “well-oiled precision” he demonstrates how to bow from the waist (20). The bow is a symbol of reverence and respect; performed incorrectly, it becomes mocking and disrespectful. At Japanese school, the concept of “bowing distance” enters the Nisei children’s consciousness, and when a teacher falls within this range, “we hissed at each other to stop the game, put our feet neatly together, slid our hands down to our knees and bowed slowly and sanctimoniously” (22).
For the Issei community, it is important to teach their children their ways precisely, so that their legacy is not lost through immigration. The Nisei generation find that these customs are useful for passing among the Japanese community, but that they do not weather so well in the mainstream American world. Sone imagines that the rough guests at her father’s hotel would “have laughed in [her] face” if she bowed to them, and she gently mocks the artificiality of the bowing tradition when she describes what she believes to be the contrived nature of children stopping their playground games in order to pay respect to a teacher (28). This light and often affectionate mockery of Japanese etiquette is consistent throughout Sone’s memoir as she seeks to remember and respect the Issei, but shows that she, a Nisei, is different and more a part of mainstream America.
The Temporary Home
The temporary home is a poignant symbol of the Issei’s continued visitor status in the United States. As the child of Issei parents, Sone passes through many impermanent dwellings in her childhood. Although Mr. Itoi buys the Carrollton Hotel—where Sone is born and where a few rooms are adapted for the family’s use—the hotel is a guesthouse and therefore the ultimate symbol of the elder Itois’ lack of naturalization. The building has seen finer days, having had its heyday during the Alaskan gold rush, and therefore has a stray, unwanted quality to it, which makes it a natural fit for an immigrant family like the Itois. Moreover, it is significant that Sone describes the hotel guests as a “flotsam of seedy, rough-looking characters,” as the people with whom the Itois’ share their home also have a transitory, stray quality (9).
While Sone finds the bustle and frequent change at the Carrollton exciting, the environment is not nourishing for her asthmatic sister, Sumiko. Sumiko’s asthma triggers the search for a second temporary home at Alki Beach. When the Itois find that no one will rent to them or even let them stay impermanently because they “don’t want Japs around here,” it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will further unsettle the Itois (114). Before the evacuation to the internment camps is announced, there are numerous wild suggestions from the US government about where to house those of Japanese ethnicity, so that they are contained and not antagonistic to the mainstream public. The Japanese community cannot “vanish into thin air” and they have nowhere to go, forcing the government to house them first in a temporary camp—Camp Puyallup, where they leave in time to make way for the State Fair—and then in a more permanent one, in converted army barracks, Camp Minidoka (159). Once at Camp Puyallup, the Itois are barely allowed to settle in their inadequately-sized room before they are moved to another on the other side of camp. While there may have been practical reasons for this change, it also symbolizes that as enemy aliens, the Japanese are continually unsettled and moved around, and that they never feel at home.
