Illuminati :A Transnational Journal of Literature, Language and Culture Studies: VI

By Prof Neeru

Literature of the New Millennium
Literature of New Millennium, containing articles of academic criticism that explore the various issues, questions and debates raised by the contemporary literature. This special issue was designed to help the readers (research scholars in particular) in assessing and formulating their point of view about the bright possibilities and dark contour of literature written in the last one and a half decade. Contemporary writings mainly deal with various issues: alternative sexuality (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender), Crime fiction, Chick lit, Campus Novel, Short story, Graphic novels, Diaspora novels, postcolonial novels and feminist novels. It also contains plays written and translated into English dealing with the social issues like hunger, transgender, eunuchs, Gay and Lesbian, Crime, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prof Neeru
• Release date: Aug 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370323982

Book preview

Illuminati

A Transnational Journal of Literature, Language and Culture Studies

ISSN No. 2229-4341

Illuminati A Transnational Journal of Literature, Language and Culture Studies

Volume 6 – 2015-2016

Chief Editor

Neeru Tandon

Bio-Note

Eiko Ohira is Professor of English and Assistant to the President at Tsuru University in Japan. She has worked on British fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular reference to Wuthering Heights and A Passage to India. She is the author of A Study of Wuthering Heights (1993). Her research interest for the last 14 years is Indo- Pakistani partition novels and women’s writing, and her book on Indian writing in English will be published in 2015. Recent publications include essays on Rabindranath Tagore’s writing in English and Japanese writing in English in the early 20th century.

From Editor’s Desk

Literature of the New Millennium

I found this to be one of the most powerful literary experiences I’ve ever had. For anyone who gives a whit about writing or the human condition, New Millennium Writings should be required reading.

—Kane S. Latranz

"By the way, I really love NMW. The content is some of the most

‘rockin’ ‘awesome’ stuff that isn’t shy and crosses boundaries, pushes the envelope, winks at the nun—you know what I mean. I read LOTS of literary journals, and honestly NMW is up there in my top 5."

—Shela Morrison, Gabriola Island, British Columbia

I feel privileged to offer the Sixth edition of ILLUMINATI, focusing on

Literature of New Millennium, containing articles of academic criticism that

explore the various issues, questions and debates raised by the contemporary literature. This special issue was designed to help the readers (research scholars in particular) in assessing and formulating their point of view about the bright possibilities and dark contour of literature written in the last one and a half decade. Contemporary writings mainly deal with various issues: alternative sexuality (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender), Crime fiction, Chick lit, Campus Novel, Short story, Graphic novels, Diaspora novels, postcolonial novels and feminist novels. It also contains plays written and translated into English dealing with the social issues like hunger, transgender, eunuchs, Gay and Lesbian, Crime, etc.

vi

I admit that it was not possible to assimilate all distinguish literary trends and paradigms in this one volume, but I am sure that through it scholars will be in a better place to identify the changing face of the contemporary literature.

The 12 articles in the volume examine the issues like Japanese Immigrant Women, Broken family, postcolonial dilemmas, New women in chicklit. Hindi short stories, essays, campus novel, theme of identity crisis, etc. Article by Dr. Sudhir K. Arora titled Indian Poetry in English in the New Millennium: A Tour is a must to go through, if you have least interest in development of Indian English Poetry. Research article on English language by Dr. G.A. Ghanshyam, Revitalizing the English Classroom gives food for thought.

Besides insightful articles, there is an interview followed by three poems and five book reviews.

I have realized that one emerging genre-often called interactive literature, or new electronic literature breaks the bonds of linearity and stasis imposed by paper. It is because in this form the reader can interact with it. He is not a passive entity, rather he becomes the partial writer. Such prominent writers as William Dickey, Thomas M. Disch, and Robert Pinsky have tried their hand at interactivity for example when you go through Victory Garden, a hypertext fiction by Stuart Moulthrop you find a different experience. By the process of choosing which links to follow, readers determine the order—and therefore also the contexts—in which episodes of a story or poem appear. They assemble their own versions of a fictional world in much the same way that they piece together unique, personal versions of the real world from the fragments of their own experience. The text becomes a real environment that the reader can interact with.

Happy Reading

Contents

viii

JAPAN was still in a period of national isolation (1639-1854) during the Tokugawa shogunate, whereas California, which became a state in 1850, already was attracting immigrants from all over the world. The California Gold Rush (1848-1855) marked the beginning of the history of Asian immigration to the U.S.: Chinese coolies—many of them against their will—arrived in North America, the so-called land of opportunity.

On June 8, 1869, the first contingent of six Japanese immigrants arrived in Gold Hill near Coloma, California, under the leadership of John Henry Schnell, a German soldier of fortune and an ardent follower of Matsudaira Katamori, the last feudal Lord of the Aizu Domain. The Pollack Pines Press Congressional Record mentions that the Schnell party arrived at San Francisco aboard the side-wheeler China of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company on May 27, 1869. These Japanese pioneers proceeded to Sacramento by riverboat and then by horse and wagon to Gold Hill, where John Henry Schnell bought 160 acres of land for $5,000.00 from Charles M. Graner. In the fall of 1869, sixteen more Japanese followed (including It Okei, nursemaid to the Schnell household, which consisted of Matsu and Kuni). The colonists brought with them silk cocoons, 50,000 three- year old Kuway Trees (of the Mulberry family) for silk farming, tea plants and seeds, grape seedlings, five-foot long bamboo roots, and sapling wax trees. The colonists hoped to transform the arid California soil in order to grow tea and silk cultures, treasured in their native Japan. Okei was brought to the Wakamatsu Colony by Sakurai Matsunosuke, a middle-aged former samurai from Aizu-Wakamatsu, who arranged for her passage from Japan to serve as a nursemaid in the household of the Schnells several months after their daughter Mary’s birth. In 1870, after the Wakamatsu

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in and the Literary Portrayal of Japanese

Colony failed, its members disbanded. Some stayed in the U.S., but we do not know what happened to most of them. Okei stayed at Gold Hill even after most of the colonists had left, hoping that one day in a not too distant future, someone would come to get her; sadly, the following year, in 1871, she died from malaria and never saw her home country again.

The Meiji government was the first to authorize emigrants, known as Kanyaku Imin literally, government contracted Japanese immigrants, to travel to Hawaii, a practice that began in 1885 and ended in 1894. As a consequence of terminating the Kanyaku Imin program, the Japanese government lost control over the Japanese immigration population; government-licensed private agencies soon took over the recruiting of Japanese immigrants, and a large number of self-contracted immigrants started arriving in Hawaii. After 1895, one can see a rapid increase of the number of Japanese emigrants to Hawaii, and before long they began arriving on the American West Coast. For the next thirty years, the Japanese population in the United States steadily grew, reaching a peak in the early 1920s. But, by 1924, it began to decline rapidly. Looking at the evolution of the number of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii and on the Pacific Coast during the periods 1885-1907 and 1908-1924 reveals the evolution of Japanese immigration and its relationship with such factors as the 1908 Gentlemen's Agreement, various land laws, as well as immigration acts and laws periodically enforced during this period until the Japanese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1924.

Japanese emigrated to the U.S. to find work and to make a better life for themselves and their children. Japanese were willing to engage in manual labor at near-subsistence wages. Japanese men were employed as bellboys in hotels, as housekeepers, and as manual laborers on the railroads, for example. Many Japanese men brought their families with them; unlike Chinese women immigrants, many Japanese women could enter the U.S. with their husbands, as family members. However, most single Japanese men worked as laborers in the United States and did not have enough money to go back to Japan to find a wife, so they got married to a so-called picture bride. Exchanging pictures with their bride-to-be in Japan through a proxy, who also arranged to have their marriage registered in Japan, permitted the husband to bring his new wife to the United States. In those years—twice a month—women from the Orient, (specifically Japan) would disembark, oftentimes provoking unfavorable reactions among Americans.

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in and the Literary Portrayal of Japanese

Anti-Japanese protests had escalated every year since 1900 and many new anti-Japanese movements were organized. The first Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1908 prohibited the immigration of males as laborers; however, the parents, wives, and children of laborers already in the United States could remain, as could laborers who were already working in the United States. However, the 1913 Alien Land Law act prevented ownership of land by aliens ineligible to citizenship. Japanese (and other Asian) immigrants were prohibited from becoming naturalized citizens, but there was still hope for their children born in the United States to become citizens. Therefore, since the 1908 Gentlemen’s Agreement, the number of single Japanese males looking for a wife from Japan, using the traditional Japanese practice of meeting and marrying through pictures, Shashin Kekkon, escalated. New brides arriving in the United States soon became known as picture brides. Since Americans believed in dating and marriage based on love, celebrated in a church ceremony, most viewed the Japanese practice as immoral. However, Japanese men in the United States had virtually no chance of meeting eligible women, and the Japanese government argued that arranged marriages created harmonious households in Japan and that Americans should respect cultural differences. The practice continued with thousands of picture brides arriving, whom white Californians increasingly viewed as a threat to their control over a growing Japanese immigrant population.

On October 26-30 and November 1, 1915, on the first page of the Nichi Bei, Yamazaki Hokusui published an essay in six parts titled Shashin Kekkon Mondai (Problems with Picture Brides). His October 29 article included statistics on the number of picture brides who had arrived in San Francisco: in 1912 (879), 1913 (625), and 1914 (768). Here, consider that the total number of Japanese males in the United States in 1914 was

37,221: in California 31,676; in Utah, 1,445; in Arizona, 473; in Nevada

569; and in Colorado 3,058. The total number of Japanese children in

1914 was 5,549 boys and 5,279 girls: in California (boys 5,362, girls

5,087), in Utah (boys 64, girls 48), in Arizona (boys 10, girls 11), in Nevada (boys 6, girls 6), Colorado (boys 107, girls 127); and the total number of births in those states were 1,145 boys and 1,122 girls (Yamazaki Hokusui, Nichi Bei (The Japanese American News) Oct. 29, 1915, 1).

Many Japanese women joined their husbands, living in one of the early West Coast settlements, a formative stage in the process of cultural transformation or cultural adjustment to America, which all immigrants

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in and the Literary Portrayal of Japanese

went through. However, the evolution of Japanese women immigrants to the U.S. West Coast begins with the history of the Wakamatsu Colony at Gold Hill, where the grave of a young Japanese girl named Okei stands today as a solitary reminder of the past. Gradually, of course, increased immigration from the four corners of the world led to the formation of a hybrid culture very evident today in places, such as Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. However, until recently, scholars studying the lives of immigrants were primarily interested in the life of male immigrants, whose numbers were far greater. The experience of women, to the extent that it was described at all, typically, was told from a male point of view, as evident in two novelists I will consider next.

During my research on Japanese immigrants on the American West

Coast, I discovered the extraordinary life story of Okina Ky in (1888-

1973), which present not only his own life story but also the life of Japanese immigrants on the West Coast. While Okina shared many common experiences with his peers who crossed the Pacific to look for a better future in the United States, his life took a different direction. For ambitious young Japanese like Okina, Japanese-American newspapers became the most valuable vehicle of communication available in which to express personal opinions on important social issues and, of course, to describe everyday life in their community, thereby making newspaper articles an invaluable source of information for scholars. Okina became incredibly productive in this regard, publishing numerous articles, critical essays, and novellas under the pen name of Okina Rokkei (occasionally Okina Rokkei-Sennin). His works also appeared almost daily in such major West Coast newspapers as the Nichi Bei (The Japanese American News), the Shin Sekai (The New World), and the Taihoku Nipp (The Taihoku Daily News).

Specifically, I will look at his portrayal of women in the Japanese immigrant community in the early twentieth century. However, Okina was not the only writer to give a literary account of women’s life, which was every bit as tough as men’s, if not more so. But, in his many descriptions of women, Okina, just like his contemporaries, for example, the novelist Nagai Kaf (1879-1959), who, in his novel, Amerika Monogatari (American Stories), nevertheless adopts a sympathetic point of view, tends to subject women to mostly negative stereotypes (waitress, prostitute, picture bride, run-away wife). Here, I would like to examine how Nagai Kaf and Okina

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in and the Literary Portrayal of Japanese

Ky in’s stories and memoirs portray Japanese immigrant women and show how they consistently portray a certain type of woman in a negative light.

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in both traveled to the U.S. and describe America in their literary works. Nagai Kaf , who went on to become one of the most important modern Japanese writers, lived in Tacoma and Seattle but also in the Midwest, in Chicago and Kalamazoo, Michigan. He became a student at Kalamazoo College, then traveled east, living in Pennsylvania and New York between 1903 and 1907. His well-known memoir titled Amerika Monogatari is a detailed and gripping account of his American odyssey. Nagai spent a total of four years in the U.S. His journey began at the age of twenty-three and lasted for four years; needless to say, he was not a teenager but was older and maybe more mature than the average Japanese immigrant, who traveled to the U.S. on a student visa. He left New York and continued to France, which apparently had been his primary destination all along.

As I stated above, there is not much literature dealing with the lives of Japanese Americans, particularly Issei women or Japanese-born women in the immigrant community during the early immigration period. In addition, although many Japanese women traveled to the U.S., few of them wrote about life in America, whether in Japanese or in English.

I am interested in how male writers portrayed women in immigrant society, and I will focus on Japanese women on the North American continent at the turn of the century. By looking at Nagai Kaf ’s journey to the U.S. and using his Amerika Monogatari, as well as several literary works by Okina Ky in, who happened to be in the U.S. around the same time and who lived in the very same cities, I hope to promote a better understanding of the life of immigrant women. Both Nagai and Okina wrote novels about immigrant society and the life of Japanese people in the U.S., but their experiences, though apparently similar, were really quite different.

Nagai Kaf ’s father, Nagai Ky ichir , was a scholar, bureaucrat, and successful businessman, who visited Europe on government business and later worked for the shipping company Nippon Y sen. Nagai was his oldest son, and he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a bureaucrat.

In 1898, Nagai Kaf began writing short stories under the guidance of a popular novelist, Hirotsu Ry r (1861-1928). In 1899, he helped write and stage a Rakugo (a comic story). At around the same time, he dropped out of

Nagai Kaf and Okina Ky in and the Literary Portrayal of Japanese

the Tokyo Foreign Language School. In 1899, he began publishing short stories. In 1901, he worked briefly as a newspaper reporter and then began to study French. He was interested in the culture of the Edo period and, as Iriye Mitsuko writes, immersed himself in the lifestyle of a typical late Edo dilettante (Iriye ix); he took shakuhachi (bamboo flute) lessons, visited the Yanagibashi geisha quarter (the red light district in Tokyo), and frequented Kabuki theaters. As Edward Seidensticker mentions in his book titled Kaf the Scribbler, he was sent to the United States [because] his father had given up hope of making a bureaucrat of him, and had decided that a degree from an American university might start him on a commercial career (Seidensticker 18).

Around the same time, Nagai Kaf also became interested in French literature and devoured many of the French naturalist Émile Zola’s novels (which he read in translation). His novel titled Yume no Onna (The Woman of the Dream) was published in 1903 and told the story of a prostitute; the work is very Zolaesque and reminiscent of Zola’s masterpiece, Nana. As Edward Seidensticker writes, when Kaf first appeared on the literary scene, he was called an anti-Naturalist because he never could bring himself to admit that flat, seemingly passionless and objective reports ought to be the ultimate goal of writers of fiction (Seidensticker 14-15). But then the categories used in Japanese literary history are sometimes quite curious, since essentially European schools of thought were