Analysis Of Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

Through the progression of the boy and his measures to cope to the trauma of incarceration, Julie Otsuka, author of When the Emperor was Divine, suggests a general basis of the emotions Japanese Americans have faced, as outlined by the Kübler-Ross model, or in other words, the five stages of grief. When the Emperor was Divine follows Japanese Americans through the perspectives of a four-membered family, from spring of 1942 to 1946, a period of time in which both issei, Japanese immigrants to America, and their nisei offspring were subject to anti-Japanese hysteria, through means of extreme propaganda and incarceration. Otsuka highlights the distinct lifestyles a Japanese American family faces, before, during, and after the overlying trauma …show more content…
After the family’s release from the internment camps, the family returns back to their previous home, where there is still anti-Japanese hysteria at large. One late night, the boy and his sister wander around the city. The narrator writes, “On our way we [look] for the place on the sidewalk where we had once carved our initials but that place was no longer there” (117). The fact that their names had disappeared from their previous community symbolizes that because of the extreme anti-Japanese hysteria within America, the community that they once live in is no long their world-- no longer their home. Despite the long lasting emotions of sadness that the boy and many other Japanese Americans face, the boy accepts the bitter reality, giving into the white American oppression. By giving in, the boy acknowledges that he cannot fight the insurmountable anti-Japanese racism that he faces daily. Within the Kübler-Ross model, when one is depressed and accepts his or her fate, not only does the victim produce a mental prison around him or herself, isolating them from others, but, in addition, he or she is overcome with feelings of self-hatred and insecurity. When the American soldiers come home from World War II, loads of anti-Japanese propaganda is spread; in result, the siblings write, “We [look] at ourselves in the mirror and [do] not like what we [see]: black hair, yellow skin, slanted eyes” (120). Another example of self-abasement, the siblings, especially the boy, follow the last two steps of the Kübler-Ross model, depression and acceptance, and see themselves as the enemy-- as inferior to their white American counterparts. By accepting the oppressions faced against them, they attempt to fully blend into American