Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality: Reading Milton Murayama*

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 30.2 (July 2004): 155-72.

Joan Chiung-huei Chang Soochow University

Abstract Differing from the Marxists’ idea of “social class” which differentiates people on the basis of capital (money and land), social stratification divides people on the basis of other forms of symbolic capital as well, including family background, religious influence, language, ethnicity, gender, and educational achievement. The result of social stratification is not only differentiation of personalities but also the sharpening of inequality and discrimination. Japanese American writer Milton Murayama has planned a tetralogy for the Oyama saga, with three novels published so far. Each deals with a specific variation of the “plantation mentality,” understood as the mental attitude of people who, subject to a contract-like agreement, maintain a self-deprecatory attitude and toil to the point of self-sacrifice, as they are caught up in the intricacy of social stratification under the colonial surroundings in Hawaii. The present essay will discuss how the protagonists in the novels struggle to fight stratification and climb out of their “plantation mentality.”

Keywords Japanese American literature, social stratification, Milton Murayama, All I Asking for Is My Body, Five Years on a Rock, Plantation Boy

I. Plantation Mentality

Almost twenty years after the appearance of his first and by now classic novel, All I Asking for Is My Body, in 1975, Japanese American writer Milton Murayama published his second novel, Five Years on a Rock, in 1994, and four years afterwards his third, Plantation Boy. In Plantation Boy, the protagonist, Toshio Oyama, is employed by an

* A Chinese version of this paper was delivered at “Class and American Literature” conference, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, on 27 December 2002. 30.2 (july 2004)

exploitative architect, Charles Ames, for about fifteen years as a draftsman. Despite all his grudges, Toshio successfully keeps his temper in check until one day he realizes that his labor for three months on an extremely profitable project has gained him no bonus except a shoeshine. Toshio’s penting fury is pushed to the verge of explosion. After collecting earnings from this project, Charles asks Toshio to drive him from his house to the airport for a vacation. When Toshio arrives at Charles’s stylish residence, this is what he hears:

“Oh, Chuck [Charles], your boy is here!” a young, skinny haole1 shrieks. “Can I get you a drink?” “No thanks.” Couple more young men come out. Mainland haoles not yet tanned. “So he’s the tiger of Malaya,” one of them says. “He doesn’t look ferocious, he’s more—” “Like a trade number!” they shriek, kicking up knees. I’m boiling. Ames has leis up to his ears. “You ready?” I snarl. The boys follow with the suitcases. I get madder and madder as I drive down the mountain. When I reach the bottom, I let go. “You and your goddamn mahus!2 You all the same! You think we nothing but houseboys! I going show you some day! I going get my license and I’ll show you who needs who more! No draftsman in town working harder! Shit! I work around the clock for three months! I ignore my family! I push myself so hard I almost crack up and all I get is one shoe shine! Without me you nothing! You one parasite! Just like the plantation bosses!” (131-32)

Venting his emotion in pidgin, Toshio has finally let out his feelings. In fact, this episode is a convergence of his multi-layered anger at infantilization (calling him a boy), dehumanization (comparing him to a tiger and a trade number), degradation of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, homogenization of different Asian groups (mingling the Japanese with the Malayans), the stereotyping of Asians as servants, the mistreat-

1 Haole: Hawaiian slang, meaning “white person.” 2 Mahus: Hawaiian slang, indicating “homosexual or effeminate.”

156 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

ment by different powerless groups of each other, and the exploitation of the Asian by the white. Toshio used to be a laborer toiling on the sugar cane plantation, but now he finds himself still trapped in another devastating system: bureaucratic stratification in the architect’s profession. This scene eventually becomes Toshio’s epiphany, spurring him to emancipate himself from the domination of the haoles and to lay aside his “plantation mentality.” Murayama has planned a tetralogy for the Oyama saga, with three novels published so far, each with a different narrator. Five Years on a Rock is narrated by Sawa Oyama, the issei3 mother; it begins with her decision to leave Japan for Hawaii as a picture bride4 and ends with her resolution to face a family debt of $5,500 and to relocate her family for a new beginning. In the beginning, Sawa thinks her stay in America will be only temporary and announces to her family that she will return to Japan with honor in five years. The metaphor in the title describes how her life in Hawaii is an affliction and indicates how Sawa makes a contract with herself which she keeps through numerous labors. All I Asking for Is My Body is narrated by Kiyoshi Oyama, a nisei5 and the third son of the Oyamas in Hawaii; it begins with Kiyoshi as a naïve and filial son at the age of nine and ends with Kiyoshi volunteering for World War II army service. Kiyoshi needs to free himself from the familial contract to gain the right to control his own body and establish his manhood. Plantation Boy is narrated by Toshio Oyama, the number one son and a high school dropout. It begins with Toshio’s resuming his education and ends with his winning an architect’s license after sixteen years of education through correspondence school. He finally declares his determination to leave Charles Ames’s corporation to establish his own contacts and identity as an architect. Toshio says at the very end of this book, “I oughta thank Chuck for kicking me out of my plantation mentality” (181; italics in the original). The life of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century was tantamount to a history of victimization under the sugar cane plantation stratification system. First, the Japanese laborers were treated inhumanely. The planters ordered and imported the Japanese into Hawaii as supplies, and then worked them “like machines.” Occupations were assigned according to race: “whites occupied the skilled and supervisory positions; Asian immigrants were the unskilled field laborers” (Takaki 253). Then, based on a “divide and

3 First generation Japanese in America. 4 The foreign bride a male Japanese selected in America based on her photograph and other vital data. 5 Second generation Japanese in America.

157 30.2 (july 2004)

control” strategy, the Japanese were pitted against the workers of other ethnicities. They were either promoted as model workers to set an example to other laborers, or their job security was constantly threatened by the immigration of more workers from other Asian countries such as Korea and the Philippines. Murayama’s three novels so far all deal with a specific variation of the “plantation mentality,” which the present essay defines as the mental attitude of people who, subject to a contract-like agreement, maintain a self-deprecatory attitude and toil to the point of self-sacrifice, as they are caught up in the intricacy of social stratification under the colonial surroundings in Hawaii. Donald Ellis thus defines “social stratification”: “Social stratification is the institutionalized social arrangement that determines who gets what and why, and rank and status are associated with these arrangements” (181). Daniel Rossides has commented on “social stratification”: “stratification inequality is the condition in which social positions are ranked in terms of importance, rewarded differentially, acquired by individuals (and thus their families), and trans- mitted over generations quite independently of biological or psychological attributes” (12). As Celia Heller observes, social stratification is “a system of structured inequality in the things that count in a given society, that is, both tangible and symbolic goods of the society” (A Reader 5).6 Differing from the Marxists’ idea of “social class” as something which differentiates people on the basis of capital (money and land), social stratification divides people on the basis of other forms of symbolic capital as well, including family background, religious influence, language, skin color, gender, age, sexual inclination, educational achievement, media control, and governmental management. The result of social stratification is not only differentiation of personalities but also the sharpening of inequality and discrimination. Murayama’s novels have portray- ed different institutions that legitimize social stratification among people. The present essay will discuss how the protagonists in the novels struggle to fight stratification and try to climb out of their “plantation mentality.”

6 As Harold R. Kerbo asserts: Social stratification means that inequality has been hardened or institutionalized, and there is a system of social relationships that determines who gets what, and why. When we say institutionalized we mean that a system of layered hierarchy has been established. People have come to expect that individuals and groups with certain positions will be able to demand more influence and respect and accumulate a greater share of goods and services. (12) In the discussion and analysis of social stratification, some sociologists prefer a different term, “structured inequality,” to indicate that the stratified system is not random but “follows a pattern, dis- plays relative constancy and stability” (Heller, Structured Social Inequality 4).

158 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

II. Stratification of Languages

Murayama’s three novels echo each other regarding the history of the Oyama family and the theme of constant migration. However, the narrators of these novels are different and their viewpoints appear so drastically contrasting that, due to the diffi- culty of pinning down the author’s attitude, the narrators eventually become unreliable. In Five Years on a Rock, the immigrant mother Sawa Oyama tells the story in a language mixed with Japanese and English, and in a style juxtaposing an external discourse relating what happens and an inner discourse revealing how Sawa feels. At the beginning of the novel, the narrative of Sawa’s decision to become a picture bride provides a perfect example of a double-lingual discourse and a double-voiced discourse. Seeing her father reeling with financial problems, Sawa is bitterly compelled by the obligation of filial piety to give up the man that she has long admired and to marry herself to a stranger in Hawaii. She says, “It’d be the filial thing to do, wouldn’t it?” (7), a decision still tinted with reservations because of the tag question. Influenced by her Japanese teaching—“Shikata ga nai [...]. It can’t be helped; it’s fated” (8)— Sawa seldom expresses regrets for marrying an expatriate. Only occasionally does she let escape some muted outcry. Like numerous picture brides in the early twentieth century, Sawa marries because of familial obligations rather than romantic emotions. The double-lingual discourse, a mix of Japanese and English, is a realistic re- flection of issei articulation since many of the issei never learned English until after they arrived in America. Meanwhile the double-voiced discourse, one vocal and one muted, is a consequence of both cultural and linguistic influences. Being a woman in the male-dominant Japanese society, Sawa is in no position to express opinions and sentiments of her own except to express what is expected as appropriate from her. Besides, self-deprecation is essentially embedded in the language used by Japanese women, because the language forms they use are essentially divergent: they employ humbler forms of expression when referring to themselves and politer forms in addressing others.7 Interestingly, as a narrator, Sawa eloquently propagates, especially

7 As Malve von Hassell observes: for the issei, the Japanese language expressed and reaffirmed the hierarchical structures of Japanese society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this was particularly important with regard to the language used by women, whose “entire bearing, physical move-

159 30.2 (july 2004)

to her sons, the values that she absorbs from Japanese teachings such as absolute stamina, stoical taciturnity and unconditional filial piety, no matter how exploitative these values might be. Ironically, her language in public does not always correspond to the language in her heart; whereas the former presents her as a resolute upholder of traditional Japanese values, the latter discloses her bewilderment, complaints and exas- peration. Should conflicts occur between the public and private languages, the problem is resolved by Sawa giving up her individual desires for the sake of family. In All I Asking for Is My Body, the double-lingual discourse undergoes a transformation and becomes multi-lingual, i.e., a polyglot discourse of different “Japaneses” and “Englishes.” One characteristic that makes Murayama a pioneer writer in Japanese American literature is his use of Hawaiian pidgin and creole in his writing. In linguistic terms, “pidgin” refers to “a simplified language native to no one used for re- stricted communicative purposes” and is “much reduced in structure by comparison with other languages”; whereas “creole” is a pidgin expanded both in structure and function to become “the native language of a group of people” (Romaine 20). Ha- waiian pidgin hybridizes the languages spoken by local and immigrant groups—native Hawaiians, mainland Americans, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos—thus serving as a lingua franca for the people of Hawaii.8 When Murayama first tried to seek sponsors to publish All I Asking for Is My Body, he was rejected by many publish- ers who questioned the “correctness” of English in the book (e.g., the apparent “gram- matical error” in the title) and doubted the public interest in Japanese American literature. Insisting on authenticity of experience and sentiments and refusing to falsify language and the subject for the sake of ingratiating stereotypical conceptions, Mura- yama decided to establish his own printing press at home. In the event, his self- published printings of over 10,000 copies became “an underground classic and campus bestseller in Hawaii” during the 1970s and the book afterwards received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation (Wilson, “Review” 2; Kim 314n1).

ments, style of speaking, and language forms and expressions were supposed to reflect their status as well as their special feminine qualities as shy, retiring, and graceful” (561-62). 8 One interesting ambiguity exists in the origination of Hawaiian Pidgin. According to historian Roland Takaki, pidgin English “grew out of management’s need to give commands to a multilingual work force” (167). But literary critic Stephen Sumida, a nisei, maintains a different observation based on his personal experience: “My generation receives this daunting multilingualism and Pidgin not as a multiply fractured polyglot but as a language of our own, Hawaii’s Creole, that is our native tongue, born from the self-conscious efforts of our forebears to devise means for communicating across cultures” (“Place” 221). Actually, the divergence of their opinions results from the different experiences of the issei and the nisei, or to put it in another way, the differences in the origination of pidgin and creole.

160 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

Murayama created his literary authority with a unique language style and eventually gained public acknowledgement as a writer. Nevertheless, Murayama’s use of four languages in the novel does not form a carnival of polyglossia and dialogism. Instead, it implies stratification of different languages in contention. Michael Argyle has pointed out how various aspects of speech— accent, grammar, complexity, and other features discriminating high and low versions of a language—are endorsed by a society as an index of social status (123-29). Corre- sponding to Argyle’s observation, Kiyoshi in All I Asking for Is My Body states that the nisei Japanese in Hawaii speak four languages: “good English in school, pidgin English among ourselves, good or pidgin Japanese to our parents and the other old folks” (5). As he differentiates the languages into “good” and “pidgin,” the languages separate from each other not only on the basis of syntax but also in consideration of morality. “Good” English and Japanese appear to be authentic and correct, therefore superior; while “pidgin” English and Japanese appear deviant and corrupt, therefore inferior. Any language implying mixture and simplification seems undesirable. Literary critic Rob Wilson’s observation explains Kiyoshi’s struggle with pidgin and standard languages: “To speak good English one runs the risk of becoming ‘haolified,’ a homogenized American. But to speak only pidgin English is to inhabit a world of limited terms and values, too” (“The Language” 64). Metonymically, this struggle runs parallel to Kiyoshi’s strife with conventional Japanese values, particularly filial piety, because it seems to imply that one could remain filial if one spoke pidgin instead of the haolified English. Interestingly, the struggle of speaking the pidgin or the standard, and being filial or unfilial, reaches a temporary ceasefire at the end of the novel when the filial son Kiyoshi ironically enlists in the army without asking for his parents’ permission. A double irony is that only away from home does Kiyoshi have the chance to pay off all the family debt, by winning $6,000 during a barracks craps game. Filial piety is demonstrated in two seemingly contrasting ways: in Toshio who, in spite of all his curses and confrontations with his parents, faithfully stays home and provides financial support; and in Kiyoshi, who remains deferential to his parents but chooses to pursue a future for himself in the outside world. The examination of filial piety mirrors the evaluation of pidgin English. Wilson has pointed out: “Pidgin is at times a language of liberation, an act of vernacular defiance, and at other times a language of confinement, of social stigma and limi- tation” (“The Language” 63). This double nature in pidgin leads to the revelation that the language one speaks cannot serve as an index to one’s filial piety. By the time of

161 30.2 (july 2004)

Plantation Boy, pidgin English has creolized itself and become a language of a new kind: good pidgin English, or in a different expression, creole English. When Mura- yama first transcribed pidgin into literature, he was already aware of “a danger in being unintelligible in dialect” (“The Problems” 8). However, if unintelligibility is a possible danger in All I Asking for Is My Body, it becomes a merit in Plantation Boy. During World War II, in order to avoid censorship of their letters, Toshio corresponds with his friends in the army in pidgin. In addition to being a dynamic language with secret codes and exclusive properties, pidgin thrives as a language of directness and sincerity, in contrast to standard English which to the issei or nisei seems decorated with courtesy and formality. Toshio criticizes standard English: “Saying it in good English is like pulling your punches. You cannot let go BANG! with your pidgin anger” (159). One time when one of Toshio’s potential customers refers to the Japanese as “Japs,” Toshio blows up and gives him a good lesson in pidgin (169-70). It’s a manifesto resonant with self-assurance and ethnic pride. For all that, Toshio’s attitude toward standard English is not absolutely negative. He makes himself take lessons in public speaking, because he knows he needs standard English as a vehicle for networking and market penetration.9 The double-voiced discourse that we hear in Plantation Boy is an interplay of standard English and creole English. The transformation of pidgin from an index of shame and oppression to an expression of pride and emancipation corresponds to the theme of this novel: a transformation from the plantation mentality to a new consciousness, however subjective, of ethnic autonomy. Reflecting the diversity of Hawaiian polyglot culture, Murayama has promoted Hawaiian pidgin from a “secondary spoken dialect” to a “literary written language.” In other words, he has justified an authoritative discourse for pidgin English in American literature.

III. Stratification in Various Institutions

As institutions determine the norms and principles in stratification systems, they at the same time regulate the deeds of individuals. Murayama’s novels have explored all different pecking orders in various institutions. However, as malicious, devastating

9 There might be another reason for Toshio’s learning to speak in standard English. As he reveals to a friend, “I want to go into politics” (175). The answer to whether Toshio will make a career in politics may not be available until Murayama finishes the last book of the tetralogy of the Oyama saga.

162 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

and infuriating as these pecking orders can be, the author’s criticism of them often goes underground, waiting for acknowledgment. Within the Japanese American community, several pecking orders exist. In generational terms, the issei demand absolute filial submission and familial devotion from their offspring. In All I Asking for Is My Body, one day when Toshio quarrels with his mother, he yells, “You’d call it filial piety! It’s filial bullshit! [...] I’d have been happier as an orphan than having you as parents! You raise us like we were pigs! Oyama’s pigs!” (92). Toshio angrily accuses his parents of keeping having children that they cannot afford, and of distorting the meaning of filial piety by ignoring parents’ obligations and demanding children’s sacri- ficial devotion. As the quarrel reaches fever pitch, Tsuneko, one of Toshio’s sisters, crawls out of the bedroom on all fours, uttering, “Oink, oink, oink” (92). As a result, anger is turned into laughter, but at the same time the need to examine the meaning of filial piety as well as other Japanese traditional values is deferred. In Five Years on a Rock, a Japanese school graduation play, an adaptation of Hamlet (Hamuretto), offers a moral that one has to remain filial despite the revelation that parental power is merely a shadow of a ghost. Then in Plantation Boy, the parent-child quarrel continues but now is ritual-like and almost laughable. With so many grudges in mind, Toshio refers to his parents as “old farts.” After establishing his own family, he often sends his children back to the grandparents’ for the summer. In a haughty tone he writes thus to his parents: “You don’t deserve it, but you’ll have a chance to know your grandchildren” (106). Interestingly, this letter seems to correspond to a make-believe game the grandfather has played with his grandsons in the summer—chasing them while shouting, “Cut your prick, cut your prick” (106). As years go by and the issei parents are no longer capable of dominating their children, generational strife subsides. Still Toshio’s grudges never seem to go away. His repeated cursing of his parents for abusing his body gradually becomes a refrain, ringing throughout the whole novel like a ritual. Gender discrimination, a major concern in contemporary literature, is another of the stratifications disclosed in Murayama’s novels. Situated at the bottom of the hierarchical, patriarchal heap in the Japanese community, young women easily become victims of men’s frustrations in economically and racially stressed societies. Five Years on a Rock depicts Sawa’s story of how she toils through spiritual and physical drudger- ies in the Oyama family. Whenever a financial crisis occurs, Isao, Sawa’s husband, is able to leave the house and seek comfort at his men’s club, but Sawa has to stay home, soothing her afflictions by sticking to her toilsome routines. One time in a confron- tation with Isao, Sawa brings upon herself blows. Later that day, Madame Kanai visits

163 30.2 (july 2004)

the Oyamas expecting to mediate the conflict. On learning the purpose of Kanai’s visit, Sawa laughs so hard that tears come to her eyes. She explains: “It was just a husband- wife spat! It was nothing!” (114), and everybody laughs. The husband-wife strife is seemingly resolved. However, the happy ending tints the story satirically because thereafter the concern for women becomes off-focus and the issue of domestic vio- lence is silenced. Stratification also exists in Japanese society based simply on one’s family background, such as that manifested in discrimination against Okinawans. Okinawa, originally a semi-independent kingdom with its own language and government, was in- corporated into Japan as a prefecture in 1879, but afterwards the Okinawan people suffered a history of discrimination as a Japanese minority group, being considered primitive and exotic.10 Even after Okinawans moved to America, discrimination among ethnic Japanese Americans persisted. Toshio is aware that Okinawan girls are considered unacceptable in marriage by people from the main islands of Japan; but interestingly he finally marries an Okinawan girl and the marriage goes satisfactorily. Historically speaking, Okinawa and Hawaii have many things in common. When British explorer James Cook first arrived in Hawaii in 1778, he found a paradise-like land inhabited by “noble savages.” Before it was annexed to the United States in 1898 and officially became a United States territory in 1900, Hawaii was a monarchy. But the Hawaiian people suffered from being considered inferior to people from mainland America, a situation that continued at least until 1959 when Hawaii finally became America’s fiftieth state. That year, Toshio hears rejoicing over statehood: “Hey, we not second-class citizens no more [...] things gonna change at last” (Plantation 143). This optimistic view is both promising and suspect. Should prejudice against people from Okinawa continue, the stereotypical conception of the Hawaiian as inferior might similarly continue. It is ironic that the Japanese immigrants in Hawaii, who suffer from discrimination by people in mainland America, should hold a bias against people from the island of Okinawa. Pecking orders exist outside Japanese society as well: how the Hawaiian workers are exploited as cheap laborers and are maltreated under the plantation system; how the kibei (Japanese born in America but educated in Japan) are excluded from the Japanese and American societies, many of them ending up alcoholics and suicides; how the civil service hierarchy is arranged by seniority and race, and only the old white male can

10 For details, please see Kobashigawa.

164 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

move to top rank. Murayama depicts all these injustices in an apathetic tone, often masking criticism with understatement and giving very few comments directly target- ing the stratifications. As he analyzes it himself: “I would rather the reader discover things for himself, as an after-thought maybe. It means presenting rather than telling and being direct, not standing between the reader and story” (“Letters” 6). Even though authorial condemnations of the pecking orders in these three novels are not easy to find, the systems are so rampant that they form a network too corrupt to be ignored. An interesting thing about Murayama’s literary style is the discrepancy between theme and attitude of the narrator. In Five Years on a Rock, although the novel features the inequality a woman faces in the patriarchal society, Sawa remains a faithful upholder of the patriarchal system; in All I Asking for Is My Body, although the novel features the bigotry and dictatorship of filial piety, Kiyoshi remains a submissive and thought- ful son to his parents; in Plantation Boy, although the novel features the hegemony and bureaucracy of professional society, Toshio follows all the steps the system requires him to take to join the middle class in the end. This discrepancy on the one hand reveals an always existing protest of the powerless class against the unfairness in different stratifications, and on the other hand discloses a strategy applied by the weak to fight against the dominant class, i.e., not to work outside but within the pecking order for a possible change of their individual position. Nevertheless, this strategy may invite the accusation that it is the reason why exploitative stratification still persists. As Sawa was abused by her parents-in-law, she continues abusing her children; as Toshio is discriminated against by his usage of pidgin English, he continues legitimizing the authoritative status of standard English in his profession; as Kiyoshi is exploited by Japanese traditional values, he continues respecting his parents as the head of the household. Ambiguity arises as the intention to protest against and the intention to merge into the dominant culture grow indistinguishable from each other.

IV. Stratification in Governmental Management

The family history of the Oyama clan follows the international history of the world war years: World War I in Five Years on a Rock, World War II in All I Asking for Is My Body, and the postwar era in Plantation Boy. In keeping with the style, the fictional narrative is interwoven with factual events. Being a minority group with a

165 30.2 (july 2004)

skin color different from that of Caucasians, Japanese Americans were vulnerable to suspicion of their loyalty, and as a reaction, became more aggressive in proving themselves to the country. Murayama explores the meaning of patriotism by questioning the justification of wars and the essence of heroism. In Five Years on a Rock, Sawa presents herself as an example of women who are dogmatic followers of dominant ideology. Sawa is not critical enough to perceive that in the context of international war, a domestic war of racism is also under way. Two incidents after the First World War make her ashamed of being Japanese. In 1928, Fukunaga Yutaka, a nisei, kidnaps and kills a white boy. Hearing the news, Sawa is “burned with shame” (108). She exclaims to herself: “Killing your own was bad enough, but a haole! They were like the samurai and nobility of feudal times. Commoners had to walk several steps behind so as not to step on their shadows. How could he not know his place?” (108). By comparing the whites to the aristocracy in traditional Japanese society and the Japanese Americans to the commoners, Sawa has obviously internalized the then prevailing bias against Japanese Americans as inferior and secondary. Knowing the fact that Fukunaga com- mits his crime because his mother is forced to pay rent to the father of the kidnapped boy, Sawa turns a blind eye to the economic oppression Japanese Americans have suffered in American society and criticizes Fukunaga as “insane.” Her sentiments indicate how the minority groups cope with hostile surroundings by adopting a self- contemptuous mentality. The second incident happens when five young men in Honolulu, including a Japanese, are suspected of raping the wife of a white navy officer. They are released for lack of sufficient evidence, but afterwards the Japanese male is kidnapped and murdered by the family of the raped woman. Sawa comments: “Nobles and samurais can kill peasants, but not vice versa” (131). Upon Isao’s protest that American law discriminates against the Japanese because Fukunaga is sentenced to death but the navy officer is only sentenced to a ten-year imprisonment, Sawa replies: “One should never cross the line” (132). Sawa’s response represents the con- tradictory roles that minority groups ironically play: as both victims and upholders of the racist ideology of white supremacy. As a bigoted and nagging mother, Sawa represents a threat to the imminent manhood of her sons. To help ease the family’s economic stresses, she asks her sons to quit high school, suppress their sexual desires and delay marriage so as to extend their contributions for the family. Even though endurance of physical hardships usually brings men a sense of virility, Toshio and Kiyoshi find their toils on the plantation both a confinement and a futility since their earnings are too scanty to bring any improvement

166 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

to family finances. For compensation, Toshio and Kiyoshi try self-training in boxing, supposedly a manly activity. However, eventually Toshio turns down an opportunity to turn pro due to “family obligations” (All I Asking for 70). As for Kiyoshi, his frustration in establishing masculinity is more than obvious. His sexual desire for women drives him crazy at night, but the pressure of the family’s debt deters him from dating. Finding no future for continued labors in the fields or in boxing, he finally tries an alternative solution to his frustrating struggle with manhood, joining the army, also supposedly a manly activity. Even though military service conventionally carries a romantic association of loyalty and patriotism, Kiyoshi’s decision is hardly patriotic; he enlists for his own sake: to “get out of this icky shit-hole” and to earn “a right to a future” (98). Kiyoshi considers his decision a chance for freedom and masculinity, but as literary critic Sau-ling Wong has prophetically noticed: “he appears oblivious to the fact that the military is, if anything, an even more rigidly ranked and paternalistic institution than the plantation” (162). The truth that the military is another stratified society does not manifest itself until we arrive at Plantation Boy. In 1942, the U. S. government decided to form a unit in the army exclusively with Japanese Americans: the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a nisei unit with a majority of Ha- waiians.11 On February 1, 1943, President Roosevelt announced the establishment of the 442nd with the famous words: “Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry” (Niiya 163). As idealistic as these words were, Roosevelt’s statement proves ironic. The military treats the 442nd differently from other units, basically in a racist sense. Froggy Yasui, a returning soldier in Plantation Boy, talks about the assault in Italy which cracks the Gothic Line, weakening the Germans in the European theater: “the 100/442 could’ve been the first unit into Rome, but they got held back just outside of Rome so that another unit could get the honor” (Plantation Boy 55).12 No wonder the soldiers of the 442nd believe that for them this is a war with two enemies: “the Nazis and prejudice at home” (Plantation Boy 34). In Plantation Boy, the returning soldiers, welcomed as heroes, are asked to relate their heroic deeds on the battlefield. Ironically, they appear feeble and their stories dis-

11 Factors behind the formation of this unit had to do with two issues: countering Japanese propa- ganda which emphasized the discrimination Japanese Americans faced in America, and molding the image of America in the international realm as a leader in democracy and freedom. See Niiya, ed. 163. 12 100/442 refers to the combination of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion. The 100th Infantry Battalion was originally made up of nisei from Hawaii and in 1944 became the first battalion of the 442nd. The 442nd compiled an impressive battle record: it suffered the highest casualty rate and was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in American military history. See Niiya, ed. 164 and 327.

167 30.2 (july 2004)

turbing. Froggy returns home walking with a cane, concerned lest his handicapped body cost him a job; he complains to Toshio how nisei soldiers were used as cannon fodder in the battle: “A regular human butcher shop. Blood-blood-blood, bloody legs, arms, heads oozing brains, guts spilling, blood, dirt, and shit. Minute ago that was your buddy!” (45). Another nisei, Seiji Nakama, returns home to a big welcome from his family. Arriving visitors ask where he has been wounded and what war is like; Seiji is reticent and all he says is how a comrade was shot through his helmet the day after he had given Seiji his watch—a ghastly gesture portending his death (59). Kiyoshi returns home safely. His father throws a big party for him and the guests come “expecting to hear stories of heroism,” but Kiyoshi talks “like a broken record” and cannot satisfy the guests’ curiosity (64). If the war cannot be justified, heroism can hardly have meaning and heroes can hardly exist. Kiyoshi’s depression results from the irony that after he has gained physical freedom from the domination of his family, he simply gives away this autonomy to the war when he enlists in the army. The Japanese American soldiers have used their bodies to prove their patriotism to the country; however, the loyalty proved in the war does not automatically improve the status of the Japanese in society. After the war, when men return to the plantations, the occupational structure stratifies employment according to race as before, and discrimination against the Japanese continues in Murayama’s novel. It seems that the nisei soldiers have defeated their enemy in the international battle, but have not yet prevailed in the domestic realm.

V. A Tentative Ending

Murayama’s first novel, All I Asking for Is My Body, has invited different comments on its ending. Murayama originally named this story “The Family Debt” or “The Family in a Hole” (“Remarks” 60) because a financial perplexity that threatens to bury the family in perpetual toil underlies the book. In the development of the story, family debt keeps piling up and the hope for freedom from hardships keeps receding, but at the end of the novel, the problem is suddenly solved by Kiyoshi’s roll of the dice in the craps game. Arnold Hiura recalls in a conference discussion how his students criticized the ending as “an easy way out” (“Questions and Answers” 67). In defense of the novel, Hiura interprets the ending as “a symbolic device” because it represents a phenomenon in reality that almost all the plantation families then lived with debt but eventually

168 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

worked themselves out of it (“Questions and Answers” 67). Rob Wilson originally thought that “the book is weakest at its ending, its attempt to resolve the tensions in the plot between conformity to tradition and the will to self-determination” (“Review” 4). The good luck in the game, he said, is the author’s deus ex machina, “a stroke of unmerited good fortune which allows the book to close comically” (“Review” 4). But soon afterwards he changed his opinion:

It seems to me that luck and bad luck are important concepts in the book, and that in the ending, what the character does is to immerse himself in the concept of luck with a kind of absolute concentration and courage, and actually overcomes the concept. It’s sort of a way of getting beyond the past and making a new start. (“Questions and Answers” 68)

Stephen Sumida also speaks for the ending:

[T]he novel’s ending is not a deus ex machina [...]. With regard to the novel’s plot, the dice game underscores Kiyo’s sudden entrance into a world where relatively large sums of money continually change hands, compared with the closed, stagnant economic life in the plantation community. This new world of the army barracks is no less realistic, certainly, than the plantation. But whereas Kiyo’s winning the money in such a sudden development might be expected to come as a given at a story’s Aristotelian beginning, here it comes at the end. We are left wondering, then, of the win’s consequences, especially for Kiyo. (And the View 136)

Both Wilson and Sumida perceive an invitation for future development of the Oyama story at the end of All I Asking for Is My Body, because the ending arrives too quickly to wrap up all the controversial issues raised in this novel. With the appearance of Murayama’s second and third novels, the quick ending of the first novel becomes explicable in two aspects: the style and the theme. In terms of the style of Murayama’s works, Five Years on a Rock also ends as an unfinished story. This novel details the origin of the Oyama family in Hawaii and provides a historical and cultural explanation of the despotic nature of filial piety. It ends with Sawa’s realization that she will not be able to return to Japan as she has expected, and with her decision to move to a new place to shake off the bad luck that has stalked her family;

169 30.2 (july 2004)

but the ending remains tentative because continuing financial stress means the future of the Oyamas remains unknown. Sawa has released herself from the illusionary hope of returning to Japan, but she may have saddled herself with another illusion, that she will be able to settle her family in Hawaii. The option of relocating the family, though financially unpromising, brings the hope of ridding the Murayama family of the plantation mentality typical of Japanese-based stratification cultures, but at the same time it confines Sawa to the “plantation mentality” of the stratified sugar cane economic system. All I Asking for Is My Body ends with Kiyoshi’s winning in a gamble a chance to pay off the family debt and free himself from “this prison of filial piety” (102); but this ending is tentative because Kiyoshi’s future is haunted by the imminent danger and unpredictability of war. Kiyoshi has jumped from the confinement of his family into another imprisonment, namely the military. The instant luck in the craps game, though too good to be convincing, promises to rid the Murayama family of the plantation mentality implicit in the sugar cane stratification system, but at the same time leads Kiyoshi to the “plantation mentality” of the military stratification system. In Plantation Boy, the Oyama nisei find themselves “American names” and move to different places of the United States, and the novel ends with Toshio’s getting his architect license. His resolution to establish his own company may indicate his success, and perhaps also the success of his siblings, of climbing out of plantation mentality, but the ending still provides no closure because Toshio himself expresses more concern than confidence about his future. He knows well that established architects already monopolize the architecture business and his license is possibly a “certificate to star- vation” for his family. Nevertheless, Toshio still determines to go after what he desires. His success in climbing the social ladder, achieved through ruthless professional competition, promises to free the Murayama family of the plantation mentality of the sugar cane stratification, but at the same time subjects Toshio to the “plantation mentality” of occupational pecking orders. Kiyoshi has written to Toshio at the end of the novel: “You never win by playing it safe” (180); Toshio’s adventurous spirits may win him profit, just as Kiyoshi won in the craps game. Whether Toshio will succeed and the plantation-like exploitation will stop haunting the Oyama family remains hidden, pending the last novel of the Oyama tetralogy. The ending of All I Asking for Is My Body is also significant in terms of the theme of Murayama’s works. As Kiyoshi puts it: “In gambling it was dog eat dog, every dog was after something for nothing, you never gave a dog an even break” (103). The image of “dog eat dog” brings back all the issues in the predatory stratification and

170 Chang: Social Stratification and Plantation Mentality

pecking orders disclosed in the novel, in terms of language, social class and racial conflicts. Therefore, the ending may be comic on the surface but thrilling in reality, because it symbolizes in a brutal scene how contention can eat up people. The cutting theme of the first novel, exploitative social stratification, is found omnipresent in the second and third novels, as we see the characters strive to free themselves from one stratification only to fall trapped in another. Toshio may have shed for himself, and his family as well, the “plantation mentality” of controlling stratifications in family, military and ethnicity based communities, only to find that an equally ghastly stratification, that of a society that stresses educational credentials, material possessions, and professional connections, may be waiting for him in the last part of the Oyama tetralogy. Different social stratifications have become related, collaborative, and omnipresent.

Works Cited Argyle, Michael. The Psychology of Social Class. London: Routledge, 1994. Chock, Eric and Jody Manabe, eds. Writers of Hawaii: A Focus on Our Literary Heritage. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge, 1981. Ellis, Donald. Crafting Society: Ethnicity, Class, and Communication Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999. Heller, Celia S., ed. Structured Social Inequality. New York: MacMillan, 1969. ——, ed. Structured Social Inequality: A Reader in Comparative Social Stratification. 2nd ed. New York: MacMillan, 1987. Kerbo, Harold R. Social Stratification and Inequality. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Kim, Elaine. Asian American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1982. Kobashigawa, Ben. “On the History of the Okinawans in North America.” Amerasia 12.2 (1985-1986): 29-42. Murayama, Milton. All I Asking for Is My Body. San Francisco: Supa P, 1975. Hono- lulu: U of Hawaii P, 1988. ——. Five Years on a Rock. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1994. ——. “Letters.” Bamboo Ridge 5 (Dec. 1979-Feb. 1980): 6-7. ——. Plantation Boy. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1998. ——. “The Problems of Writing in Dialect and Mixed Languages.” Bamboo Ridge 5 (Dec. 1979-Feb. 1980): 8-10. ——. “Remarks by Milton Murayama, October 16, 1980.” Chock and Manabe, eds. 59-61.

171 30.2 (july 2004)

Niiya, Brian, ed. Encyclopedia of Japanese American History. Updated ed. New York: Checkmark, 2001. “Questions and Answers.” Conference Discussion. Chock and Manabe, eds. 67-69. Romaine, Suzanne. “Hau fo rait pijin: Writing in Hawai’i Creole English.” English Today 38.10.2 (April 1994): 20-24. Rossides, Daniel W. Social Stratification: The Interplay of Class, Race, and Gender. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. Sumida, Stephen. And the View from the Shore: Literary Traditions of Hawai’i. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1991. ——. “Place, History, and the Concept of the ‘Local’ in Hawaii’s Asian/Pacific Literatures.” Reading the Literatures of Asian America. Ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Amy Ling. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1992. 215-37. Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror. Boston: Litter Brown, 1993. von Hassell, Malve. “Issei Women: Silences and Fields of Power.” Feminist Studies 19.3 (Fall 1993): 549-69. Wilson, Rob. “The Language of Confinement and Liberation in Milton Murayama’s All I Asking for Is My Body.” Chock and Manabe, eds. 62-65. ——. “Review: All I Asking for Is My Body.” Bamboo Ridge 5 (Dec 1979-Feb. 1980): 2-5. Wong, Sau-ling Cynthia. Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Ex- travagance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.

About the Author Joan Chiung-huei Chang is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Soochow University, Taipei, Taiwan. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of Transforming Chinese American Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 2000) and the editor of The Globalization of Comparative Literature: Asian Initiatives (Taipei: Soochow U, 2004). Her recent publications include “Reading Kyoko Mori: Demystifying the Ideals of Women, Asian Im- migrants and Diaspora,” Journal of Feminist Studies in English Literature 10.2 (Winter 2002): 43-60; “Conflicts between Nation and Family,” Journal of American Studies 32.2 (Winter 2000): 379-99. Her research interests include Asian American literature and the theory of autobiography. She teaches courses in American and British literatures.

[Received 6 February 2004; accepted 28 May 2004; revised 7 June 2004]

172