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.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Shocking Fact of Life”
The shocking fact of life referred to in this chapter’s title is Sone’s discovery that she is “a Japanese” (3). Up until the age of 6, when her parents tell her that she is of Japanese ethnicity like them and, as a result, ought to attend Japanese school, Sone thinks that she is “a Yankee, because after all I had been born on Occidental and Main Street” (18-19). Sone bursts into tears at the thought of going to Japanese school and thinks that having dual nationality is “freakish,” like “being born with two heads” (19).
Before the conversation, when they announce the family’s nationality, Sone had never seen her parents as Japanese, even though “they had almond eyes and they spoke Japanese to us” (5). That was only normal to her.
Sone’s father, Mr. Itoi, is from Tochigi-ken prefecture and studied law in Tokyo. He practiced law for a few years until he came to Seattle, a place that teemed with “promise and opportunities” (5). However, once in the US and barely scraping by, Sone’s father gives up his dream of continuing his law studies in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His thoughts turn to marriage.
Sone’s maternal grandfather, Nagashima, a congregational church minister from Tochigi-ken prefecture, arrives in the United States with his three daughters, including Sone’s mother, Benko. When Sone’s father hears of the Nagashimas’ arrival in Seattle, he immediately goes to pay his respects and seek the eldest daughter’s hand in marriage. The daughter, Yasuko, is already betrothed, so he settles on the second daughter, Benko. Benko is initially reluctant but eventually consents. Years later, Benko and Mr. Itoi’s children laugh at the couple’s wedding picture, especially because Benko’s face “had been plastered white and immobile with rice powder” in the custom of Japanese brides (7).
In 1918, the Itois buy the Carrollton Hotel on Main Street and Occidental Avenue, a bustling part of Seattle. Though the Carrollton, which saw its heyday during the Alaskan gold rush, has an old-fashioned appearance, Mr. Itoi vows to make it “the cleanest and quietest place around here” (9). The guests are all rough characters, namely men, who are dispossessed of work and family. Mr. Itoi strives to accept the ones who smelled like “plain, honest-to-goodness perspiration” as opposed to alcohol (9).
Sone, the Itois’ second child, is born in 1918, shortly after the First World War Armistice is signed. She is given two names, one Japanese, one European: Kazuko Monica. Kazuko means peace, while Monica is chosen by Benko as a reference to Saint Augustine’s mother. Sone, with her brothers Henry and Kenji, and her sister, Sumiko, grows up in the Carrollton Hotel’s renovated rooms and has a happy and boisterous childhood, where Japanese and American elements appear alongside each other, without having particular significance.
At that time, Sone is under the illusion that “the whole world consisted of two or three old hotels on every block” (14-15). She enjoys going to the Bailey Gatzert School on Twelfth Street and becomes aware of children who are different from her: hagu-jins, white people who “spoke a strange dialect of English, rapidly like gunfire,” and Chinese children “who looked very much like me […] but spoke in high, musical singing voices” (18).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Stubborn Twig”
Sone attends Nihon Gakko, a Japanese school run by etiquette enthusiast Mr. Ohashi. Sone initially resents the discipline but is enchanted to learn Japanese characters. She develops different personalities for English school and Japanese school: “At Bailey Gatzert School I was a jumping, screaming, roustabout Yankee, but at the stroke of three when the school bell rang […] I suddenly became a modest, faltering, earnest, little Japanese girl with a small timid voice” (22). Japanese school teaches Japanese manners, such as bowing with respect to teachers, using both hands to handle objects, and perfect posture.
Sone’s mother is relatively relaxed about etiquette, and Mrs. Matsui, an immigrant 10 years older than Benko who had known her father, “felt it her duty to look after Mother’s progress in this foreign country” (26). She criticizes Benko’s lax discipline and her propensity to stay up late into the night writing poems instead of resting for the next day’s work. Together with Mr. Ohashi, Mrs. Matsui aspires to turn Sone “into an ideal Japanese ojoh-san, a refined young maiden who is quiet, pure in thought, polite, serene, and self-controlled” (28).
These qualities are embodied by Mrs. Matsui’s own daughter, Yaeko, who sits quietly, “knees together, dress pulled down modestly over her ankles, hands folded demurely in her lap, and eyes fixed dully on the floor” (27). Sone finds Yaeko’s display of reverence unnatural and stifling, and she resists the transformation. Instead, she’s excited by the gritty goings-on at the hotel and the possibility of winning $3,000 for capturing a fugitive murderer. She constantly looks to see whether one of her father’s guests matches the profile of a murderer in the detective magazines.
However, it is the police who prove to be the true enemy when they arrest her father on the suspicion that he is a bootlegger—an illegal alcohol dealer during the Prohibition era. Making the arrest at dinnertime, the police mistake shoyu, a Japanese cooking sauce, for sake, a kind of Japanese rice wine. It turns out that Mr. Itoi was framed, and Benko enlists the help of Mr. Kato, another hotel owner. Mr. Kato gets Mr. Itoi out of jail by showing the card he had printed when he was the Japanese Chamber of Commerce president. Itoi is “apoplectic” and would like to see justice done for the unfair accusation and arrest (42). Mr. Kato, however, discourages him, saying that “the police have the upper hand. If you try to settle scores, there’s no telling what other miseries they might think up for you” (42). As a result of this incident, Sone develops an entrenched hostility toward policemen.
Chapter 3 Summary: “An Unpredictable Japanese Lady”
Sone generally admires her father’s ability to be “sober and self-controlled,” apart from when he opposes her wish to take ballet lessons (43). While Sone thinks the sight of ballerinas in “cloud pink tutus and satin slippers” engenders the realization that she “had to be a ballet dancer or die,” her father thinks that dancing is disreputable (44). To Mr. Itoi, professional dancers are like geisha girls in Japan, and even worse in the West, where, scantily clad, “they […] kicked their legs way up in the air in the most scandalous manner” (44). Though she is denied ballet lessons, Sone takes every dancing elective she can in school.
Unlike her father, Sone’s mother is “a lot of fun” and, despite her calm demeanor, “a quivering mass of emotions” (48). Sone attributes her mother’s behavior to her arrival in Seattle as “an energetic and curious seventeen-year-old” (48). Benko desires to speak English as well as her children do. However, despite her best efforts, proficiency eludes her and at school functions. She says “‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘thank you’ and laughed at the wrong time,” never quite understanding the conversation (50). Benko is unusually intrepid in attending school functions, as most Japanese mothers are too intimidated to do so.
On one occasion, Benko loses her way to her daughters’ Mickey Mouse Club function and ends up being mistaken for Mrs. Saito, the Japanese consul’s wife. At first she corrects the “gay, enchanting people” she meets about her identity, but then she gives up and enjoys the attention (58). The family wonder if the real Mrs. Saito had been taken to the Mickey Mouse Club.
Every now and then, a ship from Japan steams into Seattle harbor. The family dress up and go to greet the ships. Sone is impressed by her parents’ ability to identify incoming passengers’ origins by their accents and manners. A pink-faced sailor targets Benko, teasing her that her youngest daughter, Sumiko, who has “an olive complexion” and “huge, flashing Latin” eyes, cannot really be her daughter and must be foreign (63-64). When Benko tries to usher the children away, the sailor runs after her, saying he would like to invite her back to his private quarters. The family find Mr. Itoi, who stares down the rival.
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Japanese Touch”
Sone reflects that “most of the time my life rolled by in pretty much the same fashion as it did for my yellow-haired, red-haired and brown-haired friends at grammar school” (66). She celebrates all the American national holidays that they do. However, there are some special, Japanese occasions in the calendar year.
The first is Tenchosetsu, an austere occasion celebrating the reigning emperor’s birthday, when all of the youngsters have to dress immaculately and endure a ceremony that is unchanging from one year to the next. The Imperial message is delivered “in a style of speech used exclusively by the Emperor,” so that Sone can only appreciate the sound of Mr. Wakamatsu’s voice, without understanding his meaning (68). Later in the ceremony, Mr. Ohashi is shocked that two high school girls have worn hats to the occasion. Though the girls think that their hats are in style, Mr. Ohashi pronounces them an insult to the emperor.
A more fun event is Nihon Gakko’s annual undo-kai picnic, which the entire Japanese community prepares for a month in advance. Mothers cook enormous quantities of food, while children are bought new tennis shoes and participate in games and races. Sone participates in a “matching” race, where she has to find envelopes on the ground and match a card containing “kanji” with “ideograph” symbols (74). She is the second person to complete the task and runs toward the finish line, but falls over when her toe catches in the grass. The parents enjoy singing naniya bushi, ballads recounting Japanese classic tales.
On New Year’s Eve, Benko marches the children into the bathtub so that they can “scrub off the old year and greet the new year clean and refreshed in body and spirit” (80). They play Karuta, an ancient Japanese game, but forgo the typical Japanese fare of ozoni, a gloopy chicken stew, for a Western breakfast. At the Matsuis’, the children are expected to deliver a formal Japanese New Year greeting and refuse Mrs. Matsui’s offer of seconds. At the end of the party, Sone feels “tight as a drum and emotionally shaken from being polite for too long” (86).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first four chapters set up the Japanese and American facets of Sone’s childhood. Almost immediately, a distinction is made between the Issei and Nisei generations. Sone writes that for the first five years of her life, she “lived in amoebic bliss, not knowing whether I was plant or animal, at the Old Carrollton Hotel on the waterfront of Seattle” (3). Sone’s reference to primitive forms of life reflects her innocence and her lack of realization that her upbringing is either bicultural or unique. Even though her parents speak Japanese to her and her siblings, the fact that Japanese ethnicity and culture is separate from mainstream America is shocking and upsetting to her, akin to having been “born with two heads” (19).
Though she is convinced that going to Japanese school as well as her grammar school will bring “a lot of trouble,” Sone learns to switch her “personality back and forth daily like a chameleon” (19-22). She goes from being a boisterous, all-American kid at grammar school to a deferential Japanese young lady at Japanese school. Respect for authority and ritual is a crucial part of her Japanese education, and even playtimes are different from her Western expectations:
On the playground, we behaved cautiously. Whenever we spied a teacher within bowing distance, 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).
Whereas American mainstream culture seems one of spontaneity, Japanese culture is one of care.
Sone finds herself irritated with the expectation that she will be molded into the perfect Japanese young lady and feels that “life was too urgent, too exciting, too colorful for me to be sitting quietly in the parlor and contemplating a spray of chrysanthemums in a bowl as a cousin of mine might be doing in Osaka” (28). Sone displays faint ridicule for certain Japanese customs, finding them irrelevant to her lived experience. For example, she thinks that bowing is “practical only at Nihon Gakko” and not at the ramshackle hotel where she lives (28).
Perhaps with a Western reader in mind, Sone uses detailed sensuous imagery to convey the exoticism of Japanese ways. For example, when she and her mother are making maki sushi for a picnic, Sone considers that she “chopped vegetables, fish and meat into infinitesimal particles” to make the cylindrical, seaweed-covered rolls (72). However, her mother tells her that the cuttings are still too “coarse,” that Japanese food is meant to be “dainty as well as flavorsome. Smaller, still smaller” (72). Here, the fineness of the cut and the conception of a tininess smaller than “infinitesimal particles” indicates a scale that Sone’s own Western-trained eye cannot contemplate (72). Her parents’ culture is therefore exotic to her.
While Sone experiences estrangement from her own ethnicity, she also uses common Western stereotypes about Japanese culture. For example, she describes her mother as looking “tiny and doll-like” in her wedding photograph, alluding to a stereotype of Asian women as dainty, static, and well-behaved dolls (7). She also describes Mr. Ohashi, the manners ideologue at her Japanese school, as having “a facial expression cemented into perfect samurai control” (24). The samurai, a disciplined but deadly warrior, is also a well-known trope of Japanese culture. That Mr. Ohashi’s face is “cemented” with a samurai expression indicates his unchanging nature, the implication being that he remains exactly as he was at the time of his emigration and will never change (24). Rather than exploring Mr. Ohashi’s psychology, Sone leaves him as a flat character emblematic of a certain kind of Issei.
Still, despite her occasional use of stereotype, Sone also shows that her parents are unique characters with their own personalities and not typical Japanese immigrant stock. Her Gandhi-admiring father shows a typical American work-ethic and admiration for cleanliness: “If I have to manage a flophouse,” he says, “it’ll be the cleanest and quietest place around here” (9). Meanwhile, her mother is as lively and curious as a liberated American woman from the 1920s. She stays up into the night writing her poems, and she does not hesitate to enjoy her escape from the duties of motherhood when she is mistaken for the wife of the Japanese consul and lands at a lavish party that makes her feel “part of a movie set” (58). The event and being treated as though she is “an Oriental princess of the court” makes her giggly and nervous for days (59). Sone’s endeavor to present her parents as fully-fleshed characters, with both Eastern and Western attributes, runs against the dehumanization with which immigrants are described and treated. The picture Sone paints in the initial chapters will make what happens to the Issei in subsequent chapters all the more harrowing.
