The Enemy

The theme of racial prejudice is prevalent throughout “The Enemy” and inseparable from the act of its creation. “The Enemy” was published in 1942 at the peak of military tension between the United States and Japan. By writing a story from the perspective of Japanese characters, Buck offered her American readers a viewpoint they had not encountered before, showing a group that many Americans viewed as cruel—the Japanese—to be capable of great kindness, even toward an American. Moreover, by depicting Sadao and Hana as rounded individuals with familiar concerns (e.g., the safety of their children), Buck humanized her characters for a Western audience. Implicitly, the story aimed to show readers that what they had learned about Japan is not true (or at least not the entire truth).

The story itself touches on Americans’ attitudes toward Japan in its portrayal of Tom, who consistently expresses surprise at the kindness Sadao and Hana show him. It does not mesh with what he thinks he knows of Japanese people broadly, to the extent that he thinks of them as outliers; the war could have been avoided, he says, “if all the [Japanese] were like [Sadao]” (55). Tom thus functions as a partial stand-in for readers, articulating their likely views. More significant, however, is the story’s choice to primarily concern itself with Japanese attitudes toward America. By immersing readers in those attitudes, the story invites readers to recognize their underlying commonality with Sadao and Hana, who, like the story’s presumed Western audience, have learned to view “the enemy” as a monolith.

More specifically, Sadao and Hana have learned to view themselves as racially “superior.” Both Sadao and his wife have spent time in America, but the experience did not fully shake their prejudices, which also stem from fear. Hana’s anxiety about spending time alone with Tom implies that nationalist propaganda has also led her to believe that he is dangerous. Nevertheless, her and her husband’s conscious beliefs about Tom constantly war with their inherent human kindness. Faced with an injured man, they consistently find that they cannot do further harm to him, whether by returning him to the ocean, allowing him to bleed to death, or permitting him to be murdered. This comes as a surprise to both of them; again and again, they resolve to treat Tom as an enemy but instead treat him with compassion, which they then attempt to rationalize. After hearing the servants speaking, for example, Hana assures herself, “That they were right she knew too in most of her being. But there was another part of her which she could not understand. It was not sentimental liking of the prisoner” (51). That Hana and Sadao feel the need to explain away their sympathy illustrates the force of nationalist propaganda, and the story ends with Sadao reiterating his sense of white Americans as “repulsive.” Once again, however, there is a sense of hyperbole: No matter how much people remind themselves of their prejudices, Buck suggests, their instinct for kindness will prevail.