37 pages • 1 hour read
Milton MurayamaAll I Asking for Is My Body
Milton MurayamaFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1975A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Japanese Family System vs. Individualism
According to Franklin S. Odo in his Afterword of All I Asking for Is My Body, Milton Murayama understood the themes of the novel to be “the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism” (108).
In an article titled “Japanese Family” by Anne E. Imamura printed in Asia Society in 1990, Imamura explains that the Japanese “family rather than the individual is considered to be the basic unit of society.” While Mr. and Mrs. Oyama spent their formative years in Japan, their children received a different upbringing, and as first-generation Americans, they are more likely to identify themselves as individuals, rather than as part of a family.
When his father forbids Kiyo from playing with his friend, Mr. Oyama describes Makot as “bad.” When Kiyo asks what makes Makot bad, his father answers, “Because his home is bad. His father is bad. His mother is bad” (9). Because the Oyamas see the family as the basic unit of society, as opposed to the individual, they do not consider that Makot might be different than his parents. For the Oyamas, the sins of the father are visited upon the children.
While the Oyamas consider Tosh to be unfilial, he really straddles the two systems. As an American, he understands himself to be an individual with bodily autonomy, but having grown up in a Japanese family, he feels the weight of his family’s expectations. That is why, unlike Kiyo, Tosh is unable to break away from his family completely. Even when his mother and sister disappoint him by both getting pregnant, he goes out of his way to drive by the house and shout his complaints at them. He is unable to disengage from his family, no matter how upset he gets with his parents and siblings.
Kiyo is able to make the transition because the older Tosh took the brunt of his family’s strong demands. Kiyo’s quiet demeanor is mistaken for obedience, and it is almost shocking how simple it is when he finally goes against his parents’ wishes. It shows that the ties that bind Tosh are purely psychological, but it is unlikely that he will ever be able to escape them.
The Plantation System vs. Individualism
Everything about the plantation is built to minimize the individual. The homes of the Japanese workers are identical to each other, while the shabbier homes of the Filipino workers are identical as well. Workers and their families bathe in communal baths, and share communal toilets.
While the individual is minimized, differences between the different cultural groups are exploited. The Japanese families are isolated from the Filipino workers. By keeping the groups from identifying with each other, the plantation can make sure that no strike is ever successful. If one group strikes, the plantation can slightly raise the wages, and count on the other group to fill in. Tosh recognizes the game that Mr. Nelson is playing. When he argues that they should have joined the strike, his father argues that the Filipinos scabbed when the Japanese went on strike in 1920 and 1922: “‘That’s why nobody can beat the plantation,’ Tosh said” (37).
The plantation walks a fine line between individualism and collectivism. Mr. Nelson does not want the workers to band together and unionize, so he has to find a way of playing one group off of the other. He does this by establishing a pecking order built around the sewage system: “Mr. Nelson was top shit on the highest slope, then there were the Portuguese, Spanish, and nisei lunas with their indoor toilets which flushed into the same ditches, the Japanese Camp, and Filipino Camp” (96). In the end, Kiyo determines that “[f]reedom was freedom from other people’s shit […] and [he] was going to have no part of any shit or any group” (96).
The two themes that Murayama saw in his novel come together in the following short exchange between Kiyo and Tosh. While training, Tosh says:
‘You see the dumb Bulaheads, they like it for their sons to be dumb. They like them to obey. They consider you a better man if you said yes all the time.’ ‘The plantation the same way,’ I said. ‘Yeah, we gotta fight two battles all the time’ (68).
Like in other, historical oppressive situations, the plantation controls its workers through a lack of education and a mistrust of fellow workers
Suspected Dual Loyalty of Americans of Japanese Descent
There are many American ethnic groups that have been accused of dual loyalty, but the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II is a stark example. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered 110,000-120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, the majority of whom were American citizens, into internment camps.
Relatively few Americans of Japanese descents were interned in Hawaii, and the novel ends without any mention of the camps. However, this idea of “dual loyalty” comes up in All I Asking for Is My Body long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Both Kiyo and Tosh tell their father to cancel their Japanese citizenship. They want to be purely American.
After the attack, some of their non-Japanese classmates harass Kiyo’s younger sister. Japanese people are not allowed to congregate, and the bank accounts of “Japanese aliens and organizations” (85) are frozen. In the months that follow, Kiyo and his family live under martial law. “Everybody was frozen to his job” (87), and even though they are not interned, the plantation functions as a type of prison.
Kiyo jumps at the chance to volunteer for the army and fight in Europe. Not only is this an opportunity to escape the plantation, but by fighting he will have earned “the right to complain and participate” (98). Kiyo feels that he must prove his loyalty to America, and this is at least partially due to the country’s treatment of Japanese Americans at the onset of World War II. The novel ends with Kiyo’s hand-scribbled note to his brother: “Take care of the body. See you after the War” (103). We have no idea whether Kiyo’s need to prove himself will cost him his life, or “[earn] him a right to a future” (98).
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