Obasan: Naomi

Obasan is a powerful novel written in first person under the eyes of Naomi Nakane, who is the protagonist of the novel. The book centers on the memories and experiences of Naomi. The setting is Western Canada and the novel frequently goes back and forth between 1972 and World War II. The year 1972 is the year which Naomi is currently in and World War II is the point of time where Naomi and many Japanese Canadians had to deal with onerous difficulties and injustices.

Naomi resides in the West part of Canada and is a thirty-six year old middle school teacher. She is a third generation Japanese Canadian also known as �Sansei’ (pg 7). She has no family of her own. She has a brother named Stephan. He becomes a celebrated musician.

When the readers are first introduced to Naomi, we see that she is a self-contained. Naomi tells the readers next to nothing about herself or her life. We lack the basic information about her which suggests she lacks the basic information about herself. It seems that she is pondering, for something but is a mystery during the early pages of the book.

As the novel progresses, we learn a great deal about the questions that preoccupy her. As a girl, Naomi suffered various serious traumas: displacements caused by issues like family and government, interments and sexual molestation. She was also ridiculed, ostracized and faced racism nearly everywhere. Not only that, she also suffered the disappearance of her mother and the death of her father. The book begins to explain why she suffers; as she journeys through her past memories. She attempts to understand her memories further and figure out why and how all her tragedies happened. The book Obasan provides a long answer to the following question: Is it better to remember or to forget?

The experiences Naomi faced during childhood must have had an impact towards on her adult life. During her childhood, Naomi has lost nearly everyone who were close to her, including the mother and the father. While during the beginning parts of the book she might have expected the family to cling to each other but the hardship they will face intensifies when she was separated from the parents. She definitely was angry towards them but she is uncomplaining. She shows flashes of bitterness here and there and feels passionate anger about many injustices stacked on her family. However, she endures the hardship in silent stoicism

With the emptiness the parents left the two children, Uncle Isamu Nakane and their Aunt Ayako Nakane or known as Obasan (meaning aunt in Japanese) opened up their arms and took the nearly orphaned children. These children were not orphans in a literal sense but were spiritually. This is a major conflict Naomi had to face as she has to struggle to come to grips with her painful past trying to find an answer as to why would their parents make such decisions of leaving the children. Naomi was protected by the unwavering endurance of her Obasan (aunt) and the silence of those around her. Silence caused ignorance which had protected Naomi from the truth (which Naomi did not notice until much later in the book).

The characters in the book have different methods in dealing with their haunting past. To live a functional adult life, Naomi shut herself from their past memories and emotions. Stephan’s suppression and opacity are much more dramatic in comparison to Naomi’s. Not only does Stephan turn away from his past, he turns away from his ethnicity, his family and his country. Basically, Stephan is the type who �ran away’ from his problems. Naomi wanted to be like Stephan but takes a different road from him. Instead of completely forgetting, she wants to know; know the mysteries that cloud her mind. Uncle and Obasan believe