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In Under the Broken Sky, sisters Natsu and Asa Kimura must make the long trek to safety after Japanese rule in Manchuria comes to an end.

What I liked:

• It took me a long time to read this book. At first, I thought the book was simply not to my liking, but when I finally picked it up again, I realized my discomfort with the subject matter had more to do with my feelings about Japanese-ness and what it means to be nikkei. Having now finished the book, I would definitely recommend it to fellow nikkei readers who enjoy stories that encourage self-reflection.
• Nagai’s verses are incredibly readable and I am amazed at the vivid scenes she is able to paint with just a few words. Although I have never envisioned myself as any kind of poet, reading Nagai’s work, not to mention nikkei poets like Kenji Liu and Brandon Shimoda, has taught me a lot about ways of interacting with language(s).* Most novelists probably already know this, but I think there is much (for us) to learn by studying the work of poets. (On a side note, I also find myself thinking about the role of poets in Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress.)
• I would like to read this book in Japanese – if Nagai herself is the one to write it! The style choices of fellow bilingual nikkei/Japanese writers are always fascinating to me, especially choices pertaining to translation. In this instance, I am curious to see how Natsu’s personality comes across in Japanese.

What I learned:

• I really don’t know much about Japanese settler colonialism (is ‘settler colonialism’ still the term if the context is not US history?) in Asia, and I still don’t, but reading this book has motivated me to revisit the academic portion of my TBR, with an eye to how broadening my understanding of this area of history may influence my ever-evolving views on what it means to be Japanese.

Questions I had:

• In the afterword, Nagai links her work to refugee crises around the world, and ends with the line, “Nobody chooses to be a refugee.” I appreciate and respect the feelings behind this statement and I always like to see authors who are in touch with current events. That said, I’m curious about the context here. It seems to me there is a certain flattening of nuance happening, but I also wonder if I could be mistaken, because it seems odd that a poet of all people would skip over this deliberately. In this story, Natsu and Asa are very obviously settlers. They refer to themselves as such and they call their hometown a settlement. It is clear they do not understand settler colonialism/Japanese imperialism in the same way the original Chinese residents of Manchuria do. As Nagai writes, many Japanese settlers in this period did not understand their role in the displacement of local populations (I need to look into this more – would it not be fairly obvious that you are moving into land, especially agricultural land, that was lately occupied by someone else? Was this a willful lack of understanding, or were these settlers, perhaps because of their origins in rural Japan, truly so much out of touch with the larger picture of Japanese imperialism? How much “innocence” can be claimed here?). Natsu and Asa, and the other settlers fleeing Manchuria, undergo many horrible experiences and some do not survive. As a reader, it is not difficult to sympathize. However, does/should this sympathy take the same form as sympathy for, say, residents of Palestine? How about immigrants from Latin America? Nagai herself references 3/11 as another source of refugees. It seems she wishes to make a broader point about the treatment of refugees across the globe, which is certainly valid. As a US citizen, I understand how remaining ignorant of immigrant crises at this time is an especially shameful privilege. Still…I think it is possible to draw attention to refugee crises without necessarily erasing the different circumstances which cause certain groups to become refugees.
• If a Japanese or nikkei writer wanted to write about refugees, without being a complete cultural/ethnic outsider, what scope of experience is available? Nagai tells us she thought of this story while watching a program about the ethnically Japanese, culturally Chinese descendants of Japanese settlers returning to Japan from China in search of long-lost relatives. She also has a personal connection to the topic via her uncle, who was drafted and imprisoned in Siberia. Personally, I’m quite glad to see Nagai, a Japanese writer (and with a personal connection!), be the one to discuss this weighty topic. It would also be interesting to read work by Chinese writers who were witnesses or descendants of witnesses to Japanese imperialism in Manchuria. I raise this point because, in thinking about how Nagai linked her specific work to broader refugee issues, I wondered how many other ways a Japanese or nikkei writer could do this without, as previously stated, writing from the perspective of a complete outsider. Stated another way, in what contexts can Japanese or nikkei writers responsibly participate in ongoing dialogues about refugee crises? For example, some nikkei activist groups have been protesting the immigrant detention centers, drawing a direct link between these centers and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war. This seems to me to be a form of allyship. Does Nagai accomplish the same thing in her book, by linking the historic experiences of Japanese settlers to the present-day experiences of refugees around the world?
• I also think of 火垂るの墓. It has a similar theme – spotlighting the experiences of Japanese children during the war – but a different context. In both cases, it is not hard for the audience to sympathize with the plight of children who are victimized by circumstances beyond their control or understanding. However, what happens beyond that? Should we (Japanese, non-Japanese?) interpret 火垂るの墓 as a poignant symbol representing the perceived victimization of Japan at the end of the war? Is it an anti-war message? Does it condemn Japanese imperialism by pointing to what happens to those left at home? Is it ambivalent – both pro- and anti-Japan at once? The same questions can be applied to Under the Broken Sky. To be clear, I am not at all stating Nagai has a pro-Japan stance on the war. Rather, I am curious about the role that works like these play in shaping our understandings of Japanese-ness, particularly Japanese-ness as it relates to the war. How might these works fit in with Akiko Hashimoto’s analysis in The Long Defeat? (Read my post on Hashimoto’s book here.) How does Nagai herself see her work fitting into the existing literature and media about Japan at war?
• Is there a Japanese translation of this book? If so, how has it been received by nihonjin readers? I keep going back to Nagai’s statement that this book began while she was watching television. From my experiences in Japan and talking to my nihonjin family and friends, and even more specifically, watching television with nihonjin family and friends, I have given a lot of thought to how “fads” or “special interests” operate in Japanese society. I think of Japanese-Chinese people coming to Japan, looking for their relatives, and how Nagai writes that often, there is no one to greet them, because it is a one-sided search. This is similar to discussions I have had with my nihonjin friends, when they tell me nihonjin who immigrated to the US or elsewhere may have been erased from the family registry or simply forgotten. One person’s lifelong search is another person’s…dinnertime entertainment? This is not to say there are no nihonjin interested in making these connections – there are plenty. However, the medium (or intervention?) of television to accomplish or draw attention to these searches is certainly thought-provoking. How does the commercialization of these searches in Japanese media fit in with Hashimoto’s theories on Japanese war memory?
• I often think, in writing my analyses of books pertaining more specifically to nihonjin than nikkei experiences, about the line between what is relevant to me, in the capacity of my identity and experiences, versus what simply becomes passing judgment on matters that have nothing to do with me. Being nikkei is, like other diaspora identities, nebulous, and defined differently by different people. I’m still not sure what to use as the arbiter of “did-I-cross-the-line-or-not,” but I like to think that, for as long as I continue seeking the answer, I will continue to learn.
• A technical note – who determined the use of italics in this book? Certain words in Japanese and Chinese are italicized, but at times, so are phrases in English to indicate speech or emotion. I’m particularly curious because the novel is written in verse and I wonder, in a medium where individual words, line breaks, punctuation, etc., each carry so much weight, how much control did Nagai have over italicization?

Follow-up:

• I have been a fan of Mariko Nagai for several years now and I’m looking forward to reading some of her books of poetry.

*While I’m on the subject of poets, Chen Chen is also a wonderful person to follow online.