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Nori, written and illustrated by Rumi Hara, is a graphic novel depicting the day-to-day adventures of a girl growing up in Osaka in the 1980s.

What I liked:

• Hara is interesting to me because she appears to be shin-issei, an identity that occupies a nebulous space within nikkei and/or ‘Japanese American’ communities. I do not know anything about Hara’s personal experiences in her time here, so I cannot speak to the exact perspective she brings to her work, but I believe certain distinctions can likely be drawn between her perspective and the perspective of, for example, a yonsei or gosei creator. I wonder about the decisions Hara made when she wrote the text for Nori. How did she decide on her preferred English translation for distinctly Japanese text, such as song lyrics and sounds?
• Although my family is not based in Osaka (except, possibly, a relative or two?), I saw many familiar references in Hara’s settings, which made the story feel very nostalgic. For me, the familiarity of the settings also helped to offset the distinct creepiness of Hara’s character designs. I do not know if she is emulating a certain style, or if this is the style she brings to all of her work, but I did not find any of the characters particularly cute or visually appealing. Instead, the appearance of the characters emphasized the dreamlike quality of the book, specifically the kind of dream where, even if things appear benign on the surface, you know some kind of threat or unease is lurking just out of sight, making you want to get to a place of safety as soon as possible (I have never studied psychology, but I’d be curious to know the meaning of dreams like this). The potential intersections between dreams and memory are fascinating to me, especially when considered a step further in the context of intergenerational trauma in WWII JA history. Given Hara’s background, I do not believe the JA history piece applies to her, but I did find myself thinking about intergenerational trauma and memory during the scenes when the elders recount their wartime memories. It was interesting that the shopkeepers encourage Nori and Hana to go to Hawaii as a way to validate and/or “make up” for their own struggles and hard work. I need to read up on nihonjin perspectives of Hawaii. Apart from being a perceived destination for immigrants, what else does Hawaii represent in the minds of nihonjin, specifically nihonjin who stay in Japan? Is there any thought given to the politics of painting Hawaii as a vacation paradise, without regard for Native Hawaiian rights? How might such a discussion be linked to ongoing changes in Japan’s own tourist economy, or, alternatively/additionally, to Japan’s relationship with indigenous peoples such as Uchinaanchu and Ainu?

What I learned:

• How much has the canon of Japanese children’s songs changed over time? I grew up with songs taught to me by family members, some of which resurfaced years later in weekend Japanese school. Even as a child, I had the sense many of the songs had long histories, maybe even very specific origin stories, but I’ve never investigated this feeling to see if it’s true. The events of Nori take place about a decade before my childhood memories in Japan, yet I recognized every single one of the songs, once I figured out the translation from English to Japanese. (On a separate note, there is an odd sense of disconnect, trying to translate song lyrics that I never thought of in English before, and then seeing if they matched what Hara had written, to try to identify the song.) I was not expecting to be able to identify each of Hara’s cultural references so on-the-dot and this makes me wonder about the evolution (or lack thereof) of Japanese children’s culture in the postwar years (maybe even the pre-war years, if the war did not, in fact, constitute a major shifting point in this particular area of Japanese culture).

Questions I had:

• To be honest, I have not checked, but has Hara published a Japanese edition of this book? If not, are there plans to do so? I feel the story would read very differently in Japanese and I’m curious to know what Nori sounds like, what sort of character she embodies, in her native language.
• Does Hara have an intended audience for this book? Since the book was published in English, does she not envision a non-English-reading audience? For example, does she have any desire for nihonjin readers (specifically, those who do not normally read in English) to read this book?

Follow-up:

• Incidentally, I recently bought Hara’s newest book, which made me remember that Nori was buried in my TBR.