Etsuko Sone’s “I-Story” appeals to me in several ways. Nearly 50 years ago I spent almost a year in Japan, and the book reminds me of familiar places, customs and words. The history of the pre-World War II era, and insights into the culture both in Japan and within the Japanese community in Seattle are enlightening.
Because she was rejected at birth by her mother, Etsuko lives with the conviction that she is a person of no value. Etsuko’s older brother had died from SIDS, and fearing she was unable to care for a child, Etsuko’s samurai mother rejected the newborn and sent her to be raised by a nearby farm family. Etsuko did not know her true identity until she was ten years old, when she, in turn, rejected her birth family, and returned to “Mama and Papa.”
Out of school, where she met her younger sister, she marries a master kite builder. They move to Seattle in 1918, where Tadeo expects a job with Boeing Aircraft. With economic depression, however, the job does not materialize and he works on a fishing boat. (Think “Deadliest Catch.”) He dies when the boat sinks and Etsuko is a widow at 24.
By this time her sister, with her dentist husband, is also living in Seattle. When Naomi dies in childbirth, Etsuko becomes mother to little Hanae. In 1928, when Hanae is six, her father decides that she should go to Japan to be raised in the traditional way. So Etsuko takes Hanae to live with their mother/grandmother, who is essentially a stranger and remains emotionally distant.
Japan has changed in the decade she has been away. The government is moving toward militarism. Japan begins the Second Sino-Japanese War, and personal freedom grows more and more limited. Media censorship is imposed. Schools move from the classical to the practical—homemaking and first-aid. I was surprised at the anti-war movement within Japan, in which Etsuko becomes involved and where, so some extent, she finds a sense of worth and, eventually, a connection with her mother.
As the book ends, in 1939, plans are under way for Hanae to return to her father in Seattle, where life is freer and safer. Though Etsuko and her mother have a growing bond, it is a sad ending, for we know that Etsuko and her mother will experience horrendous sufferings and deprivation, and that Hanae and her father will most certainly face internment as 1941 approaches.
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