Stephen Nakane Character Profile
Propaganda painting Japanese Canadians as the enemy:
- comic books depicting war read by Stephen as a child. Japanese characters
are drawn with yellow faces and buck teeth
- given the game ‘yellow peril’ for Christmas. It’s a Canadian made game based
on war, in which the small, yellow pawns represent the enemy, the Japanese.
- Being older than Naomi, Stephen also reads the newspaper, which is full of
articles about the Japanese as threatening the security of Canada (“… the
newspapers are printing outright lies. There was a picture of a young Nisei
boy with a metal lunch box and it said he was a spy with a radio transmitter.
When the reporting was protested the error was admitted in a tiny line in the
classified section at the back where you couldn’t see it unless you looked
very hard” (79)… also pure hate-mongering: “A newspaper in B.C. headlined,
“They are a stench in the nostrils of the people of Canada.”
Reader is presented with these examples of how Canadian government and society
systematically foster racism and prejudice against anyone of Japanese appearance,
regardless of their actual citizenship. The novel shows how these ideologies are
absorbed by children, and how this affects children belonging to the persecuted
group. This is most evident through a close reading of the racism Stephen is
subjected to as a child, and how racism becomes internalized as he grows older.
Stephen is a Canadian citizen, born in Canada, yet because of his Japanese
appearance he is subjected to racially motivated bullying by his peers. The bullying
is both psychological and physical, he is frequently beaten up, and is constantly
being called a “Jap” by kids at school. Naomi has a memory of Stephen being told by
a white girl in his class, “All the Jap kids at school are going to be sent away and
they’re bad and you’re a Jap”. Stephen tells his sister “It is a riddle… we are both the
enemy and not the enemy”. This reveals the confusion that Stephen feels, unable to
make sense of the fact that he is being persecuted in his own country, by his fellow
citizens. He is torn between what he is told by his family, and what he experiences
on a day to day basis. While his family adamantly tells him that he is Canadian, and
he knows that he is native to Canada, everyone outside the family sees Stephen as
the enemy and treats him as such.
Eventually, all of the taunting and beating exacted on Stephen by his peers
takes it’s toll, and he begins to reject his Japanese heritage. This is most evident in
the way he begins to treat Obasan, the aunt who takes on the roll of mother for
Naomi and Stephen when their mother goes back to Japan. Obasan is the character
that most embodies the traditional aspects of Japanese culture, and Stephen treats
her with increasing amounts of contempt as he grows older. Obasan often mixes the
languages of Japanese and English, and as a child Stephen tells her to “talk properly”.
She also tries to teach Stephen and Naomi traditional Japanese folklore, and Naomi
recalls that Stephen “always scowls” when she does this. The lunches Stephen and
Naomi bring to school are symbolic of Stephen’s rejection of anything remotely
Japanese. While Naomi brings a typical Japanese lunch to school, complete with
riceballs, boiled eggs and chopsticks, Stephen brings a typical North American lunch:
peanut butter sandwich, apple, thermos of soup (139).
As an adult, Stephen completely rejects his Japanese heritage. Since his family
is his only connection to this heritage, he distances himself from them as much as
possible. As soon as he is old enough to leave them, he moves away, studying music,
then eventually making a living as a successful musician. His rare visits home are
indicative of his complete rejection of anything ‘Japanese’. He hardly ever goes
home, and when he does he is irritable, distant, and even rude to his family
members, particularly Obasan, with whom he barely communicates. He consciously
forgets how to speak and understand Japanese, and refuses to eat traditional
Japanese food. As Naomi puts it, “He is always uncomfortable when anything is ‘too
Japanese’”.
Clearly, Stephen’s rejection of his Japanese heritage is evidence of
internalized racism. It is precipitated by a nation-wide rejection of Japanese
Canadians. From every possible angle, Stephen is made to believe that his Japanese
heritage is justification for being severely mistreated. He experiences the
systematic, institutional racism of the government through displacement and
internment. He is subjected to media and pop culture that wrongly characterize the
Japanese as deserving of this severe mistreatment. The ideologies expressed
through both the government and Canadian society at large are absorbed by
Stephen’s peers, who bully and victimize him.