The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

author: Julie Otsuka

publishing house: Knopf

published edition date: 2011

original language: English

number of pages: 144

genre: historical fiction

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka is a short novel – only 144 pages – but an extremely powerful one, distinguished by its choral narration and its ability to give voice to a collective history often forgotten. Set in the early decades of the 20th century, the book tells the story of the so-called "picture brides," young Japanese women who, between 1908 and 1924, emigrated to the West Coast of the United States to marry Japanese men who had immigrated to America, based solely on the photographs they had received. This historical period is conveyed with both emotional and historical accuracy.

One of the most distinctive elements of the novel is the narrative voice. Otsuka adopts a collective point of view, using a first-person plural that unites all the women protagonists into a single narrative entity. This rare and powerful stylistic choice immerses the reader in the collective dimension of the migratory experience and the sacrifices these women endured. There is no single protagonist; each woman contributes to forming a mosaic of hopes, pains, and resistance. This "we" creates a sense of solidarity among the women, while also maintaining a distance that allows for reflection on the universality of their experiences.

We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God. We developed a coldness inside us that still has not thawed. I fear my soul has died. We stopped writing home to our mothers. We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.

The novel moves through key moments in their lives: crossing the ocean, the first meeting with husbands who often turned out to be very different from the photographs and letters they had received, the exhausting labor in the fields, the birth of children, and finally, the shame of deportation and internment in labor camps following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent United States entry into World War II. Through short chapters rich in visual and emotional detail, the author manages to capture both the breadth and the intimacy of these women’s experiences. Otsuka restores to them their humanity and depth, going beyond the simple numbers to which these women were reduced in the dominant historical narrative.

Otsuka's style, spare yet poetic, makes the reading experience profoundly engaging. The repetitions give the novel an almost hypnotic rhythm, reflecting the monotony, fatigue, and pain that permeated the lives of these people. The use of the first-person plural, initially striking, becomes at times heavy and often redundant as the pages turn. However, it achieves its purpose: the individual identity of these women fades into the sea of a population that experienced this phenomenon. It is a "we" that is then contrasted with a "they," primarily used to refer to Americans, a people whose customs were foreign and unknown to the Japanese, and secondarily used to refer to the children of these women, Japanese-born Americans, who formed a segment of the population with a dual cultural and linguistic identity. Towards the end of the novel, the point of view shifts, moving to the perspective of the Americans who relate to the Japanese immigrants.

In conclusion, this novel struck me in several ways, allowing me to discover a piece of history I had never heard of before. In the historical moment we are facing today, it is essential to engage with readings that push us to understand phenomena like migration, to give voice to the individuals affected by it, and to recognize their humanity.