Imprisonment In Julie Otsuka's When The Emperor Was Divine

At its heart, Julie Otsuka’s novel When the Emperor was Divine revolves around journeys. Otsuka blends the journeys of many Japanese Americans into one, concise story. To make the protagonist family more relatable, Otsuka never names the family as a whole, or the individuals that it is comprised of. This has the effect that Otsuka’s story could apply to a large amount of families during WWII. The casual reader may never go deeper than acknowledging that the internment camp is really a prison. To understand Otsuka’s work on a deeper level, readers must ask themselves, How do prisons change people? Otsuka suggests that imprisonment makes people less motivated and less personable.

Early in the novel the Mother show signs of understanding imprisonment.

People have become obsessed with the idea of losing all choice and power. Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried” explores the concept of imprisonment in a war setting. The story revolves around Jimmy Cross and his men in the Vietnam War. The men carry physical and emotional burdens. Cross cannot stop thinking of a girl he left behind in the United States. O’Brien writes, “In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there” (O’Brien). Cross is so infatuated with this girl and her letters that he often finds himself distracted. Cross’ men also carry emotional burdens. When describing Cross’ subordinate, Ted Lavender, it is written that he, “carried thirty-four rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighted fear” (O’Brien). Fear had the most effect on these men. Many of them used tranquilizers and other drugs to keep themselves sane. They all feared different things. Some men feared dying while

Towards the end of the novel the war ends and the Japanese are released from the internment camps. When released, the mother’s personality changes yet again. If a reader doesn’t analyze this, they might think that the mother is simply happy to be out of the camp. However, this shift is Otsuka confirming the effects imprisonment has on people. The mother’s emotional states line up with time in and out of the internment camp. Once out of the camp, the mother resumes her normal life. The mother does this despite being extremely depressed just months before. Otsuka suggests the mother is able to do this because her environment changed. She is now with home with her loving family. Although the mother eventually returns to normal life, it is difficult at first. The internment camp left such an impression on the family that they continue to behave as though still imprisoned for a while. The first night back, Otsuka writes that the family, “Without thinking, [the family] had sought out the room whose dimensions- long and narrow, with two windows on one end and a door at the other- most closely resembled those of the room in the barracks in the desert where [the family] had lived during the war” (Otsuka 112). Because the family spent years in this arrangement, they feel more comfortable. The family’s eating habits remain as though they are still imprisoned. The mother scorns her children, “‘Don’t shovel,’ [the mother] said.