This past week we read All
I Asking For Is My Body by Milton Murayama. I really enjoyed this read and
several aspects of the book stuck out to me. The one area I wanted to focus on
was the role of filial piety in the novel. Before the reading, I had only
briefly been exposed to the philosophy of filial piety and I found it quite
interesting to learn more about its influence on the Oyama family. From the
very first chapter, we see the mom pressuring Kiyoshi into ending his
friendship with Makoto by saying,
“You
understand, don’t you Kiyo-chan? You’re a good filial boy so you’ll obey what
your parents say, won’t you? Your father and I would cry if we had two unfilial
sons like Toshio…” (Murayama 3)
At that
young age, statements like this would surely cause me to obey my parents too! The
quote above is just a small example of the continuous expectations the Oyama
parents have for their sons. As I read further into the novel, I learned that the
idea behind filial piety is to take care of the parents by bringing honor to
the name of the family and to perform tasks to support the parents. It is under
these notions that Kiyo and Tosh eventually end up taking on the task of
repaying the $6,000 family debt by working long arduous hours for the
plantation. I thought it was really intriguing to see the transformation made
my Tosh and Kiyo in regards to their roles as filial sons. Tosh was depicted as
the loose cannon son who couldn’t be depended on. He was the more progressive
and outspoken of the two sons and declares through out the novel
“Shit, all I asking for is my body. I doan wanna die on the plantation
like these other dumb dodos. Sometimes I get so mad I wanna kill them, you know
what I mean?” (Murayama 48)
So when Tosh ends up settling
down, getting married, and continuing to work at the plantation to pay off the
family debt, needless to say I was surprised. It seemed to me that Tosh never
accepted the role but was eventually suppressed into it by a deeper connection
for family respect than I had expected. Kiyo on the other hand does a total
role reversal for me. His mom says rather frequently that they won’t depend on
unfilial Tosh, instead, the family will rely on Kiyo. Truly, I had expected
Kiyo to end up chained down to plantation life and family debt, so when Kiyo
signs up for the military, I felt proud to see Kiyo break away. I was proud to
see him take his life in his own hands and generate some of his own luck. I
also appreciate the way in which Kiyo broke away. He didn’t say “Sayonara suckers,
deal with the debt your selves,” he promised to come back. He knew that his
escape from his role as filial son was only temporary and had always plan on
coming back to offer support. His loyalty was always with his family, he just
took the opportunity to grab some “freedom
from other people’s shit. ” (Murayama 96) And, luckily, it paid off.
Vanessa -
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting to note, and telling of the conditions and monotony of plantation life, that Kiyo was willing to risk death as a soldier just to experience and see another part of the world. Good reading of the brotherly role-reversal, nice work.
- Trey
One of the things that I found most interesting was the idea that the societies in which these characters live is a window into one of the "last surviving vestige of feudalism in the United States" (Murayama 33). Its definitely an accurate depiction of this society; the basis for feudalistic societies during the middle ages in Europe was the poor peasant class and there dependency on lords. It was a system in which the workers were tied to the land and never really given the opportunity or in that matter the right to move up in society. The characters in our story, Tosh and Kiyoshi, find themselves tied to the land more specifically to the plantation. There wages for work were barely enough to survive much less to use to get out of the plantation life. In the story we see two young boys with a thirst for knowledge but are pushed down into place not only by the plantation bosses (who crush any demonstration for unity or better quality in the work force) but also by there cultural heritage. Tosh in particular is reluctant to succumb to the desires of his father. Their father in a way becomes the land lord and the sons his peasants in which he requires them to work hard for how ever long necessary for the family as he had done. He doesn't give his sons the opportunity to seek better life because to him the most important thing is culture and heritage. In a way he wants his sons to be tied to him and tied to the land; both Tosh and Kiyoshi struggle with feudalism in both there work life as well as their domestic life.
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