When the Emperor Was Divine

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Summary: When the Emporor Was Divine
Review: "When the Emperor Was Divine" by Julie Otsuka tells the story of an anonymous family who suffers during the time of the internment of Japanese ¨C American citizens during World War II. Right after the attack on Peal Harbor, evacuation orders was posted everywhere stating that whoever of Japanese background was supposed to move out of town. One evening, in the middle of the night, the father of the family was taken away from the FBI for questioning. The mother after seeing the evacuation poster decided to go to that internment with her son and daughter. It was a long and miserable train ride. They weren't used to the environment. They were surrounded by wired fences, wooden towers and guards. The two kids had nothing to do. The weather is always terrible. They had to go through harsh seasons in the desert. The environment started to drive them insane. The mother had no strength for anything, she didn't want to eat and slept all the time. After the war, they were sent home. Their home was vandalized. They had returned to their normal lifestyle. Except that there was still a Japanese hatred going on. For example, the boy's and the girl's friends whom they used to be very close were trying to avoid them or even discriminate them. At the end of the book, their father was sent back home. Their lives weren't really the same anymore. The father changed so much. His physical and mental appearances were not the same as before. He turned into a sorrow and a lost person not knowing what to do. The mother works will he stays at home and wonders. Their lives have been affected and have been changed by the prejudice and war.
I really liked this book because the author, Julie Otsuka, gave us the reader a very vivid portrait of the fears, confusion for the family in the internment camps. This book gives us another point of view not from an American but from Japanese. It is written in a melancholic vocabulary. Throughout the book, the tone of this book is somewhat sad. It is showed by the descriptions of the nature and weather. But there is only one passage of the book where there is a bright happiness. It is one of the boy¡¯s dream where there is ¡°a beautiful wooden door the size of a pillow. Behind it is a second door, and behind that is a picture of the emperor that no one is allowed to see because the emperor is holy and divine ¨C a god.¡± I have learned a lot from this book. How the internment prisoners were treated and how there life had affected their lives.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking picture of WWII Japanese internment camps
Review: A national embarrassment that I suppose seemed justified at the time is behind When the Emperor was Divine. Never diving into melodrama, the book follows the story of a woman and her 2 children who move to an internment camp after her husband is arrested on conspiracy charges. Enduring the filth and cramped quarters of the camps for 3 years, she eventually returns to Berkeley to a hostile welcome and a home that has been vandalized.
It's the matter-of-fact tone of the writing (in the face of blatant injustice) that is so compelling. Anger has no place in the voice of the author; she leaves it to her readers to experience the passion of her unspoken rage for her.
Superb.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, jebus
Review: I admit that I do not feel much sympathy for Japan around the time of World War II. I understand that the principle of sending the Japanese to internment camps was wrong. However, I feel that it is blown much out of proportion. The camps were livable, they received education there, and didn't even have rationing like the rest of the country did at the time. Also, Pearl Harbor was caused by an espionage ring in Hawaii, so I can understand the government's wariness.

I agree with what another reviewer said, that their "divine" Emperor was the cause of this problem in the first place. Remember, Japan started the war--not us.

As for the book, I felt that it was rather condemning all along. I also distrust an author who appears obviously much too young to have experienced this herself. I do not enjoy books on this subject, but if I did read one I would rather it written by someone who was actually there.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat fell short
Review: I believe Otsuka is a writer. But what she should've reminded herself of was that the writing style did not match at all with the dauting theme. Unfortunately, the very novel on this theme had been written a long time ago by John Okada in his No No Boy. Any novel that comes after the very original Asian American literature fruited inevitably from their real inexpicale predicament of course has to have more guts, style and powerful sense of awareness to handle the historical matter. I never thought Otsuka's work lived up with any of the demandsm here.
Added to those, I found characters in this work were unnecessarily flat. The suthor might have thought it would work to convey the facelessness/namelessness of Japanese people back then. However, it did not seem to work as she aimed. No hook there.

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Summary: When The Emperor Was Divine: a Novel Review
Review: I loved this little book! The story is written so simply and yet it is a book you will think about for days after you are through reading it.

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Summary: Lovely, Lyrical, Haunting
Review: I plucked this book off the shelf at the library yesterday, flipped it open to see if I liked the writing style and almost forgot to pick the kids up at school half an hour later because I had completely fallen into the world of this novella and lost track of time.

When the Emperor was Divine is the literary equivallent of ikebana -- elegant in its spareness and revealing great beauty beneath the simple balance of form and substance. Author Julie Otsuka doesn't miss a step in this compelling, disturbing story of a Japanese American family torn apart, interred in separate camps; mother, daughter and son in one, father in another.

Confused, helpless, longing for each other, yearning for the comforts of home, hearth, and happier days, the family spends three and a half years waiting. Waiting for release, waiting to be reunited, waiting for a tulip to grow in an old tin can. Ms. Otsuka doesn't give us the details -- she walks us right into the bodies, hearts and minds of each of her characters and makes us live with them. And in the end of the endless waiting we return with them to the scattered remains of a life that is less than what is normal, necessary or desirable. My heart broke a hundred times in the few short hours it took to read this slim book.

It is particularly compelling to think of the men interred in Cuba right now and wonder if a future generation will tell their story as poignantly. I recommend this book for the quality of the writing and the timliness of the story.

Rating:
Summary: ...mistaken for the enemy!
Review: I wish I could give this book a higher rating than three stars... I mean, that's not even the ladle part of The Big Dipper right?... I wish I could, but I can't. I felt as though the book was just on the edge of being better, but wasn't. It failed to "sweep me away" as it did for other reviewers here. But it is true that there is something very good here, something that makes me want to read Julie Otsuka's next book.
This story can be comfortably read in just one or two evenings. For such a compact book, the author does cover quite a bit of ground. We see how the mother prepares for the family to face their unjust fate, the father having no time to prepare at all, to the point of being taken away in his slippers and bathrobe. Then the uprooting and relocation of mother, daughter, and son... to a prison facility (let's call it what it is) in Utah, where they will spend 41 months... where they will alternate between being roasted and frozen as the seasons dictate, and are under constant guard, complete with searchlight sweeping the walls at night.
Each chapter focuses on a different perspective of what it was like to endure the undeserved shame, humiliation, and inconvenience (to put it mildly) of this post-Pearl Harbor Japanese internment camp.
There is a certain timeliness to reading Otsuka's story in the year 2002, with the term "racial profiling" not only affecting news headlines, but many people's daily lives.
In "When The Emperor Was Divine" this little family (and all Japanese people at the time) were degraded, and, in the interest of national security, were mistaken for the enemy en masse. When it was all over, the War Relocation Authority sent each person home (for some, their homes no longer existed) with train fare and $25.00 each (the same amount given to criminals when released from prison). And you only got this preferential treatment if you were willing to sign "loyalty papers"... as in, loyal to America.
The subject matter could hardly be more important, timely, and interesting.
But I found the style of the writing to be just a bit choppy. By that I mean, the fits and starts within the chapters, short scenes, times when I wondered which character was doing the thinking now etc.
Also the attention to detail seemed overdone at times (check out the girl's observations from the train on pages 26-27... I wondered "How slow is this train going anyway?") Also, the mother is watching kids play (seemingly) in the distance and she can hear their conversation... from inside the house? Bionic ears? Or really loud kids? I'm still not sure.
The final pages are the best part of the book, and the way that the family never returns to "happily ever after" days... it makes all the miscarriage of justice in the preceding pages all the more poignant.
Three stars.
O.K., so it's not a full ladle, but... it's a darn good complete handle!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: I would recommend you read this book, place it back on the shelf, and then read it again in two weeks. Read if first for the simple joy. Read it again and think of it's powerful message. If you love syntax, if you love powerful prose, if you love a haunting story...this book is the one. I borrowed the book from our library..I plan now to buy it and add it to my little collection, the collection I read over and over again. If this is a sample of what the author is capable of, I do hope we get more soon. Thank you so much Ms Otsuka!

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Summary: A dishonorable moment in American history . . . in brief
Review: If someone had recommended a book about the struggles of a Japanese-American family during WWII, I definitely would have declined. So many historical novels are seemingly endless and downright oppressive and boring. Ms. Otsuka's writing, however, is refreshingly sparse, blunt, and does not reek of "woe is me." She gets her point across quite well in less than 200 pages! Ms. otsuka quickly engages the reader's imagination and emapthy giving pause to the heinous betrayal of human dignity and human rights in the name of fear and ignorance. Grab a cup of Green tea and enjoy trip back in time.

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Summary: thoughtful, thought-provoking
Review: In the last few years, I've read several good, short novels, including The Officers Ward, The Lost Garden, Ordinary Love & Good Will, Lying Awake, I Was Amelia Earhart, and Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. I've grown to appreciate the range and power of this shorter form. When the Emperor Was Divine is among the best recently published short novels, and I highly recommend it to both avid and occasional readers of novels, WWII history, or Japanese-American literature.

Each of the five chapters in Julie Otsuka's debut is narrated from a different point of view so that, by the end, readers have the full story of this Japanese family as they prepare for and live through internment during WWII and then return to their home. The story remains unsentimental and unsensationalized so that we grow to understand the mother's concerns and strength as she buys twine at Lundy's hardware store, the children's fears and adjustments as they write letters that their friends do not answer, and the father's coping while separated from his family and accused of plotting against the U.S. government.

As with most history and the most powerful fiction, what is said in When the Emperor Was Divine implies what is not said. Life is indeed in the details so that we see these characters as even their neighbors cannot. Given more recent events in our world, Otsuka's short novel also forces us to consider how public policy and personal responsibility intersect, how social forces sweep individuals up and, sometimes, away.