Importance of Tradition in Seventeen Syllables - Book Report/Review Example

Importance of Tradition in Seventeen Syllables Roll No: Teacher: 14th June 2009 Importance of Tradition in Seventeen Syllables The short story Seventeen Syllables by Hisaye Yamamoto is written in a Japanese context. The family showed in the story is an immigrant from Japan to United States of America. The mother figure, Tome is shown interested in writing specific styled Japanese poems that are called Haiku and have seventeen syllables. The name of the story is also taken from the same poetry writing style. Yamamoto elaborates the importance of tradition in the story by means of many Japanese values that are accepted and followed by the members of the family such as Tome, her husband and her daughter, Rosie. Tome has adopted two characters in the story, one of a mother and wife and other of a writer as it is said, “Rosie and her father lived for a while with two women, her mother and Ume Hanazono” (Yamamoto 1988, 312) Ume Hanazono was the pen name adopted by Tome to write haikus. As a mother she performed all the household activities as were expected by all the Japanese women and as a writer, she wrote with Japanese style of writing poetry, the haiku. In Japanese traditional families, the men are given the authority and dominance over women and they are also allowed to exercise their control over their wives, daughters and other women of family. Tome’s husband was a traditional male and enjoyed his authority over his family (Cheung 1991). He disliked his wife’s freedom to write haikus and showed his disgust on multiple occasions in the story. For example, at one night when the family went to Hayano’s family in the neighboring town, Tome’s husband without caring about the embarrassment her wife is going to face started to leave the house without taking her care and giving her any time to discuss her interests. Tome’s husband showed displeasure with Tome’s act of discussing haiku with Mr. Hayano. Tome’s husband believes in the values of Japanese tradition and thinks that a woman should do as her husband wishes and also that her topmost duty is to manage her household. Domestic life is given utmost importance. Tome’s husband being a traditional husband did not want his authority to be challenged and thinks that the haiku writing passion of her wife is a kind of challenge to his authority. Due to this fact, he shows entirely disliking for her wife’s creativity of haiku writing. However, as far as Tome is concerned, she is shown as a rebellious woman in terms of Japanese society as she continues to write haikus without caring her husband’s disgust for her passion (Yogi 1997). She does not work according to the norms of the society. With the support of her haiku writing, she is trying to gain power over her house. After migrating to America, she gets a chance to rebel against the traditional norms of Japanese society. She sees her haiku writing as a way through which, she can show her inner self freely and can do what she likes without her husband’s restriction. She also adopts a new identity for writing haikus because she wants to be a free individual and wants to have no pressure or enforcement that is associated with her name. She has a need for self-fulfillment. The self-fulfillment that she requires impels her to adopt a dual identity. For rebelling against the tradition and customs restricting her to reveal herself and obtaining something of her interest, she requires a dual identity (Cheung 1991). She submits her written haikus to the Japanese journal and publishes them without the prior allowance or permission of her husband. After coming to American society, she is allotted her due freedom but still, she cannot detach herself wholly from her reality and origin as a Japanese woman. She has to take care of her traditions and culture. She does not love her husband or never shows any deep affection for him but continues to be with him because of her culture and traditional pressure that she faces. Tome informed her daughter that she married her father as a substitute for suicide. She had a love affair with a boy from whom she had a son, who was born premature. Due to her this act, her family despised her. Rosie’s father was not aware of her wife’s other son as this was to be counted as her mother’s guilt. Rosie’s mother is much attached to her daughter and her daughter also shows rebellious instincts like her mother. She is indulging in an extravagant activity of sucking tomatoes, which is symbolic that like her mother, she wants to go beyond the norms of her culture. Harvesting is a creative activity that is done by Tome’s husband in contrast to another creative activity that is constructing poetry (haikus) that is done by Tome (Yogi 1997). Tome’s husband likes his creativity but shows disregard and displeasure for Tome’s creativity as he dislikes the idea of considering his wife equal to him. He wants to maintain his authority over her. By considering his authority in his mind, he burns the prize that his wife receives at winning the competition for haiku writing. He shows his utmost covetousness and autocracy by putting on fire something that is so loving to his wife. By his evil act of smashing her prize and then putting on fire, he exposed his authority over his wife and also injured her feelings. Whatever, he did was thoroughly acceptable in his own tradition and he also thought his anger and reproach to be justified. He wanted his wife to be there as soon as he ordered her to be there helping with the tomato job. At this incident, Tome informed her daughter that she married her father as a necessity and not for love, as it is said, “Her mother, at nineteen, had come to America and married her father as an alternative to suicide.” (Yamamoto 1988, 321) Therefore, it is quite explicit that Yamamoto used the Japanese tradition to indicate how men use their power over women and how women are not allowed to have any freedom. Yamamoto also shows that the traditions and norms enforce people to do what they do not wish for such as Tome’s marriage to Rosie’s father. She accepted him as an alternative to suicide, which means that marrying him was like a suicide. Tome’s husband wanted to maintain his influence over his wife as a norm of Japanese tradition and exercised his control to restrict her freedom. Works Cited Cheung, King-Kok. “Double-Telling: Intertextual Silence in Hisaye Yamamoto’s Fiction.”American Literary History 3 (2) (1991): 277-293. Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. New York: Kitchen Table, 1988. Yogi, Stan. “Japanese American Literature.” An Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature. Ed. King-Kok Cheung. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997: 125-55. Read More