I wrote this essay as a final for an American Literature class.
Themes of silence and quiet permeate almost every page of No-No Boy, a novel by John Okada which follows the Japanese main character Ichiro Yamada as he returns to Seattle after time in prison for resisting the draft. In one example, “moving about quietly as if fearing to jar the floor, Emi fixed the plates and set them on the table” (Okada 92). Emi is a person who believes that if Ichiro can fully assimilate, he will no longer face oppression in America, so she encourages him to embrace patriotism. She is not the only character who believes that Ichiro’s depression is simply a matter of attitude, not a result of genocidal actions by the United States government (Entin 92). This sentence about “fearing to jar the floor,” to break the silence, can be about Ichiro and Emi’s regret about his decision to dissent, but it can also be about the book as a whole. The book as a whole never fully commits to “jarring” the way things are, and it also indicates that in this historical and geographical context, no Japanese American character would survive such a position of dissent. The only person in the novel who remains fully committed to the idea of Japan’s victory is Ichiro’s mother Mrs. Yamada, and she dies by suicide. Despite this, the novel never fully commits to the idea that assimilation will solve all of Ichiro’s problems either. Critic Joseph Entin says that noir in the novel “represents a discourse of negative feelings that continually, if incompletely, undercuts the affirmative, patriotic sentiments that the text labors to endorse” (87).
In her article about literary trauma theory, Michelle Balaev writes that “the trauma novel conveys a diversity of extreme emotional states through an assortment of narrative innovations, such as landscape imagery, temporal fissures, silence, or narrative omission— the withholding of graphic, visceral traumatic detail” (159). I could write at length about Ichiro’s repeated description of the city as a dirty, ugly place, or about the technique of writing about the aftershock of a traumatic experience in prison rather than about the traumatic experience itself, but what intrigues me the most is the narrative’s use of silence. Trauma affects those areas of the brain that are beyond language. For these characters, there are no words in the dictionary of everyday conversation, or the dictionary of conversation between first-generation Japanese American parent and second-generation Japanese American child, that are sufficient for describing what has happened. Therefore, the characters are silent about hard things, but not completely. Where spoken dialogue fails them, they instead find alternative modes of expression beyond language to communicate the unspeakable. This essay explores the places where the novel is silent, and the places where it wails.
Although the novel makes use of spoken dialogue, most of that dialogue registers as white noise. Readers can see one example of this when Ichiro’s friend Kenji is about to go to the hospital for a life-threatening procedure on what remains of his amputated leg. Kenji’s family gathers around him, but no one is able to talk about the leg. One family member “slid into the empty space beside Kenji and asked him how he’d been and so on and talked about a lot of other things when he really wanted to talk to Kenji about the leg and didn’t know how” (Okada 117). There are no words in that dictionary of small talk that can touch on the absurdity of what is about to happen. “He closed the cabinet door and let his hand linger on the knob as if ashamed of himself for having tried to be cheerful when he knew that the pain was again in his son and the thought of death hovered over them” (Okada 108). Kenji’s father cannot understand why he finds it so difficult to express what he is really feeling instead of filling the air with cheerful conversation. Shame breeds silence (Cheung 20). Kenji’s father feels shame around his inability to really talk to Kenji, which generates even more silence.
After Kenji dies in the hospital post-surgery, Ichiro also speaks in white-noise dialogue even when he intends to deliver this news to Kenji’s father. “Alarmed, he suddenly began to ramble with too much fervor: ‘Of course. He’s fine. He was in excellent spirits when I left him this morning. A week, ten days, before you know it, he’ll—’ and then he stopped as suddenly upon seeing the look in the father’s eyes which said: My son and I had no secrets, and if death is the truth about which you wish not to speak to me, do not speak at all” (Okada 162). This mirrors Mr. Yamada’s matter-of-fact remark after his wife’s death a few pages later: “‘Ya, ya, a good wife,’ he was saying, ‘but she is gone and we talk no more about her’” (Okada 168). The characters find themselves unable to talk not only about death itself, but also about those who have died. This presents a barrier to healing. However, it is a great narrative technique. Silence in the novel is not only a result of trauma, but also a storytelling technique. In the places where silence around the trauma or response to the trauma creates a gap in the narrative, the reader has to fill in those details with her imagination (Balaev 159).
When the characters run out of white-noise dialogue to fill the silence and Kenji’s father brings up the hospital visit again, the silence weighs heavily on them. After a period of conversation, Kenji’s brother Tom feels guilty and quiets down. “‘Sure,’ said Tom, now sharing the unspoken sadness and terror which abided in the hearts of his father and sister. He went to the sink and, cleaning it carefully of the pots and dishes, washed himself as quietly as possible” (Okada 115). Tom fears the breaking of the silence, because if someone were to mention the leg and the prospect of death, that would make it more real. If they do not talk about it, they can pretend that it does not exist. Silence in the novel precedes and follows death. Before Mrs. Yamada dies, Ichiro describes it this way: “Then silence, and he forgot now whether the silence was of her lying or sitting on the bed, the silence which was of the water quietly heating to boil. Following that silence had come the rain, the soft rain as always, drizzling and miserable and deceivingly cold” (Okada 155-156). Joseph Entin’s work “‘A Terribly Incomplete Thing’: No-No Boy and the Ugly Feelings of Noir” demonstrates how the trauma of prejudice against Japanese Americans in this historical context brings about such pain on the novel’s characters that they find themselves unable to speak to each other in dialogue about the trauma. There is an overwhelming darkness and cynicism there that Ichiro and the other characters will never overcome even if the surface text states otherwise. There are “searing, damaging forces of prejudice and psychic trauma referenced in the text by noir” that render many characters speechless (Entin 98). That injury has a silencing effect on the characters of the novel, and particularly on Ichiro. After his mother’s death, he feels “there were no words to describe the numbness of feeling in himself and he made no attempt to seek them” (Okada 163).
The existence of the novel does prove that such traumas are not entirely unspeakable (Balaev 162). Especially in moments between family members, prose says what dialogue cannot. Prose expresses painful truths about these relationships, as well as feelings of sentimentality and love that the characters are unable to express out loud. Though Ichiro appears at first to be the third-person narrator, we find out later that the narrator is omniscient and can see into the inner thoughts of characters outside of Ichiro. This adds depth to many characters (although interestingly we do not get insight into Mrs. Yamada’s life story from her point of view, but only in a prose passage from Ichiro’s point of view). Ichiro says this of his father’s life story: “He could imagine what it must have been like for the young Japanese new to America and slaving away at a killing job on the railroad in Montana under the scorching sun and in the choking dust” (Okada 97). Ichiro gets all of this from the five words “I was young once too” (Okada 96). This causes us to wonder if his father used to tell him stories about his life before the government moved the family into concentration camps, or if Ichiro has peeked at old photos of his father on his own, or if he is imagining his life in full detail by filling in the gaps between what he knows with his imagination. Kenji’s father is similarly unable to express his love for his son or how terrified he is that Kenji will die, so instead he says in prose, “please come back and I will have for you the biggest, fattest chicken that ever graced a table, American or otherwise” (Okada 114).
The unspoken prose can also harbor resentment. Taro says “he stood and looked down at Ichiro, wanting to speak but not finding the words in himself to tell his brother that he had to go in the army because of his brother whose weakness made it impossible for him to do otherwise” (Okada 62). Without this sentence, Taro would be a flat character. Thirteen pages later, Ichiro responds to say, “Taro, my brother who is not my brother, you are not better than I” (Okada 75). That response implies that Ichiro somehow understood what Taro was saying without needing Taro to say the words out loud. Ichiro thinks to his mother, “I am not your son and I am not Japanese and I am not American” (Okada 16). More resentful words follow this proclamation. In a softer manner, Mr. Yamada tells Mrs. Yamada in prose, “Kin-chan, that is what your sister calls you now” (158). Prose gives Ichiro and his father the opportunity to say to her what they wouldn’t be able to say out loud without Mrs. Yamada either interrupting them or completely shutting down.
When Ichiro found his mother dead in the bathtub, he described her as a blockage that finally released (Gribben 38). “On one side, the hair had pulled away and lodged against the overflow drain, damming up the outlet and causing the flooding, just as her mind, long shut off from reality, had sought and found its erratic release” (Okada 165). Her mind finds this release, and by extension, Ichiro and his father find a kind of release. Late in the book, we learn about an incident in the past when Ichiro used to sit in his room and enjoy listening to the phonograph, only to come home one day to discover that his mother had smashed the device to bits and even snipped each individual cord. In this act, she imposed silence on the family. After her death, which Ichiro and his father view with a kind of relief, the lines of communication again open between them. “We’ll have to talk about it,” Ichiro says (Okada 181). Notably, though, he says this in prose, but never directly to his father. That is because it is too late to say everything they should have said years ago. After Mr. Yamada said a few words about life, “his lips trembled a little and Ichiro felt that it was because the old man was finally doing and saying what he should have long ago and knew that it was too late” (Okada 189).
The overarching effect of the silence on the work is that it brings what is said into stark contrast. Note that to even say something substantial is a physical challenge for the characters. These are the last words that Kenji’s father exchanges with his son: “Hoarsely, in choked syllables, his father spoke to him: ‘Every day, Ken, don’t forget. I will be home’” (Okada 119). This line holds power because Kenji’s father has to overcome his fear of talking about that prospect of death and the wave of emotion that comes with breaking the silence. Another spoken line that holds great power comes early on. “‘I like you, Ichiro,’ said Kenji, breaking the silence” (Okada 59). That breaks Ichiro out of an entire passage of unspoken self-loathing, and he smiles. Kenji’s friendship meant a lot to Ichiro. These words from Kenji work as a salve to the novel’s typical noir-like “hard-boiled” language (Entin 93). Another line that was difficult to get out was this one, in a letter from Ichiro to Taro after Taro had gone to war: “When it finally came time to fill out the yellow form, all he had been able to write was: ‘Ma dead. Suicide.’ Was there something more he should have written?” (Okada 169). There are only three words, but this is one of the only moments of “speech” in the text that actually covers something real.
Although Western society sees silence as negative, King-Kok Cheung writes in her analysis of silence in Asian American literature that language and naming can often be incredibly limiting (20). And because spoken dialogue proves insufficient in this novel, the body says what words cannot. Gary, a fellow no-no boy, chooses to express his feelings through art. “‘I’ve no one to talk to and no desire to talk,’” he tells Ichiro, “‘for I have nothing to say except what comes out of my paint tubes and brushes’” (Okada 198). The narrative as a whole finally allows for catharsis in the character of Bull, a Japanese American veteran who loves to torture Ichiro, and what he does after accidentally killing another character, Freddie. Bull wails. “Ichiro put a hand on Bull’s shoulder, sharing the empty sorrow in the hulking body, feeling the terrible loneliness of the distressed wails, and saying nothing” (Okada 221). This wailing is the only form of language presented as a sufficient response to death, and it is the only form that Ichiro can understand in that moment. This scene is a release of all that has been building up beneath the silence for the entirety of the book. In this essay, I worked to reflect the characters of No-No Boy as actors with the agency to work around the unsaid and express themselves nonverbally, rather than as totally silenced victims of various tragedies. The characters did not have to find other ways to express their trauma when spoken language proved inadequate, but they chose to do so. The silence that Mrs. Yamada imposed on her household ended up killing her, but the other characters avoided this fate by channeling their feelings in prose or in wailing. Ichiro is writing a letter to Mr. Carrick when a new understanding strikes him. “Knowing, finally, that the unsaid would be understood, he merely affixed his signature to the postcard and dressed so that he could go out to mail it and get something to eat” (Okada 139). The prose passages and moments of wailing offered here in the book are not simply moments of self-indulgence, but opportunities to communicate in a form that transcends language and rises to the challenge of fully capturing those tricky topics of death and shame.
