Courtesy of Beaverdale Books

Review by Harriet Leitch

By Julie Otsuka

Anchor Books

03/20/12

$13.95

144 pp

“The Buddha in the Attic” chronicles the lives of Japanese women immigrants who came to America early in the last century as “picture brides.” They were married to Japanese men already in America who often had exaggerated their status and wealth, as well as their appearances, in seeking their brides. The women were expected to work hard, and work they did as field workers, as maids in large houses where their husbands were gardeners, as partners in dry cleaning establishments and grocery stores. The story’s timeframe is from their arrival early in the 1900s to their “resettlement” during World War II.

The book is written in an unusual first person plural, making all the individual stories related throughout the book intimate yet very much a part of the story of an immigrant people. As with all immigrants, the Japanese are not always welcome, even before the bombing of Pearl Harbor: “At night we slept with our shoes on, and hatchets by our beds, while our husbands sat by the windows until dawn.”

In the chapter “Traitors,” the suspicion of anyone of Japanese heritage is effectively presented. The “list” became an ever-present threat to them, and some of the men were taken away without explanation because their names were on such a “list.” This is followed by the chapters of “Last Day” and “Disappearance,” which hauntingly relate the gathering and “resettlement” of this people in America, and their subsequent disappearance from the conscience of the communities they left behind.

In “The Buddha in the Attic,” author Julie Otsuka has poetically and wonderfully related the hard work and sorrow of the first half of the 20th century for the Japanese people in the United States. CV