A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

of the Reds. In 1962, Isamaru takes his youngest to a Kurosawa movie, starring his
favorite actor Toshiro Mifune, “Japan’s John Wayne,” whose role of a “RAGGED
SAMURAI” “addressed the rift, the drift he felt within” (all 44). The two kinds of movies
are referred to again, when the older Isamaru has to bail out his Vietnam-protesting
daughter in 1972, checking “her neck and arms for rope marks. He was relieved to find
none.” While John Wayne “seemed to have realized that he was becoming larger than
life,” “Akira Kurosawa, on the other hand, was continuing (with and without Mifune) to
de-noble-ize the samurai. (The western influence was prevalent. No wonder Yojimbo
became the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, and Seven Samurai became The
Magnificent Seven)” (45-6). Rather than talking about movies, this could be a statement
on the rise of the United States to a world power while the days of the empire of Japan
were over. The story ends in 1982, when Isamaru’s four-year old grandson is accused of
having stolen a pen in a store. The manager excuses the security guard’s mistake:
‘He’s only a kid. He doesn’t know what stealing is.’ […] Isamaru pushed up his
glasses and looked at the manager. ‘Mistake! Eretime, mistake! No care how
much harm!’ He grabbed his package, his red-eyed grandson, and stalked away
toward the nearby drugstore. Seen. Known (48).
Though he still struggles with his Japanese-American identity, he sees hope for a more
understanding future in his grandson, who is half haole, half Japanese.
The issue of Local identity in the face of Cold War and Vietnam War is negotiated
in “Under the Table,” once more from the perspective of having to grow up into a
complicated world. Shortly before graduating from high school, the narrator remembers
another transition time, sixth grade, when he was first confronted with things being less
straightforward than they seemed: “The places we had been but hours before, though it
seemed like months, were history” (81). At the time, he did not yet connect his personal
experiences with what was happening in the larger world, could not relate having to
practice ducking under the table in case of a Russian bombing with his life of beaches,
Elvis movies, and finding out who one’s friends were. A few years later, he is “escaping
to college,” while “Lenny was going to Nam because some men in nice suits in Paris
couldn’t agree on the size and shape of their negotiating table” (84). Though he
114