BREAKING FREE FROM TRADITION

BY MINA EGGLESTON

Family dynamics in Japanese culture have always been well known across the world, namely in their emphasis on patriarchal authority and the importance of respecting and listening to your elders. But in recent decades, the culture has shifted slowly as more and more women enter the workforce and men become more involved in parenting. In E. K. Ota’s “The Paper Artist”, she focuses on this changing narrative through the main character, Muneo, and his often hypocritical values of historical family dynamics. Approaching this short story through a New Historicism critical lens creates an understanding of how familial dynamics in Japanese culture led to the destruction of Muneo’s relationships as his beliefs are too narrow, but learning to overcome these internal struggles may allow him to find happiness in the end.

In the second paragraph of “The Paper Artist”, the main character Muneo narrates bluntly, “She had shamed them…She had not only gotten herself pregnant, she had done it with a foreigner, a foolish one, by the looks of it, low-class and without prospects.” (Ota 80). Muneo makes his beliefs very clear from the beginning of this story, and they aren’t unrealistic to the typical nationalist beliefs in Japan, especially in past decades. In an essay by Laura Hein titled “The Cultural Career of the Japanese Economy: developmental and cultural nationalisms in historical perspective” she discusses the plummeting economy in Japan during the 1990s and how “a relatively small number of prominent figures built a classically compensatory cultural nationalist movement, asserting the right to national pride and blaming foreigners for all Japan’s troubles.” (Hein 461). She goes on to talk about how “Ishihara Shintarō, the novelist-turned- politician, epitomized this trend in his 1998 book…which catapulted to the top 10 business-list status.” (Hein 461). Though never explicitly explained in the short story, Muneo’s beliefs on foreigners connect to the history and economic struggles of the 1990s, and how a high-class, wealthy, and Japanese husband is the standard that Muneo holds his daughter up to. Masako then scolds Muneo for his behavior toward her, how he never acknowledges her abilities, and asks, “‘Do you think you know the twists and turns of a woman’s heart?’” (Ota 83).

Despite some of Muneo’s clearly traditional beliefs, he also believes in the importance of his daughter succeeding in a career and admits that she “doesn’t have time for a relationship or for a child.” (Ota 82). This is when we start to see Muneo’s very hypocritical beliefs, especially toward his daughter and her relationships, and we can see how he struggles internally with both traditional values and changing values. This is further emphasized in a flashback scene of Muneo when he was younger and newly in love with Masako; “‘Never in my life,’ began his father finally, in the low, controlled voice that Muneo would one day use with his own daughter, ‘did I think that a son of mine would become the maker of toys for children.’” (Ota 86). The way Muneo treats his daughter is deeply rooted in the treatment he received from his own father. There is a sense of irony, which further points out Muneo’s hypocritical thinking, as rather than Muneo scolding Mana for her career, he scolds her for her love and pregnancy. In an article by Makiko Imamura, Elizabeth Dow, and Naoko Uehara titled “Transmission of gender ideology through family discourse” they write “This burden to juggle the professional and personal spheres has become a new norm among the working mothers in Japanese society.” (Imamura, et al 17). Though Muneo’s beliefs have somewhat shifted with the modern times, he still believes that his daughter is unable to find success in working and being a mother, and this is what traps him in a misogynistic way of thinking: he wants his daughter to experience both having a career and having it in something non-traditional, like himself, but does not think she is capable of doing so while being a mother.

During another flashback, Muneo reminisces about the time when he discovered what happened to the dragon lamp that his father scolded him for years prior. His father’s neighbor explained how “the lamp you made was spectacular. Your father gave it to us as a gift when my son Taro was a boy.” (Ota 93). Muneo remarks “Up close, the workmanship was stunning. His father would have seen that.” (Ota 93). Muneo doesn’t say it, and might not believe it, but his father’s actions showed that he cared about his work. Even though he doesn’t have a traditional career, and his father never tells him so, he shows Muneo his belief in him in his own way. Muneo holds these same beliefs over his daughter, only he fails to show her in any way that he does believe in her. As Masako explains before, “‘You could have told her that.’ / ‘What?’ / ‘That she has talent.’” (Ota 82-83). Just like his father, Muneo never tells Mana that, though she has more to learn, she has talent. Even as a child, when she created something and showed him, he changed it and led her to believe that it meant he found her work unworthy, just as his father did to him. “The message was clear: her work had been unworthy; she was dismissed…Compared to the dramatic fury of the bird, her wind bell had seemed dull, heavy with unconvincing lines.” (Ota 81).

What Muneo fails to understand for so long is that his daughter is not him. He tries very hard to make her like him and treats her as his father treated him, and this is what drives her away, ultimately causing him to lose her. Muneo even admits to himself “He had wanted to teach his daughter a lesson; he had wanted her to make something of herself, something she could be proud of. If he’d had a son, perhaps it would have been different.” (Ota 99). His actions were meant to push her to do better, but his expectations of her did not allow her to feel as if she was ever succeeding. In an article by Kikuko Omori and Hiroshi Ota, they explain how “Children learn gender roles and expectations through parental modeling by observing their parents’ display of masculinity and femininity (Fixmer-Oraiz & Wood, 2017).” (Omori and Ota 6). The way Muneo treats Mana directly correlates to how his father treated him, and this is an inherently masculine form of belief, which is something Muneo points out as he says it would have been different if Mana had been a boy. But she’s not, which is why it was important for Masako to explain how Muneo doesn’t understand the twists and turns of a woman’s heart. This is further shown toward the end of the story when he discovers that Mana had secretly visited with their daughter when Muneo was in London years ago. In his bitterness, he finally admits to himself of “his ridiculous pride, his awful intransigence…and…it was too bad that people celebrated his talent even when they didn’t know that it sprang from such a difficult, unworthy man.” (Ota 99).

In an article by Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni titled “Working fathers’ in Japan: Leading a change in gender relations?” She discusses the words of a successful salaryman talking about old- fashioned mindsets and how “it was only ‘human nature’ to keep on doing what one had experienced as successful.” (Goldstein-Gidoni 370). Muneo’s personal experiences and the culture he grew up with led him to believe that his ‘tough love’ would help his daughter become the best person she could, but this belief that tradition was the only path to lead instead brings him down a path of sorrow. His inability to release himself of his old-fashioned mindset, while also simultaneously trying to have modern beliefs, is what causes his daughter to feel unworthy of his love and also causes his wife, whom he holds in such high regard, to go behind his back. The way he was raised by his father, and how his father did care about his success in his own way, taught him to think that it was an acceptable way of raising a child, but in the end, it showed him how wrong those beliefs were and how it instead led to the loss of his only child.

E. K. Ota’s “The Paper Artist” is a beautiful story about the changing values of the Japanese family culture, and more importantly the changing culture for fathers. It’s about Muneo understanding the importance of shedding the history of his past and becoming the kind of father that his granddaughter needs, and what his daughter deserved. Interpreting “The Paper Artist” through a New Historicism lens allows us to understand the struggle of the changing Japanese familial culture and how being unable to work past his narrow beliefs in time led Muneo to lose his daughter, but finally understanding how to break free of these traditional values may allow him to find happiness with his granddaughter.

Works Cited

Goldstein, Gidoni, Ofra. “‘Working Fathers’ in Japan: Leading a Change in Gender Relations?” Gender, Work & Organization, vol. 27, no. 3, May 2020, pp. 362–78. EBSCOhost,https://doi-org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/gwao.12380.

Hein, Laura. “The Cultural Career of the Japanese Economy: Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms in Historical Perspective.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, Apr. 2008, pp. 447–65. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/01436590801931439.

Imamura, Makiko, et al. “Transmission of Gender Ideology through Family Discourse: Japanese Mothers and Their Career Choices.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication (John Benjamins Publishing Co.), vol. 33, no. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 12–37. EBSCOhost, https://doi- org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1075/japc.00077.ima.

Omori, Kikuko, and Hiroshi Ota. “Japan’s Struggle to Improve Gender Equality: Japanese Culture, Gender Role/Expectation through Family, Social Societal and Media Dialogues.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication (John Benjamins Publishing Co.), vol. 33, no. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 1–11. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1075/japc.00097.int.

Ota, E. K. “The Paper Artist.” Ploughshares, vol. 48, no. 3, Fall 2022, pp. 80–100. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.cwi.idm.oclc.org/10.1353/plo.2022.0114.