Racism, Xenophobia, and Division Theme Analysis

Dr. Ibaraki’s experience in the internment camp in After Darkness demonstrates the fact that world powers, especially those at war, often use racism in an attempt to justify their own nationalist agendas. Australia interned its Japanese residents shortly after entering World War II. One of the first scenes in After Darkness shows the outright racism of many Australians towards Japanese people at the time, as Dr. Ibaraki encounters a white woman on a train who calls him a racial slur. This encounter sets up the prominence of racism in the novel while also underscoring the absurdity of such behavior, as there’s no reason to assume a Japanese resident of Australia singlehandedly could have done anything to significantly hamper Australia or its allies in the war effort.

The novel also highlights the messiness of racist and xenophobic policies, as mass internment failed to take into account the many nuances that come along with racial and cultural identity—indeed, many of the people who are interned alongside Ibaraki are Australian-born citizens who happen to have Japanese heritage. Johnny Chang, for example, is an Australian-born, half-Japanese internee who has lived in Australia for his entire life. Within the camps, tensions run high among different racial and national groups. For example, Johnny and his fellow Australian-born internees have a strong bond, often rebelling against the leadership of the camp due to their belief that their internment is a “mistake.” One of these Australian-born internees, Stanley Suzuki, even suffers a racist attack by the powerful Japanese men of the camp (with Mr. Yamada at the helm). This, in turn, spotlights the ways in which racism often perpetuates itself, causing fellow internees to turn against each other because of the very same bigoted worldview that led to their own imprisonment. The novel, then, examines the many dangers of subscribing to racist and xenophobic worldviews—worldviews that ultimately lead to little more than violence, suffering, and division.