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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Buddha in the Attic, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender and Autonomy
Racism, Assimilation, and Cultural Identity
Community and Inter-Asian Prejudice
The Power of Collectivism
Summary
Analysis
On a boat bound for San Francisco, a large group of young Japanese women—though, at 12 and 14, some are still girls—compare photographs of their future Japanese husbands who await their arrival in California. Most of the young women are from the Japanese countryside and wear hand-me-down clothes. Although the young women find the photographs of their future husbands handsome, they worry about whether they will love these unfamiliar men whom they have never met, and they fear consummating their weddings, as most of them are virgins. The first days of the voyage prove difficult: dizzy and seasick, the young women struggle to keep down their food and often forget where they are when they wake in the night.
This introduction to the young Japanese women emphasizes the dual-sided nature of the circumstances of their journey. While the reader wants to root for the hopeful and excited women, it’s difficult to ignore that they don’t have full control of their situations. As picture brides, they’ve never met their husbands in person and don’t know much about them aside from the photographs and letters the men have sent, meaning that these women are plunging headfirst into unknown territory. Since their husbands have already built lives in the United States and can present themselves however they like in their correspondence, they have far more control. The young women’s mention that most of them have little to no sexual experience also strengthens this early image of them as not having their full bearings, as they’re actively afraid of what’s to come, and the seasickness they experience onboard further destabilizes them.
Themes
Most of the young women on the boat are accomplished at the tasks traditionally expected of women in their culture, such as cooking, serving tea, and writing pensive haikus. However, they’re uncertain of what sort of lives await them in America, a country they don’t know much about. Together, they discuss the strangeness of America, with its supposedly hairy, carnivorous people and tall, loud women. Despite these worries, the young women admit that they’d rather marry a stranger than stay in their villages in Japan. Some women, who never expected to be able to marry, believe that their promised husbands will do just fine. The youngest girl, at 12 years old, shares that her parents married her off for the betrothal money.
Although the young women are confident about themselves in the Japanese context, their lack of knowledge about American culture exacerbates their lack of autonomy and adds another obstacle to their adjustment. Not only do the young women not have full control over their marriages and sexual lives, but they’ll also have to navigate a new culture of which they have limited understanding. The mention that the youngest of the women is still 12 years old—she’s a girl, not a woman at all—also highlights that the women’s happiness is not the priority of the picture bride process; rather, money seems to be more important. Despite the lack of autonomy the women have and will have in the United States, though, the fact that they would rather face the unknown than stay in Japan demonstrates just how challenging conditions are for some Japanese women living in their home country.
Themes
With the voyage set to last several weeks, the young women find themselves complaining about everything from the putrid stench of the latrines, bedbugs, the weather, and each other’s habits. For the most part, though, the young women are secretly excited by the promises their new husbands made to them in letters—guarantees of security, beautiful houses, gardens, and affection. Many of the young women carry their husbands’ pictures in lockets, their kimono sleeves, or pressed inside books offering guidance on coming to America or how to please men.
While the conditions on the boat are poor, the persisting excitement and hopefulness of the young women demonstrate how fully they believe the promises that their husbands have made, which puts them in a vulnerable position as their prospects of happiness lie in the hands of men they don’t truly know. Their already loving attitudes toward their husbands’ photographs underscore that they intend to love and care for their husbands, and the existence of books on how to please men alludes to the possibility that the women have been told to prioritize their husbands’ desires above their own.
Themes
The young women often like to people-watch on the boat and glimpse passengers from other countries, such as Sikhs fleeing to Panama, Russians fleeing the revolution, and Chinese laborers enroute to Peru. The young women speak with an English professor named Charles, who travels first class and speaks Japanese. They ask him their questions about America and its people, and he promises them that they’re sure to be very happy. Some of the young women also become friendly with deckhands who come from their villages. A few women fall in love with men on the boat, and one woman becomes pregnant but later finds her baby to look quite similar to her new husband in America.
Here, the diversity of the young women’s—and other passengers’—experiences is apparent: the young women aren’t the only ones leaving their homes in search of a new life, and the mentions of war and labor positions the women’s journey in a more global context while foreshadowing the racism and economic struggles they’ll later experience. The women’s capacity to make decisions for themselves becomes more visible, too. Upon learning that an English professor speaks Japanese, they strike up a conversation with him and obtain answers to their questions about the United States and Americans. The women who fall in love with men on the boat also render the reader’s understanding of them more complex; although the women lack full agency, they still have opportunities to experience and follow their own desires.
Themes
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Many of the young women develop a camaraderie with each other after weeks of their difficult journey, often reminiscing together about what they miss about their homes. Some spend nights together, tangled in their bunks and discussing secrets they’ve never told anyone else, finding it difficult to stop speaking once they start. These young women tell themselves that the lives they lead on the boat will no longer exist once they reach San Francisco, so anything they do will be “good practice” for when they are with their husbands. A few of the young women never grow accustomed to being with a man.
The intense camaraderie that the women experience on their journey make the boat feel like a separate entity from both Japan and the United States—a haven for the women to be their most honest selves. In this small bubble of safety, the women are free to explore their new independence: they’re momentarily not tied to their families back home, and they still have time before they begin their lives with their husbands. Here, the level of intimacy that some of the women achieve with one another seems to exceed that of friendship, though it’s not outwardly stated that queer relationships form. Either way, the camaraderie and connection that the women experience at this point in the journey is noteworthy, especially because the women are unsure of the level of community that they’ll have access to in the United States.
Themes
When the young women arrive in San Francisco, they realize the handsome Japanese husbands in the photographs bear little resemblance to the older, tired men who greet them. The men in the photographs were younger and, in some cases, different men completely, and many of these men hired professional writers to craft the letters they sent the young women. Despite the surprise, the young women try to tell themselves that they have nothing to worry about, and they steel themselves for their lives to come.
As the young women realize that their husbands have lied in their photographs and letters in order to persuade them to marry them and move to the United States, it’s clearer than ever that their marriages are putting their autonomy at risk. Since the husbands were dishonest in their searches for wives, it suggests that they don’t view the women as their equals. Instead of desiring true partners and companions, the husbands seem to want women who will fulfill the traditional roles and duties of a Japanese wife.
Themes
