and transnational, and narrating Asian-American
stories to both Asian-American and non–Asian-
American audiences.
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January Lim
Yokohama, California Toshio Mori (1949)
Although originally planned for publication by
Caxton Printers in 1942, Yokohama, California’s
release date was indefinitely postponed after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7,
- In the ensuing seven years until its appear-
ance, TOSHIO MORI had been incarcerated in Utah’s
Topaz Internment Camp for Japanese Americans
and the small audience that once existed for such
a book dried up due to the postwar era’s political
conservatism and anti-Japanese sentiment. Both
the collection and its author languished in obscu-
rity for three decades until the University of Wash-
ington Press republished Yokohama, California in
1985 due to academics’ growing interest in reviv-
ing the progenitors of Asian-American literature.
The version of Yokohama, California that even-
tually appeared in 1949, however, differed from
the original collection by two stories, “Tomorrow
Is Coming, Children” and “Slant-Eyed Americans,”
which Caxton Printers added to soften postwar
resentment and to influence its critical recep-
tion. These stories ended up changing the book’s
tone. Instead of presenting a series of innocuous
vignettes based upon the daily lives of Japanese
Americans in California’s San Leandro, Mori’s
hometown, these two stories darken the collection
by presenting the patriotism of Japanese Ameri-
cans during World War II with no mention of the
cruelties of camp life that exist as subtext. Even
though the grandmother in “Tomorrow Is Com-
ing, Children” is stuck inside an internment camp
and the family in “Slant-Eyed Americans” have
a son heading off to war, the negative historical
conditions that destroyed so many lives never ap-
pear, creating a book that panders to its audience
as much as it presents a realistic slice of Japanese-
American life.
Upon its resurrection in the mid-1980s, how-
ever, many ethnic scholars noticed how Yokohama,
California fit into both Japanese and American lit-
erary traditions, which made it an important text
through which to discuss Japanese-American syn-
cretism. Although Mori’s minimalist writing style,
anticlimactic plots, and single community setting
derived from his love of Sherwood Anderson’s
Winesburg, Ohio, his major American literary in-
fluence, Lawson Inada notes that Mori’s stories
also fit into the ancient Japanese shibai tradition
of folk drama and humorous skits. A story such as
“The Eggs of the World” fits into this tradition by
depicting a friendship that ends over a misunder-
standing with a metaphorical egg. Similarly, Gayle
K. Sato notes that many stories in Mori’s cycle
illustrate the Japanese cultural concept of amae,
where an adult yearns to be loved without put-
ting forth the work or effort to have his or her de-
sires fulfilled by an explicit request. “The Woman
Who Makes Swell Doughnuts,” Mori’s most an-
thologized story from the collection, illustrates
amae by having its narrator travel throughout
Yokohama solely to provide indulgent listening
and complimentary flattery to community mem-338 Yokohama, California