Review: The Buddha in the Attic

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka


Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic is a short book/novella that you could finish in less than two hours of reading on a single day. However, and I do not think I am alone in my opinion here, it is an uncomfortable book.

The story Otsuka tells is a simple and straightforward one (this is not experimental literature) of a group of young women who move from Japan to California to be brides to Japanese men they have never met in early twentieth century California. They believe they are moving to a land of luxury and ease but soon find themselves working long hours in unpleasant jobs; this is not the dreamland of streets paved with gold and money growing on trees they thought America would be before they arrived.

Much of the story, in my reading, is written in a sort of prose poetry in first person plural (we) with all of the women's perspectives capture. The following, from a chapter called The Children illustrates a similar style found throughout the book:

We laid them down gently, in ditches and furrows and wicker baskets beneath the trees. We left them lying naked, atop blankets, on woven straw mats at the edges of fields. We placed them in wooden apple boxes and nursed them every time we finished hoeing a row of beans. When they were older, and more rambunctious, we sometimes tied them to chairs. We strapped them onto our backs in the dead of winter in Redding and went out to prune the grapevines but some mornings it was so cold that their ears froze and bled. In early summer, in Stockton, we left them in nearby gullies while we dug up and sacked onions and began picking the first plums. We gave them sticks to play with in our absence and called out to them from time to time to let them know we were still there. Don't bother the dogs. Don't touch the bees. Don't wander away or Papa will get mad. But when they tired and began to cry out for uswe kept on working because if we didn't we knew we would never pay off the debt on our lease. Mama can't come. And after a while their voices grew fainter and their crying came to a stop. And at the end of the day when there was no more light in the sky we woke them up from wherever it was they lay sleeping and brushed the dirt from their hair. It's time to go home.

The final chapter, A Disappearance, is the only one written from a perspective other than that of the women. It is written mostly in third person with the Americans who are still living in the California towns that used to have so many Japanese workers wondering what happened to them. It is not explicitly stated, but the women, their husbands and children have been put in internment camps. The townspeople have no idea what happened to the Japanese. The book ends:

But all this is only hearsay, and none of it is necessarily true. All we know is that the Japanese are out there somewhere, in one place or another, and we shall probably not meet them again in this world.

Let me end by sharing my opinion. I found Otsuka's language poetic. However, it was often a poetry focused on pain, exhaustion, and disappointment. The book is a quick read; it is not an uplifting read. Know that before starting.

View all my reviews