Julie+Otsuka,+When+the+Emperor+Was+Divine+(2002)

=* * * PRACTICE * * *=

Julia Otsuka’s, historical fiction novel, //When the Emperor was Divine//, is about a Japanese American family which is sent to an internment camp. The internment camp was located in the deserts of Utah, during the Second World War. Otsuka writes through the eyes of four family members, and she shows details about their experiences while they were at the camp.

** Explanation of this Page **
This is our "practice" page, where you will all have a chance to practice working with wikis by contributing to this page on Julie Otsuka's //When the Emperor Was Divine //. This is in preparation for your own group wiki projects, based on the novel to which I will be assigning you (the first group's wiki will be for Fyodor Dostoevsky's //Notes from the Underground // and will be due on Wed, Jan 29). Click on the "sample" page for the novel // Mrs. Dalloway // (created by a previous class) to get an idea of how a wikipage for a novel might look.

For this practice page on Julie Otsuka, visit the Holman Library's webpage for the novel (which is GRCC's "One Book" selection for the year) to get ideas for materials to include on this wiki: [] . F ind at least one piece of biographical information, literary criticism, image, video, link, etc. related to //When the Emperor Was Divine//, and add it to the relevant sections below. Play around as best you can with formatting, so that your contribution on the Wiki fits with others and so that some level of organization begins to emerge!

Forum Assignment (nothing to be posted in this section on the wiki--post in Forum 4 on CANVAS)
Each student's forum post should include responses to the following three prompts: A. Describe and explain the significance (in at least 150 words) of what you found and added to this "practice" page in the sections below (on the wiki practice page for Otsuka). (Make sure you are finding new materials that are NOT on the Holman Library page: [].) B. Although you will be collectively developing a single forum assignment (with one or more questions) for the rest of the class in your own group wiki, for this exercise type out an individual possible question (just as I developed questions for Forums 1-3). Your individual question can be based on having your fellow classmates read or consider what you added to the wiki, or it can relate to some other aspect of the novel or our readings. C. Read the "Group Project Wiki Guidelines" from the Canvas site), and list in ranked order the four novels for which you might like to participate in a group project (not including, of course, //The Awakening// or //When the Emperor Was Divine//). I will use your list in order to make group assignments.

Biographical Info
Julie Otsuka was born on May 15, 1962 in Palo Alto, California. She lived in California through her childhood until moving onto Yale. She did not intend to become a writer, instead majoring in art at Yale. However, she suffered an artistic crisis. For three years, she mostly read. Some point during her breakdown, she signed up for a writing workshop and found her medium. According to her in her interview on the Random House website, "I think I felt more comfortable with language; it seemed easier, to me, as a medium to work with than painting." Subsequently, Otsuka earned a creative writing degree from Columbia University. Her master's project was reworked to become her debut novel, //When the Emperor Was Divine//. This fictional novel was finished being written in 2001 and in 2002 it was published. After just 4 years of Julie Ostuka's 1st novel being published there were over 142,000 book in print, that number has since doubled in the years following. The novel // When the Emperor Was Divine // is manly used for educational purposes being purchased by teachers as well as students.



In her first novel, Otsuka used her Japanese American family history in her writing to portray the injustices of the time. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Otsuka's maternal grandfather was arrested and sent to prison as a possible spy. Otsuka's mother, uncle, and grandmother then spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. In that way //When the Emperor was Divine// mimics her own family history. During an interview with //Asia Society//, she was asked about how this influenced the writing of //When the Emperor was Divine//. In response, she spoke of how nobody in her family wanted to talk about the war or their experience in the internment camps, and she herself originally tended to avoid mentioning it in any way in her works. Eventually however they began to work their way further and further into her writing until she ended up with "Evacuation Order No. 19", which is chapter one of //When the Emperor was Divine//. Biography in Context @Random House Interview

Literary Criticism
== Otsuka's debut novel has been met with mostly positive criticism, from professionals. However, writer and critic [|Michael Kakutani of //The New York Times// found that the book had a flawed ending]. Kakutani stated "though the book is flawed by a bluntly didactic conclusion, the earlier pages testify to the author's lyric gifts and narrative poise". Many of the more "common" people however did not regard this book with as high achievement as the professional critics. The author herself stated in an [|interview with Asia Society] that the ending was "a gift". The final chapter naturally portrayed the anger of the Japanese to their treatment in the camps.

While some people do see the novel as a bit of a downer, many see it as a very inspirational book. //When the Emperor was the Divine// has been translated into 8 different languages and has sold more than 300,000 worldwide. //The New York Times// calls the book "a resonant and beautifully nuanced achievement". Over 35 colleges in the United States require the book as a piece of Freshman literature.

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Historical & Political Context
Ultimately //When the Emperor was Divine// expresses the lifestyle change and corrupted view of the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941). After the attack committed by the Japaneses and the start to World War II (1939-1945), many people of Japanese decent were forced to move inland and live in internment camps. The raw conditions and crowded living corridors, for many, were a place called "home" for approximately three years. Many foods and human resources like clothes, shoes, bedding, etc, were put on small rations in which many Japanese suffered from. Not only were the Japanese forced to live in uncomfortable barracks, they were also prohibited from leaving the segregated land within the fence. There were 10 concentration camps within 7 states; California, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arkansas, Colorado, and Arizona. Although there was school and available work (with a salary of $5), the United States had hoped that cultivation and farming would have made the Japanese self-sufficient, however the land and soil was unable to be cultivated. Otsuka's novel is import in that it is able to capture what historical textbooks cannot. Focusing on not only the hardships Japanese-Americans faced in internment camps during the war, but also the difficulty of adjusting back to normalcy when the war was over. Though the novel depicts a dark time in American history, much of what is amazing about it is it's ability to capture the cruelty and suspicion portrayed by American's towards those of Japanese ancestry even after the end of the war in 1945.
 * Internment** **Camps:**

Video & Film Clips or Other Media (may also be distributed in various sections)
media type="custom" key="24934316" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-2B3Jd5Vo

Web Links
This web link provides you information about the authors insight of the novel. http://asiasociety.org/arts/literature/when-emperor-was-divine-and-when-japanese-americans-were-rounded

This link provides an essay //Alien Enemies in When The Emperor Was Divine// by Josephine Parks that offers a interesting perspective on this work []

A collection of 45 real-life photographs that represent many aspects of the Internment of Japanese Americans. Many of the situations in the photos are similar to the events in the novel. http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/08/world-war-ii-internment-of-japanese-americans/100132/

Web link to New York Times book review http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/10/books/books-of-the-times-war-s-outcasts-dream-of-small-pleasures.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

=**Historical Context**=


 * Japanese American internment** was the World War II internment in "War Relocation Camps" of over 110,000 people of Japanese heritage who lived on the Pacific coast of the United States The U.S. government ordered the internment in 1942, shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally as a geographic matter: all who lived on the West Coast were interned, while in Hawaii where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. Sixty-two percent of the internees were American Citizens.