Analysis of Toshio Mori "The Chessmen"

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Background information on Toshio Mori
2.1. Biography
2.2. Topics of writing

3. Analysis of “The Chessmen”
3.1. Summary and interpretation
3.2. Explanation of the title

4. Transfer into modern times

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

1. Introduction

Before taking part in the seminar “Introduction to American Ethnic Groups: Asian Americans”, I had neither heard anything about the situation of Asians living in the United States nor could I define terms like Issei, Nisei, relocation camp or assembly center. Through reading “The Chessmen”, looking for information on Asian American internet sites, and the biography of Toshio Mori I got a first impression of this subject in general and I got some inside into the working conditions of Japanese gardeners working in the US in the 1930s.

Before reading this seven page story I thought that it would be impossible to write sixteen pages about such a short piece of literature, but once I finished reading I realized that there is extraordinary depth to this subject. In my opinion, Toshio Mori’s “The Chessmen” is more than a fictional text dealing with the struggle of two Japanese gardeners trying to keep their job in a nursery in California. The situation Toshio Mori focuses on reflects today’s society and the way we have to behave in order to achieve something in life. I decided to base my essay on the facts that are important to fully understand his works, so I began with some background information and dealt with the biography of Toshio Mori and his topics of writing in general. Then I summarized the story. After writing an interpretation of “The Chessmen” I asked myself what the title of the story might have to do with the contents. Since the relation between George and Nakagawa-san mirrors Darwin’s survival of the fittest I tried to transfer this idea into modern times. I ended my paper with a conclusion that states my own opinion about “The Chessmen”.

2.1. Biography

Born on March 20, 1910 in San Leandro, a community of Oakland, California, Toshio Mori was raised and educated in San Francisco. He lived all his life in the East Bay Japanese American community, except for when he was interned at Tanforan Assembly Center and Topaz Relocation Center^[1] in Utah along with other Issei^[2] and Nisei3 during World War II. As a small boy, Toshio Mori dreamt of being an artist, a baseball player, or a Buddhist missionary. These career goals make it clear that he was influenced by both the American and the Japanese way of life. Another indication that he was at home in two cultures is that his parents, Hidekichi and Yoshi (Takaki) Mori, decided that his first language to learn should be Japanese. At the age of seven or eight he began to read novels. Toshio Mori was not only interested in American authors; he also read the works of French and Russian writers. Later in life, his mother encouraged him to start writing himself, which he decided to do at the age of twenty-two. Toshio Mori attended public schools and after receiving his high school diploma, he studied Comparative Religions and Philosophy. Then he began to work in the family nursery business and grew flowers most of his life. His will to write was so strong that he disciplined himself to write for about four hours a day even after having worked ten or twelve hours, “[…] I slept only a few hours. During the day, I thought about characters and themes for stories. I used to work so hard I thought I would fall by the wayside.” (Kim 168)

When writing, Mori was inspired by the stories his mother told him every evening. Some other influences were writers such as de Maupassant, Balzac, Chekov, Gorki, Gogol, Stephen Crane, William Saroyan, and Ernest Hemingway. He once said Sherwood Anderson had the greatest influence on his style.

In 1938, Mori’s works were published for the first time when he sold two of his stories to the Coast magazine. By 1941 his short stories had already “been published in the Clipper, Common Ground, Writer’s Forum, Matrix, and the Iconograph.” (Kim 168) Toshio Mori had actually planed to bring out his first collection of stories Yokohama , California in 1942, but because of the war and his removal from the western US to internment camps in the interior along with other Japanese Americans, he had to postpone the publication to 1949. During his imprisonment at Tanforan and later at Topaz, where he spent four years (1941-1944) working as the camp historian, Mori decided on continuing to write. Even when he found almost two hundred of his short stories destroyed by bookworms after returning from the relocation camps to the East Bay Japanese American community he did not give up writing.

In 1949, Yokohama , California was finally published after Toshio Mori had added two stories to the already complete manuscript. But after the war people regarded stories written by Japanese-Americans as suspect, hardly anybody wanted to read works written by and about Japanese Americans. Lawson Fusao Inada4 even describes Yokohama , California as “the most unwanted book in history.” (Barnhart 237) Because of this anti-Japanese sentiment Yokohama , California did not sell well and was soon taken out of print. On June 29, 1947, Mori married Hisayo Yoshiwara; they had a son, named Steven. But with regard to his writing career he remained unrecognized for almost thirty years.

In 1970, the editors of Aiiieeeee! 5 found a copy of Yokohama , California in a used-book shop and bought it for 25 cents, they located Toshio Mori, who was already in his sixties, and motivated him to restart his career as they wanted to establish an Asian American literacy tradition. Eventually Mori was successful and “was honored at Asian American Writers’ Conferences in Oakland in 1975, in Seattle in 1976, and in Honolulu in 1978.” (Kim 168) In 1978, Toshio Mori published Woman in Hiroshima and another collection of short stories called The Chauvinist and Other Stories. According to William Saroyan6 he was finally able

4: Lawson Fusao Inada is a Sansei (a U.S.-born grandchild of Japanese immigrants to America). He was the first Asian-American to publish a collection of poems with a major New York publishing house and is considered by many to be the father of Asian-American literature.

5: Aiiieeeee! is the first anthology of Asian American writing. It was written and edited by Frank Chin and was published in 1974.

6: William Saroyan is the son of Armenian immigrants to the US. Saroyan published essays and memoirs, which were based on his childhood, experiences among Armenian-Americans or dealt with the rootlessness of immigrants.

to claim his place as “one of the most important new writers in the country.” (asianamericanbooks)

By the time of his death in 1980 Toshio Mori had written five novels and hundreds of short stories, such as “Speaking for Ourselves” (1969), “Japanese Americans: Untold Story” (1971), “Asian-American Authors” (1972), “Asian-American Heritage” (1974), “Counterpoint” (1976).

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^[1] The Japanese were considered to be dangerous to the security of the nation because of the attack on Pearl Harbor and “in 1942, under the direction of the California State Attorney-General Earl Warren, and by signature of Franklin D. Roosevelt, almost 100,000 Japanese were sent to ten different relocation camps” in California, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Montana. (ralphmag)

^[2] The Issei are the generation who left Japan starting in the late 1800's to come to America because of poor economic conditions. They had heard that America was a rich land where wages were high and jobs were plentiful. A young, single man could go to America, find a job, and save enough money then return home to live a good life.

3 The Nisei were the second generation of Japanese to call America home. This generation was both Japanese and American in attitude and cultural heritage.