There were many Japanese emigrating to America these days, and Hana had heard of the picture brides who went with nothing more than an exchange of photographs to bind them to a strange man.
In a way, this single quote from the story expresses a consequence of immigration that is the story of America itself. At first, the idea might seem ludicrous: crossing halfway around the world to marry a complete stranger in a foreign land dominated by a culture that could almost not possibly be more oppositional to one’s own. Pure madness when you start to think about it. But this is exactly what America is made of: marriages between two people descended from completely different backgrounds who would have been complete strangers alienated to a point equitable with the couple in the story.
Most of the marriages that have happened here would never have taken place had there never been an America for the rest of the world to discover, conquer and settle. Forget those of Mexican descent married to the offspring of Bulgarian immigrants, even the marriages of people hailing from southern Italy to people hailing from northern Italy that exist today would slice and diced down to a mere fraction. America’s place in world history is, from one perspective, that of the first worldwide dating service.
The FBI had come to pick up Papa and hundreds of other Japanese community leaders on the very day that Japanese planes had bombed Pearl Harbor. The government thought they were dangerous enemy aliens. If it weren’t so sad, it would have been funny.
Although it seems like a title more suited to a sweet romance, the setting of “The Bracelet” is historically steeped in one of the darkest chapters in American history. While there are still some who will steadfastly insist that the internet of Japanese Americans during World War II was not an act of racism, but merely honest national security put to the extreme, this viewpoint is easily enough countered: what is the first name to come mind when you hear the words World War II? And yet despite Hitler still becoming the face of evil for probably at least another century, German Americans were not rounded and held against their will in captivity. Ditto Italian Americans.
The narrator’s observation that this decision made by people actually serving in the United States government sounds like an absurd joke is true enough, but nothing about it was very funny. The internment of law-abiding men, women and children—most of whom had never so much as been arrested for anything, much less fallen under genuine suspicion of being treasonous foreign agents has come to be as much a signifier of the American experience for Japanese Americans as slavery is to African Americans. Admittedly, the two circumstances are hardly identical experience, but it is the cultural stigma attached that is a defining aspect of a cultural history. It is for the most part no longer in the hands of those with actual memories of the experience to keep this stain on American history from fading; that job has been passed down to writers of both fiction and history.
“I have no use for old people in my village. They are neither useful nor able to work for a living. I therefore decree that anyone over seventy-one must be banished from the village and left in the mountains to die.”
This story is not an original by the author but rather a new version of an old Japanese folk tale. The opening sentences quickly introduce a “cruel young lord” who haughtily rules over a village in western Japan. From the opening words which carry the connotation of a fairy tale—“Many long years ago”—it is clear that the ending is going to deliver a valuable lesson. The decree issued by the lord also makes it clear that this lesson is going to be about the worth of the elderly to society. Since what is at stake here carries no surprise as far as the ending goes, dramatic tension must be built and interest sustained through the means by which the old woman of the title proves her wisdom and worth. And, sure enough, the story succeeds in doing that by presenting a series of riddles which only the old woman is clever enough to solve. The riddles are difficult complex and difficult enough to present a challenge to the reader to solve them before skipping ahead.
