The Floating World by Cynthia Kadohata

First published: 1989

The Work

The Floating World deals with the theme of identity at two levels. The narrator, Olivia Osaka, a girl of twelve at the beginning of this episodic novel, is like all adolescents trying to understand the world around her. In her case, the problems normally associated with growing up are further complicated by the fact that her parents are of Japanese origin. Thus Olivia has to find her place not just as an adult but as an American of Japanese descent.

The experiences recounted by Olivia take place in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The internment camps for the Japanese Americans had been disbanded soon after World War II, but the effects of their dislocation were still discernible. The title of the novel comes from the Japanese word ukiyo—the floating world—the world of gas station attendants, restaurants, and temporary jobs encountered by the Osaka family. Charles Osaka is constantly on the move with his wife and four children—Olivia and three sons—to seek better opportunities.

Olivia discovers that Charlie is not her biological father and that her charming, graceful mother still mourns the loss of her first love. Olivia is baffled by her mother’s unhappiness, for she cannot understand why the love of a decent man like Charlie is not enough for her mother. Like all children in families with marital tensions, Olivia wonders if she and her brothers are responsible for the unhappiness of their parents.

Obasan, Olivia’s grandmother, lives with them for some years before her death. For Olivia, she becomes the link with her Japanese heritage. She is fascinated yet repelled by the seventy-three-year-old tyrant. Olivia enjoys her grandmother’s fantastic tales of growing up in Japan, but she abhors her strict, Japanese ways of disciplining the children. She hates Obasan while she is alive, but Olivia realizes later that the memories of her grandmother’s stories and the observations in her diaries are invaluable in helping her understand the lives of her parents and of the Japanese American community.

In Gibson, Arkansas, the family stays long enough for Olivia to finish high school. During this period, she experiences her first love, and begins to appreciate the hardships endured by the Japanese Americans. By the time she leaves for Los Angeles, she has learned certain truths about herself and her relationship to her community. She recognizes the fears and uncertainties that govern her parents’ lives but has confidence in her own ability to overcome these uncertainties.

Olivia’s narrative comes to an end with her decision to go to college. She has turned twenty-one and her years in Los Angeles have given her time to learn independence, to make her own mistakes, and to come to terms with the memories of Obasan and her biological father. With the acceptance of her past and her hyphenated identity, Olivia seems ready to take her place in American society.

Bibliography

Antioch Review. Review of The Floating World, by Cynthia Kadohata. 48 (Winter, 1990): 125. Brief but favorable review of The Floating World. Calls Kadohata’s first novel “an appealing account of what it was like growing up a Japanese-American in this country.”

Asian Women United of California. Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and About Asian American Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Although this anthology does not include Kadohata’s works, it does give valuable information focusing on the historical and cultural background of Asian American women. As such, the work illuminates several key issues concerning gender and ethnicity in Kadohata’s works, including the roles of women, Asian exclusion laws, and Asian immigration laws.

D’Aguiar, Fred. “The Diminutive Epic.” Third World Quarterly 12 (January, 1990): 215-217. Reviews and compares Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day and Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World. While both books deal artfully with the minutiae of life, Kadohata’s novel “is at pains to show how the possession of that world is not individual but communal.”

Kadohata, Cynthia. Interview by Lisa See. Publishers Weekly 239 (August 3, 1992): 48-49. Kadohata relates incidents in her life to events in her novels. See and Kadohata discuss the process of writing as it fits into Kadohata’s life. The article is especially useful for its discussion of what the character Obasan represents in The Floating World.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Growing up Rootless in an Immigrant Family.” The New York Times, June 30, 1989, C15.

Matsumoto, Valerie. “Pearl and Rocks.” The Women’s Review of Books 7, no. 2 (November, 1989): 5. Matsumoto reads The Floating World from the point of view of a Japanese American woman. She notes how the work challenges her own “comfortable notions of Japanese American regionalism and family.”

O’Hehir, Diana. “On the Road with Grandmother’s Magic.” The New York Times Book Review 94 (July 23, 1989): 16. O’Hehir credits the character of Obasan with supplying most of the energy in The Floating World. The article is useful in its comment that Kadohata is writing not an ethnic history but a history that could have happened to any set of characters. O’Hehir stresses the episodic structure of the novel and Kadohata’s direct and straightforward tone.

Ong, Caroline. “Root Relations.” The Times Literary Supplement, December 29, 1989, 1447. In her review of the work, Ong compares Kadohata’s work with Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989). Noting how both works use stories from childhood, Ong observes that these novels demonstrate the way in which cultural forces can shape adolescence.

Park, You-Me, and Gayle Wald. “Native Daughters in the Promised Land: Gender, Race, and the Question of Separate Spheres.” American Literature 70 (September, 1998): 607-633. Examines the private and public retrospective constructions influencing binaric gender division in American literature that have promoted women as social actors supporting critical responsibilities within the public arena. Includes discussion of books authored under difficult circumstances involving the state, including The Floating World.

Pearlman, Mickey. “Cynthia Kadohata.” In Listen to Their Voices: Twenty Interviews with Women Who Write. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Pearlman’s interview analyzes Kadohata’s first two novels in terms of Kadohata’s own life and her ideas about writing. Pearlman discusses issues of cultural identity and queries Kadohata about what effect being a “hyphenated American” has on her writing. The interview also briefly discusses other Asian American writers.

See Lisa. “Cynthia Kadohata.” Publishers Weekly 239 (August 3, 1992): 48-49. Basing her article on an interview with the author, See provides biographic material and information concerning Kadohata’s writing process. She portrays Kadohata as a writer who, like her character Olivia Ann, is in love with the road.