Review of Related Studies
are treated very poorly for being a successful farmers, therefore, white people hate them and considered them as the enemy of white dominance.
Emiko, here, is described as depressed, isolated and victimized. The money she saves to go back to Japan has been stolen by her husband. Her dream is
already crushed and she changes her strategy. She commits suicide as she is dancing and singing to her favorite song, “And The Soul Shall Dance”, she
chooses death over a life of abuse and servitude at the hands of her husband. Terry explains that Emiko‟s death is a form of freedom, a freedom from the oppression
she had experienced back then and finally, her soul is free to sing and dance. Roberta Uno in says that Wakako Yamauchi based the main character in
her play entitled The Music Lesson on a widow she once knew in her neighborhood when she was just a girl. Yamauchi, as cited by Uno, said that she
admired this woman back then, that woman worked in a field and always wore her dead husband‟s clothes. Yamauchi described her as a woman who looked so
fragile yet she was able to drive truck, ran a piece of land and raised children alone. In The Music Lesson, Yamauchi implicitly comments on the lack of choices
for many Issei women and their misery because of the sense of sacrifice and obligation.
Yamauchi also points out the suffering of those women who failed to adjust to their arranged marriages when Chizuko, the main female character, gives
responds to her daughter accusation that she never loved her dead husband, says, “How could I love him? I didn‟t know him.” Furthermore, Uno states that the
sense of people who are isolated from each other by physical distance, occupied by their burden of labor, challenged by different culture values, gives impression
that The Music Lesson is not merely a simple love story, it also presents a chronology and problems of Asian-
American seen through women‟s perspectives.
Another study about Wa kako Yamauchi‟s work comes from Valerie
Matsumoto in the journal entitled Songs My Mother Taught Me: Stories, Plays, and Memoir, by Wakako Yamauchi
, she writes, Mother-Daughter Relations often form the axis around which Wakako
Yamauchi‟s stories revolve. Her women—strong willed farmers, awkward adolescent, middle-aged divorcees
—struggle to sort through the lessons their mothers tried to instill Matsumoto, 1994: 8
In The Music Lesson, an Issei farm widow and her stubborn teenage daughter argues over the attentions of an appealing nomadic worker. Their conflict, as
Matsumoto says, reflects the big difference in women‟s expectation and experience. The Issei woman character, Chizuko, described as a mother who
always concerns about how she can support her family in order to keep alive. She is influenced by American‟s ideals of individualism and personal fullfillment.
Meanwhile Aki, her daughter, gets tired of her mother‟s monotonous work and start demanding more. Yamauchi‟s stories often depict the relationship between
mother and daughter, the tie they have, construct a source of their hugest vulnerability and their deepest grounding.
In addition, Yamauchi always inserts art in her men and women characters‟ hearts in her works. In And The Soul Shall Dance, for instance, the
Japanese song which is repeatedly played on a Victrola, provides a nostalgic
memory to their homeland. For the Nisei teenager, Aki, in The Music Lessson, the violin music she plays symbolizes her yearning of love. In writing her work,
Yamauchi tends to emphasize commitments, compassion, love rather than false glamour and glibness.
Matsumoto explains that Yamauchi‟s capability to explore the relation between immigrants and their American-born children, gives a clear
picture of suspenses and delicate negotiations, as well as shared roots that bind them.
In this study, the writer would like to reveal the struggle of Chizuko Sakata as an Issei widow seen through the postcolonial feminist perspective. By
analyzing Chizuko Sakata, the writer wants to describe how a Japanese woman immigrant strives for survival and adjustment to isolated life. This thesis,
examines how patriarchy emerges within immigrant community and restricts women‟s movement. Moreover, the writer also reveals that conditional reason and
experiencescan give influence to the main character and play the important role in constructing attitudes and perspectives about woman being independent.