Background of the Study

lived in isolated area and were limited in their opportunities for any kind of equal status contact due to laws and customs applied there. Kitano, 1996:239. It is hard for Japanese people to live in the California in 1935. The local government insisted that California was a country for white people and Japanese immigrants could not apply for citizenship due to their racial characteristics, heredity and religion, it applies to all Japanese regardless of the gender. The policy of California‟s government, of course becomes unfavorable for Issei women because neither in Japan nor the USA, they are always inferior. Women are usually delicate and long-suffering in their dealings with their menfolk, married women have a very little place in social life. In the Japanese society, this kind of stereotype still exists until today because of the huge influence of Confucianism and Samurai based on feudalism, as we know Confucianism was the product of a patriarchal and strongly male-dominated society in China Reischauer, 1980: 128- 129. Ryoko Kato in International Journal of Sociology of the Family, Japanese Women: Subordination or Domination? states that traditional role of Japanese women are seen as helpless and exploited. She also adds that our values, beliefs and assumptions often lead us to see things in a particular way Kato, 1989:49. The combination of Confucian adage and long Feudal expe rience restricts women‟s freedom and forces them to be fully subordination of men. Meanwhile, when the Issei women arrived in the USA, they first came as picture brides and unfortunately, everything was not as good as they expected. Taylor Sakamoto in The Triumph and Tragedies of Japanese Women in America: A View Across Four Generations says, “Kazue Aoki, my maternal great grand-mother, after a month long harsh voyage abroad the Shinyo Maru, she arrived at Angel Island Immigration Station .“I had never seen a prison-like place as Angel Island.. I wondered why I had to be kept in a prison after I‟d arrived ”.” Sakamoto, 2007:99. Sakamoto notes that many Issei women struggled as there were limited to low-paying domestic jobs or farm work with their husband. Roberta Uno in Unbroken Thread: An Anthology of Plays by Asian American Women, states that Asian-American plays written by women playwrights are often carry the themes of isolation and captivity, both physical and metaphorical. These plays offer special views into the lives, roles, and relationships of Oriental women. Moreover, they also give images of Asian-American women whether they have to be real women behind the stereotypes or become women whom they have never thought of before, like the tenant farmer and the newly arrived immigrants. Most of heroines in the plays are getting married in hopes of a better life and because of their lack of opportunities as immigrants, they have to do demeaning jobs, cultivate earth or just to be independent women in order to survive. Wakako Yamauchi in The Music Lesson explores the sufferings and hardships of the first-generation issei women just like in her first play entitled And The Soul Shall Dance. Women who lived in 1935 not only had to adjust to their settlement in Imperial Valley, California, but also to an often bitter arranged marriage. Chizuko Sakata is an Issei and the major female character here. She experienced a bitter arranged marriage and sent to the USA as a picture bride. She is a widow and has three children. Chizuko is portrayed as tough and independent. She lives her hard life in California and tries to survive by running a small piece of land to grow crops. Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Walter, Birgitte Soland and Ulrike Strasser in the journal Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History summarize that there is a political slogan namely, “Woman without a man is like fish with out bicycle”. The meaning of that slogan is women actually are capable of doing their roles quite well in the absence of men. Women alone can be essential within patrilineal system Maynes, 1996:8. In Japanese family, father is described as someone who is never at home because he has to work, that is why mother becomes influential because she handles everything related to household and child-rearing. Based on the background that is already explained above, the writer wants to study and conduct a research which focused on Japanese woman immigrant‟s struggle for survival depicted in Yamauchi‟s play entitled The Music Lesson. The concern of family daily survival affects the role and attitude of the main female character, Chizuko Sakata in her adjustment to unfavorable circumstances. Therefore, in this research the writer wants to see her struggle as an immigrant who lacks in any opportunity for surviving in the USA through postcolonial feminist perspective.

B. Problem Formulation

1. How is Chizuko Sakata described in Wakako Yamauchi‟s The Music Lesson ? 2. How is the struggle of Chizuko Sakata as an Issei widow seen through postcolonial feminist perspective?

C. Objectives of the Study

In this research there are some goals which are needed to be accomplished by the writer. First of all is to identify how the author gives descriptions of the main female character in the play. Secondly, the writer wants to find out how the struggle of main female character as an Issei widow portrays the idea of postcolonial feminism in the play.

D. Definitions of Terms

1. Issei

Issei is the first-generation Japanese immigrants who came to the USA between 1870 until 1924. They were relatively homogeneous; most were young and had had four years of schooling. Most of them were male and most came from rural Japan. The Issei came primarily from southern Japan, particularly the prefecture of Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Wakayama, and Yamaguchi Kitano, 1985: 239.

2. Postcolonial Feminist

Postcolonial feminist is a person or a group of people who challenges the concept of universalism in feminism. They critique European and North American feminists for „universalizing‟ the conditions of women, they argues that the distinctions among women out of their race and cultural background should be emphasized as well https:blogs.stockton.edupostcolonialstudiesdigitizing-postcolonial- feminism.