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.