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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE
A. Review of Related Studies
Since this thesis discusses how the sruggle of Issei widow in Wakako Yamauchi‟s play, some reviews on her works are important to see in order to get a
better understanding about them and how Yamauchi describes Japanese women immigrant
‟s lives in the USA in her works.
Shelley R. Terry in the thesis entitled Five Female Characters Driven to Suicide in Plays by 20th-Century Female Playwrights as a Result of Domestic
Violence in a Patriarchal Society discusses a female character in Wakako
Yamauchi‟s And The Soul Shall Dance named Emiko who experiences an arranged marriage. Her relationship with her husband, Oka, is not harmonious and
often filled with emotional and physical abuse. A male-dominated Japanese American society, verbal and physical abuse,
and societally imposed oppression also drove unwilling Japanese emigrant Emiko to become unbalanced and commit suicide in Wakako Yamauchi
‟s And The Soul Shall Dance
Terry, 2010: 25 Since Oka has no control over choosing a wife, he decides to physically dominate
his wife. Meaning to say, eventhough Oka does not choose to marry Emiko, he can choose to abuse her. Oka‟s incapability of controlling his own life and
overcoming financial oppression cause him to be abusive. In this play Orientals
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
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