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115th out of 491 books
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167 voters
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When the Emperor Was Divine
by
Julie Otsuka
Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view—the mother receivin...more
Paperback, 144 pages
Published
December 18th 2007
by Anchor
(first published January 1st 2002)
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Jeanette
rated it
A very fast but worthwhile read about a Japanese family who suffers the indignities of the World War II internment camps here in the U.S. This book can easily be read in two or three hours if you have uninterrupted time. The construction is rather floaty and impressionistic rather than linear, but the prose is good and clean and easy to follow.
Prior to reading this, I'd only read about the Manzanar camp in California. So it was interesting to read about the Topaz camp in Utah. Th...more
Prior to reading this, I'd only read about the Manzanar camp in California. So it was interesting to read about the Topaz camp in Utah. Th...more
Of all the books I've read about the Japanese-American internment camps, this one wasn't my favorite. But I'd still recommend it. It focuses on a family - mom, dad, girl and boy - and how they dealt with the ordeal before, during and after. The family is forced to leave their home in California and stay in a camp in a Utah.
The writing style was unique: unsentimental, simple and poetic. The story was gripping, but it was a bit choppy and left some holes. It's a short read, just under 14...more
The writing style was unique: unsentimental, simple and poetic. The story was gripping, but it was a bit choppy and left some holes. It's a short read, just under 14...more
Dana Melinda
rated it
Recommends it for:
those who question society, and who love great writing
Shelves:
my-favorite-books
I loved how different this book is from many others I've read. It's written from the point of view of several characters, whose names are never mentioned. It almost seems like the author excluded the names to make them appear generic, as if they could be any Japanese person living in America during World War Two.
This book explores the thoughts and feelings of members of one Japanese family before, during, and after they've been shipped off to a desert camp during WW2. I was left at the end...more
This book explores the thoughts and feelings of members of one Japanese family before, during, and after they've been shipped off to a desert camp during WW2. I was left at the end...more
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What a sad story about the internment of a Japanese family. There is foreshadowing at the beginning of the story as the mother is packing up clothes and locking up important house items in a room of a white house in Berkeley, California. She talks gently to the family dog, and then kills him with a shovel and buries him. Her going away story is heard, but the reader does not know why this family is uprooting, or where yet.
Next the reader finds the mother, daughter and son on a train...more
Next the reader finds the mother, daughter and son on a train...more
Wow, this thin volume was really powerful and intense, the story of one family and their experience before, during and after their stay in a World War II Japanese internment camp. She switches perspectives between the various family members, and it's gripping to hear the kids' perspectives. It's highly moving and I super-recommend it. Here's some sample dialogue that pulls at your heart, as the mother reminisces to her young son:
"When I first met your father I wanted to be with...more
"When I first met your father I wanted to be with...more
Right to the nitty gritty, “When the Emperor was Divine”, by Julie Otsuka (Anchor Books, ISBN 978-0-385-72181-3), was a unique and entertaining perspective of Japanese-American internment during WWII in the U.S. The detail and imagery is compelling and vivid. The material is inviting, easy-to-read, and condensed into a novel that can be read in only a few hours.
The novel follows a Japanese-American family who receives notice that they must travel from their home in California to an i...more
The novel follows a Japanese-American family who receives notice that they must travel from their home in California to an i...more
After Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese in WWII, thousands of American Japanese were arrested and held for questioning or made to board up their businesses and homes, taking only what they can carry and put on trains which took them to internment camps set up around the country.
The author concentrates on the lives of 1 American Japanese family during this period. The father, a successful businessman, was taken away in his bathrobe and slippers one night after men knocked on th...more
The author concentrates on the lives of 1 American Japanese family during this period. The father, a successful businessman, was taken away in his bathrobe and slippers one night after men knocked on th...more
I visited Pearl Harbor for the first time last month and it touched me to tears. Originally, I'd planned on being there for an hour or two, but I couldn't help but choose another ticket to the USS Missouri, where I wandered the ship with my audio guide, running my hands over the gunwales and lingering for what seemed like hours at the very spot where the surrender and peace treaty for World War II had been signed. When I was younger, I read Farewell to Manzanar, a young girl's account of being i...more
This was a short read but it really gave you a lot to think about. It is about a family of Japanese descent who is removed from their home and sent to Topaz,Utah as part of the "relocation" program during WWII. During these 140 pages you love this little family and feel heart-broken for their trials. You feel their shame and the loss of who they really are as they leave their life behind, suffer through the prison camp, and then return home. But you never know their names. I found...more
I happened to see Julie Otsuka's most recent book, The Buddha in the Attic, in an email from Amazon.com and thought it looked interesting. I called my local library to have it put on hold for me and, at that time, the librarian told me about this book which was available on their shelves.
As the reviews state, Otsuka's writing is precise and understated, but also beautiful and almost poetic in nature. In When the Emperor Was Divine, we meet a Japanese-American family living in Berkel...more
As the reviews state, Otsuka's writing is precise and understated, but also beautiful and almost poetic in nature. In When the Emperor Was Divine, we meet a Japanese-American family living in Berkel...more
Journal Entry 1 by dancing-dog from Cordova, Tennessee USA on Monday, November 19, 2007
from amazon.com:
A precise, understated gem of a first novel, Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine tells one Japanese American family's story of internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II. We never learn the names of the young boy & girl who were forced to leave their Berkeley home in 1942 & spend over 3 years in a dusty, barren desert camp w/ their mother. Occasi...more
Otsuka's novel begins with a young Japanese family in Berkley. We never learn their names. They are Father, Mother, Girl and Boy. Already they are dehumanized, they are Them and they are Anyone. Their nightmare begins late one night when Father is taken away by the FBI. Soon after that Mother sees signs posted around the neighborhoods announcing the planned relocation of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government.
The next three years brings degradation and continued separation. Fat...more
The next three years brings degradation and continued separation. Fat...more
"When the Emperor Was Divine" is the story of a Japanese-American family who is sent to the US detention camps during World War II. The father is sent to various camps for supposed conspitators and the mother, daughter and son are sent to a camp in Delta, UT. The story was sad and powerful in its simplicity and I was embarrassed that this is part of our American history. I couldn't help but to think what fear and distrust can push people to do. The camps were nothing close to the c...more
I remember reading Farewell to Manzanar in middle school and being horrified that the US government imprisoned Japanese American during WWII. Then I read Snow Falling on Cedars as a young adult, and felt dismayed Guterson's picture of reassimilation after people returned to their h omes. In When the Emperor Was Divine, Otsuka shows, with painfully beautiful, spare writing, one family's experience with their father's arrest, being forced from their home in Berkeley, living in the Utah desert for ...more
I recognize that the terse language, namelessness of the characters, and relatively uneventful plot in Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine are all aesthetic choices. They’re just not choices that I agree with.
Otsuka details the experiences of a family of Japanese Americans placed in an internment camp during World War II. It’s an engaging topic, one not overly explored in American historical fiction, but her methods of conveying the important story only serve to undermine the ...more
Otsuka details the experiences of a family of Japanese Americans placed in an internment camp during World War II. It’s an engaging topic, one not overly explored in American historical fiction, but her methods of conveying the important story only serve to undermine the ...more
Alex Award:
I loved this book and I think it would be a very important book for young adults to read. This is a novel about Asian Immigrants and Asian Americans living in the United States during WWII. We enter in this world where families are separated and are forced to leave all that they have worked for behind and live in camps. This aspect of the war is overlooked by the tragedies that happened to the Jews in Europe however, it is essential that it is understood that people were a...more
I loved this book and I think it would be a very important book for young adults to read. This is a novel about Asian Immigrants and Asian Americans living in the United States during WWII. We enter in this world where families are separated and are forced to leave all that they have worked for behind and live in camps. This aspect of the war is overlooked by the tragedies that happened to the Jews in Europe however, it is essential that it is understood that people were a...more
How this distasteful, spiteful little book with nothing to recommend it got published, much less 4 stars on Amazon.com is beyond me. Rarely has such an interesting subject (Japanese internment during WWII) been made so boring and banal. From what I learned in the Amazon reviews, some of the author's strategies work totally against her. For example (according to the reviews) she leaves out details (including the main characters' names) intentionally to make the "experience more universal"...more
A very nice fictional examination of the treatment of and impact upon Japanese Americans during WWII, including incarceration in a relocation camp in Utah. Told through the eyes of the four members of the family, it focuses on the quiet pain endured from separation, loss, dislocation, uncertainty, and deprivation. Written in primarily simple prose, possibly befitting the characters, it is a times a tad too simplistic, though still beautiful, and there are instances of repetitiveness. I wonder if...more
This book is about the life of a normal Japanese family changed during the second world war. The children of the family, one boy and one girl, were born in America. They lived like Americans and wanted to be Americans. However, one day, the FBI came and took away their father, while he was still in his bathing clothes. The father never returned. The story begins with the mother packing up their belongings, not knowing where they would go. At that time, because the Japanese were enemies of the US...more
After reading Julie Otsuka’s piece in Granta: Aliens I ordered this novel and I have to confess that I had high expectations; I wasn’t disappointed!
It was breathtaking and moving, and I couldn’t admire more her minimalistic way of telling her story...This is a small book, so I read it a few times. Each time going back to read again my favorite parts. The second half of the book is phenomenal.
The story is set in 1942, after the attacks of Pearl Harbor. This is the story of a Japanese...more
It was breathtaking and moving, and I couldn’t admire more her minimalistic way of telling her story...This is a small book, so I read it a few times. Each time going back to read again my favorite parts. The second half of the book is phenomenal.
The story is set in 1942, after the attacks of Pearl Harbor. This is the story of a Japanese...more
The Emperor Was Divine follows the story of one Japanese family and the injustices they suffered by being confined in an internment camp during the second World War. Otsuka makes the aesthetic choice of not naming any of the characters in an obvious attempt to generalize their experiences. This book is short and sweet. It took me four days to read, but it could have been accomplished in well under four hours if I'd had the uninterrupted time. This story doesn't focus so much on what this fam...more
A beautiful little book primarily set in a World War II internment camp, and told through a revolving narrator. I used to go to bookstores with no preset notion of what I wanted to buy, and would spend hours picking books almost at random, and then reading through the descriptions, and first lines of chapters, and sections from the center or the beginning of the book. I stumbled on some writers like Jose Saramago and Richard Russo this way, but then, for the last few years, I've had huge lists...more
This book was interesting because it was about Topaz, and I didn't know much about Topaz and the Japanese Internment Camps. However, I had a hard time relating to the characters because the author didn't discuss their feelings much. She talked about the surface feelings even though you knew there was underlying turmoil. Her writing is beautiful, but it is not the kind of book that I love because I didn't connect to it. I also wanted to know more of what happened to the father in the book, but th...more
Very fast read. It's funny how a book so streamlined can seem simple. The story wasn't overly verbose, and you never get the names of the three main characters, but it comes across well.
I was sure I was going to be frustrated by the daughter, who started out as a ten year-old seemingly know-it-all, only to move into a caring and smart older sister. The younger brother turned to his imagination when the family was moved into the internment camp, and came up with several inventive ways...more
I was sure I was going to be frustrated by the daughter, who started out as a ten year-old seemingly know-it-all, only to move into a caring and smart older sister. The younger brother turned to his imagination when the family was moved into the internment camp, and came up with several inventive ways...more
Very short read, about 120 lean pages but excellent read.
Suggested as a book club bool by a woman in my group. I have read almost nothing about the experience of those of Japanese heritage who were living in the United States during World War II when we went to war against Japan (our rather when they bombed Pearl Harbor and we joined the War). This tells the story of the internment of one family through the eyes of the four family members. Very simply written with very little emotion but ...more
Suggested as a book club bool by a woman in my group. I have read almost nothing about the experience of those of Japanese heritage who were living in the United States during World War II when we went to war against Japan (our rather when they bombed Pearl Harbor and we joined the War). This tells the story of the internment of one family through the eyes of the four family members. Very simply written with very little emotion but ...more
This is a beautifully devastating tale of a Japanese family relocated from their home in Berkeley, California, to an American concentration camp in the desert of Utah during World War II. Otsuka's crisp episodic structure moves swiftly through the brief 148 pages as she reveals the destructive and long-lasting effects of war in the homeland.
The novel is incredibly literary without becoming esoteric. The central characters, a Japanese-American version of the traditional nuclear fami...more
The novel is incredibly literary without becoming esoteric. The central characters, a Japanese-American version of the traditional nuclear fami...more
This is a beautifully devastating tale of a Japanese family relocated from their home in Berkeley, California, to an American concentration camp in the desert of Utah during World War II. Otsuka's crisp episodic structure moves swiftly through the brief 148 pages as she reveals the destructive and long-lasting effects of war in the homeland.
The novel is incredibly literary without becoming esoteric. The central characters, a Japanese-American version of the traditional nuclear fami...more
The novel is incredibly literary without becoming esoteric. The central characters, a Japanese-American version of the traditional nuclear fami...more
A few weeks ago, I read another Julie Otsuka novel ("The Buddha in the Attic"). I loved its simplicity, its style, its storyline. "When the Emperor Was Divine" seems to continue where the previous novel left off, however this novel was published first. "When the Emperor Was Divine" uses one family as a lens through which to see the internment of Japanese during WWII, and the effects of the internment on one Japanese-American family. Again, this story is very sim...more
Patty
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2010,
women-writers,
world-war-ii,
war,
california,
utah,
internment-camps,
family,
fiction,
historical-fiction,
asian-american
This was a fascinating read for me because of the style. I have read other books about the US mistreatment of Japanese during WW II. And there were some that had more story than this novel. I liked the way that Otsuka told the tale of this family through vignettes. We get glimpses of their experiences and have to draw our own conclusions from what little we are told. I am very glad that I had the opportunity to read this.
The narrator was an asset to this book. She did not do "...more
The narrator was an asset to this book. She did not do "...more
A memorable novel about the internment of a Japanese-American family during WWII. I didn't appreciate the writing as first because it was so simple. I admired the work more after discussions of it with classmates and friends, and re-reading it. The writing is unstated and doesn't get complicated, trying to tell us what the characters are feelings. Instead, it tells us through the growth and transition of the characters. Interesting enough, the readers don't learn the names of the characters in t...more
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Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale University she pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She received her MFA from Columbia. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Library Association Alex Award.
Her first novel, When the
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