Chauvinist and Other Stories

by Toshio Mori, Hisaye Yamamoto (Introduction)

The Chauvinist and Other Stories features twenty-two stories of Japanese-American life, ranging in settings from pre-WWII era California, to wartime internment camps, to the postwar Nisei experience. As an Asian Times reviewer notes when The Chauvinist first appeared, Mori “cannot fail to reach [his readers] because he is an honest man, speaking from his own experience, his own suffering and happiness, his own real and human life.” The writer Hisaye Yamamoto, in the original introduction to this collection, declared Mori “indisputably the pioneer of Japanese American literature.”The collection’s republication in this volume marks the first time these stories are widely available in over forty years.About theToshio Mori (1910 – 1980) was born in Oakland and spent most of his life in San Leandro, California, where his family owned a nursery. He began writing in 1932, working at night after a day in the nursery, and was encouraged by William Saroyan, who became a lifelong friend. Mori’s first book, Yokohama, California , was scheduled to appear in 1941, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the ensuing anti-Japanese racism, put the book’s publication on hold. Like most Japanese-Americans, Mori’s family was forcefully relocated to an internment camp in Topaz, Utah, where worked as the camp historian. At the end of World War II, Mori returned to run his family nursery. His book, released in 1949, made him the first published Japanese-American author of literary fiction. Despite critical acclaim, Mori fell into relative obscurity until the early 1970’s, when a new generation of Sansei—third generation Japanese-American students—discovered his writing, leading to the publication of two new books, Woman from Hiroshima and The Chauvinist and Other Stories. His third collection, Unfinished Message, was published posthumously in 2000.

142 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Amber Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the stories are really good but "The Chauvinist" is one of the best short stories I've encountered. I think I overuse the word "encountered" but I mean it here; I don't felt like I read or understood or analyzed that story; I think it brushed against me and something was exchanged.

"The Chauvinist" is the story of a deaf man. I can't say a lot more about it because although the story performs a kind of philosophy of life it also performs a narrative that Mori perfectly controls and unravels. The writing is profound. We sit in paradox after paradox and each is unraveled and then re-raveled again and again. I was confused and overwhelmed. I was laughing and crying. All my laughing-crying was sad and joyous at the same time and it took me until the end of the story to realize that that was the encounter of the story. Mori lets us BE Takanoshin Sakoda.

And the last sentence? Too beautiful to call perfect.

Here's some of Mori's lovelier bits (I won't share the last sentence because the encounter with it shouldn't come here):

“Truth without untruth, it’s false. By representing the truth in untruth and untruth in truth I may become someone I want to be” (20).

“Did you ever have a time when you’d sit in a dark room and know every man in the world? Did you remember the time you’d have such a feeling? Was it when you were happy in a revelry or when you were alone and realized your friends had stayed away very long and you did not go out and seek them?” (23).