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Signs Taken for Wonders, Wonders Taken for Dollar Signs: Karen Tei Yamashita and the Commodification of Miracle

2004; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 35; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

1920-1222

J. Edward Mallot,

Cultural Studies and Postmodernism

Karen Tei Yamashita's 1990 novel Through Arc of Rain Forest introduces characters who possess remarkable features or perform remarkable feats: Kazumasa Ishimaru and magical ball that whirls in front of his face, an object that helps bring him unparalleled riches; Batista D japan and wondrous accuracy and endurance of his carrier pigeons whose mysterious messages suggest future events, including Kazumasa's wealth; Chico Paco and miraculous trek to Matacao, where his indestructible shrine serves as proof of Saint George's approval and his own fierce, fantastic destiny; Mane de Costa Pena and feathers that, when brushed against earlobe, can cure everything from colds to cancer. In each case, singular sign, taken as a miraculous wonder, becomes commodified in an attempt to replicate magic on a societal scale. Contribute to Radio Chico and you, too, can be part and parcel of a similar miracle; buy a feather and stroke your worries away. The particular exception to natural world becomes unnaturally duplicated to satisfy consumer demand, amounting to a commercial delusion--and dilution--of effect. Eventually, natural world reemerges, asserting itself in ways that often disastrously reverse previous miracles. Yamashita's seemingly bizarre combinations of commodity theory and magic realism allow her to demonstrate how rhetoric of former seems informed by flourishes of latter, but more importantly it offers her a context to critique modes of production and consumption in global markets. Trafficking between Japan and Brazil--as well as between these countries and wider international systems--has long been a feature of Yamashita's work. Her career as a novelist might well be traced to a 1975 fellowship she received to research Japanese immigration to Brazil. She elaborates that Brazil is home to over a million and a half Japanese immigrants and their descendants--the largest such population outside of Japan. That community has a long and fascinating history, and is a complex and varied society. But I knew very little of this when I first arrived; chance and intuition sent me to Brazil. I admit that I wanted to spend time in a warm, tropical, and sexy place, but perhaps I still wanted to know what being a pure Japanese might be. What was essence, thing that might survive assimilation and integration into a new culture and society, thing that tied communities in North to those in South and to Far East? (Circle K 12) A one-year research assignment turned into a nine-year stay, as Yamashita married and had children in country. A number of later literary works seem to share some connection to her Brazilian residence. Her first drafted novel, Brazil-Maru (finished and published after Through Arc), offers a historically-inspired account of Japanese immigrants in 1920s. Her 2001 collection Circle K Cycles contains stories, essays and images relating to more recent phenomenon of second-generation Japanese-Brazilians emigrating to Japan to take up undesirable manual labour. Through Arc of Rain Forest, composed after Yamashita's family had relocated to Los Angeles, contains much of same inquiry into migration and international labour; in this novel, however, Yamashita adds a broader preoccupation--global commodity culture--and presents this investigation in literary vocabularies of magic realism. Her tenure in Brazil, and ongoing projects tied to that nation, might have naturally led her to place another work in a South American setting. But Yamashita finds Brazil to be such a welcoming, generous society that otherworldly figures of this magic realist fiction would find a more likely home there: the man with three arms or a man who had a ball in front of his head would be accepted. Without question (Murahige 329). …