The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 11 (2000)

Creating a Feminist Transnational Drama:
Oyako-Shinju (Parent-Child Suicide)in Velina Hasu Houston’s Kokoro (True Heart)
Masami USUII INTRODUCTION
Velina Hasu Houston’s play Kokoro examines the Japanese traditional
practice of oyako-shinju, or parent-child suicide, in a transnational context. A 1985 oyako-shinju case in Santa Monica motivated Houston to
do further research and ultimately complete Kokoro as a drama.1 On
January 29, 1985, a 32-year-old Japanese woman attempted oyako-shinju with her 4-year-old son and her 6-month-old daughter at the Santa
Monica seashore. Only the mother survived. Her 40-year-old husband,an artist and restauranteur in Chatsworth, had kept a Japanese mistressfor three years. The couple had been married about eight years and had
lived in the States for about six years when this incident occurred. Kokoro
uses key facts from newspaper articles, such as the out-of-fashion
Japanese practice of the wife’s bathing the husband’s legs, the wife’s
insomnia whose symptom is a loss of hair, the wife’s journal and poetry written during her imprisonment in the Los Angeles County Jail, anda neighbor’s assistance with childcare. The 1985 oyako-shinju incident“certainly makes us consider how the Japanese culture can be judged in
the States and also how deeply the frequency of oyako-shinju is related
Copyright © 2000 Masami Usui. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
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to the unique practice of mass suicide in the Japanese culture and tradition.”2 Kokoro is set in 1985, in “San Diego, California, Japan, and Netherworlds” (89) where the Yamashitas undergo hardships similar to the
Santa Monica case within their household that result in the 33-year-old
wife’s suicide attempt with her 7-year-old daughter.3 The wife’s survival
and their daughter’s death are magniﬁed in the mass media, creating controversy and conﬂict which inﬂuence the public and the courts.
In Kokoro, the prologue connotes Yasako Yamashita’s departure fromJapan and her separation from her mother, Fuyo, in a poetic space introduced by the Japanese legend of the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, and aJapanese waka, a 31-syllable Japanese poem. In Act I, the internal conﬂict between Yasako and her husband, Hiro Yamashita, is ultimately disclosed after their six-year-stay in the States. As a couple, they face thecollapse because Hiro’s secret of having kept a mistress for three years
is revealed; and as parents of their seven-year-old daughter, Kuniko, theydiffer in their opinions about a daughter’s education and home training.
This strife leads Yasako to carry out oyako-shinju by jumping into thesea in another poetic space created by Fuyo’s spirit, Bon, and women’s
writing. In Act II, a great disparity between Yasako as a prisoner andAngela Rossetti as her attorney is gradually diminished as they incorporate the characteristics of Japanese oyako-shinju with U.S. legal procedures for cases of child homicide. This conﬂict which is diminishedwithin the prison is also eliminated outside of it by Hiro and a neighbor,
Evelyn Lauderdale, who contribute to the public’s gradual recognitionof oyako-shinju as an accepted Japanese cultural practice and as a caseof immigrant strife in the States. The play ends with a lighter sentence
on Yasako which the court handed down in order to give her a chance
to live and regain her will to live.
Houston’s personal background motivated her to explore the oyakoshinju theme. Oyako-shinju is a concept which is not well understood byAmericans; therefore, both the public and the courts found the incident
reprehensible because it opposed all American ideals of parenthood.4
Houston is an Amerasian whose mother is a Japanese who immigrated
to the States in 1959 with her African-Native American husband after
he served in both World War II and the Korean War.5 Houston is concerned about Japanese women who were called “war brides” because
they had married American GIs, and has constructed their neglected andlost stories in her trilogy, Asa Ga Kimashita (Morning Has Broken),CREATING A FEMINIST TRANSNATIONAL DRAMA

175

American Dreams, and Tea. According to Houston, there were two crucial moments when oyako-shinju became the subject at home in Junction
City, Kansas.6 It was Houston’s mother who told Houston at age 12 or
13 about a case of oyako-shinju in Japan where a mother set ﬁre to herhouse. Not only was the image of her mother’s story very vivid to
Houston, but it was crucially related to her mother’s own story. In
Houston’s late teens, her mother confessed that she had thought of carrying out oyako-shinju after Houston’s father’s death in 1969, when
Houston was 11. Since Japan lost the war and its dignity during the U.S.
Occupation, such women’s emigration to the States reﬂects a series of
conﬂicts such as a strong sense of shame, prejudice and discrimination
because of racial and political reasons, and an inescapable sense of lossof home. As an Amerasian, Houston knows the stories of the Japanesewomen who immigrated to the States as permanent residents before
Japan gained economic and social stability. In Kokoro, Houston entrusts
Evelyn—the Yamashita’s neighbor and an Amerasian offspring—with
the role of a cultural interpreter through her mother.
The Yamashitas’ background illustrates a postwar phenomenon, an
emerging shin issei paradigm in the States. The shin issei paradigm
emerged as a result of Japanese migration during the nation’s postwar
economic development, and during the bubble economy. In the early
1980’s, Houston was again informed of several oyako shinju cases by
Asian women in California. It coincided exactly with the period in which
Japan garnered remarkable economic success in the global market. In
1970, Japanese transnational corporations emerged to compete with their
U.S. counterparts and Japan’s currency value rose 100 percent by 1985.
During these years, the number of both resident and non-resident
Japanese in the U. S., ranging from elite businessmen to sushi chefs,
increased rapidly. They were named shin issei. The shin-issei’s Japanesecommunity is different from those of Japanese Americans and Japanese“war brides.” At the same time, however, the shin-issei who were bornafter World War II belong to the same generation as Japanese American
sansei and Amerasian children of Japanese “war brides.” At 39, Hiroowns a Japanese restaurant in the States. In his six years stay in the States,
he has established an ideal private life, living in a seaside apartment withhis college-educated wife, Yasako, and his Japan-born but Americanizedbilingual daughter, Kuniko. Hiro’s fulﬁlment of his American dream signiﬁes the peak of Japan’s postwar economic development and its social

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MASAMI USUIchanges. Kokoro reﬂects the shin issei’s internal strife in contemporary
America, which continually appears to welcome new groups of both resident and non-resident Japanese. It was the shin issei, or zaibei nihonjin(literally, Japanese living in the States) who actually led a mitigation ofpenalty campaign when the surviving Japanese mother of the Santa
Monica oyako-shinju case was ﬁrst prosecuted for murder and childabuse.7 Houston interlocks an Amerasian role with the role of shin issei
in society, thus offering insights into the transnational crux in thetragedy. Houston’s desire to examine the women’s transnational conﬂicts as persons in a foreign land led her to writing Kokoro in a frame
which contextualizes women of her mother’s and her own generations.
According to one review, Kokoro not only focuses on a “domestic crisis, but also provides multicultural illumination on the age-old struggle
between an immigrant’s native culture and the expectations of American
society.”8 In Kokoro, the female immigrant’s cultural conﬂict and herlone struggle within a domestic space in a foreign land is ultimately
rearticulated in a unique transnational scheme.9 Houston translates thetransnational conﬂicts of nation, community, family, and self into gender-imposed conﬂicts because they determine the role(s) of self within
nation, community, and family.10 Such transnational feminism examinesthe “‘relationship of gender to scattered hegemonies’ throughout the
globe based on various economic, legal, cultural, political, and sexual
structures of power.”11 Houston’s transnational feminism explores one
embodiment and consequence of gender-related conﬂicts which are
deeply rooted in a native country yet are transplanted to a foreign country. The oyako-shinju practice is examined and articulated from atransnational feminist perspective and is ultimately recreated as a transnational feminist space in Kokoro.
In creating her drama, Houston transforms the traditionally inheritedand still-extant practice of oyako-shinju into a poetic space in which to
examine and explore Japanese psychology. In order to establish a timeless and borderless space on stage, it is necessary to create a poetic space
which transcends all barriers between the dead and the living, the pastand the present, and reality and illusion. According to Houston, her poetic space is largely equivalent to a domestic space, yet her poetic spaceconnotes two worlds, the natural and supernatural worlds. It is effective
because her play does not bring in just one layer of reality.12 Comparedto her play Tea, Kokoro “deals with similar themes of suicide, ethnic

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displacement and female subjugation, couched in an atmosphere of magical realism and the supernatural.”13 In creating Kokoro, Houston challenges both realism and supernaturalism within the frame of a domestic
space. Houston manipulates the multi-layered narrative codes and poetic spaces of home, prison, and a room of one’s own.
II

THE NARRATIVE CODES OF OYAKO-SHINJU

Houston presents the double-layered oyako-shinju which has been primarily shrouded in Japanese ideology and its rationalized practice since
the eighteenth century. The practice of oyako-shinju, furthermore, connotes a multilayered ideology in Japan. The term, oyako-shinju, began
to be used frequently in 1923 and 1924 in Japan, and the use increased
rapidly in the late 1920’s because of enormous economic difﬁculties during the Great Depression. Since then, the Japanese have idealized andrationalized oyako-shinju in society.14 Similar to “war brides” and their
Amerasian children, oyako-shinju in postwar Japan is considered, partly, the product of Japan’s defeat in World War II and the U.S. occupation of Japan. Oyako-shinju during the U.S. occupation resulted fromboth economic difﬁculties and the failure to construct the nuclear family after G.H.Q. (General Headquaters) banned the Japanese patriarchal
ie or household system.15 Despite the legal banning of the ie, oyako-shinju in postwar Japan stems from a lack of mutual communication between
husbands and wives in the nuclear family, because there still existed traditional patriarchal and Confucian values in the Japanese family.16
Especially around 1953, during the depression after the outbreak of the
Korean War, a remarkable number of oyako-shinju incidents happened
because of ﬁnancial difﬁculties. It is noted that mother-child suicide or
oyako-shinju cases were 75 to 77 % of all oyako-shinju cases.17
The Japanese women who dated and/or married American GIs underwent such economic and social hardships both in Japan and in the U.S.
that they were vulnerable to the practice of oyako-shinju. As for Japanese
single mothers in Japan and their Amerasian children born during the
U.S. occupation, some were confronted with such poverty and discrimination that they left their children at the Elizabeth Saunders’ Home, themost famous orphanage for Amerasian children, as an alternative tooyako-shinju.18 The oyako-shinju epidemic in postwar Japan was partially transported to the U.S. as the number of female immigrants from

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MASAMI USUIJapan increased during the same period, and, as a result, oyako-shinju
began to be recognized as a Japanese cultural norm.
The contemporary nuclear patriarchal household is rooted in the postwar counterpart in which especially the wife has no friends with whomto consult, thereby paradoxically strengthening the traditional belief inthe mother-child union and increasing the potential for oyako-shinju
should conﬂict and crisis arise.19 The point is that oyako-shinju or murishinju (committing murder and suicide) has been frequently reported in
the mass media, implying the “mythological narrative” code that justiﬁes it as an ongoing Japanese cultural and social phenomenon. The mass
media does not simply convey the fact but informs its audience of themeaning of oyako-shinju. Therefore, as James W. Carey advances, itturns the “mythological narrative” and provides its readers with a modelof cultural values and even the deﬁnition of moral values just as mythology and folklore do.20
As the title, “Kokoro,” implies, shinju has multilayered meanings. Its
original meaning is “showing the inside of the heart,” since the Chinese
ideograph “shin” can be also read as “kokoro,” which means “heart,” and“ju” means “inside.” “Shinju,” as a Buddhist term, also expresses “doing
one’s duty.”21 The former literary meaning of shinju “implies a selfsacriﬁcing action to show magokoro,” which means “true heart.”22
Yasako preaches to Kuniko: “a soul is . . . everything a person feels or
dreams, an essence that cannot be touched unless you use your heart,
your true heart. Kokoro. Mind, heart, spirit” (91–92). In the title of theplay, Kokoro (True Heart), Houston notes the origin of shinju whose
meanings reﬂect deeply-rooted Japanese cultural idiosyncrasies.
In oyako-shinju, the death of parent(s) and child/ren, as one of
Houston’s reviewers points out, is considered “not an ending, but a spiritual journey that reunites” parent and child/ren.23 Yasako’s oyako-shinju is supported by the strong sense of honor and belief that she will beunited with Kuniko by dying together. In the early eighteenth century
when Monzaemon Chikamatsu (1653–1724) wrote around ﬁfteen shinju stories for bunraku, a Japanese puppet play, shinju became acknowledged as a practice where a couple who cannot get married commits
suicide with the wish that they will be united in the next life. It was
Confucianism, as the ofﬁcial Japanese doctrine in the Edo feudal period(1600–1867), that increased the number of shinju as a means of voluntary death to solve conﬂicts within the family.24 The roots of shinju canbe also traced back to the Japanese “samurai spirit” and practice of sep-

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puku as a respectable behavior to ﬁnalize one’s life rather than continuing to live in dishonor.25 Shin-ju grounds itself on a strong sense ofJapanese honor and a desire to unite in the next life, with which Yasako
is obsessed.
Yasako’s belief that her child is her bunshin, or her branch, also originates from Confucianism. Oyako-shinju is also based on the Japanese
psychology that the child/ren belong to their parents so that they will
have a hard time as orphans if they are left alone.26 Since Tokugawa
feudalism in the Edo period, the Confucian belief that children are considered as mere extensions of their parents or are “parental property” hasbeen deeply embedded in Japan. “If a mother and/or father feel compelled to take their lives, it is only ‘natural’ for their children to die withthem.”27 In modernized and urbanized Japan, the biological parents are
responsible for raising their children; as a result, parental suicide leaving the children behind is considered the most cruel and irresponsible
behavior, an act of abandoning children that troubles others.28
Houston’s unique myth-making is grounded upon a paradigm of thisjustiﬁed practice which was already encoded into a Japanese “mythological narrative” structure. She shifts the paradigm and its encoding into
a concentrated, deepened, and entwined space and time by way of presenting the intertwined mythologies. If it had happened in Japan, Yasako
would have been pitied, her act given “the ‘beautiful’ name of a love suicide, and the child-murder part would be forgiven.”29 It is Japanese newspapers that named the parent-child suicide oyako-shinju and it isJapanese journalists who even now use that term in spite of the fact thatit connotes “a carry-over feudalism, and a total disregard of the child’s
human rights.”30 A paradox exists between the narrative code of theJapanese mass media and its American counterpart which labels Yasako
as “a cold-blooded baby-killer” (122).31 After salvation activities by Hiroand Evelyn, Yasako is transformed into another myth which theAmerican media favorably creates by comparing her with Medea.
Yasako gains sympathy and becomes “a celebrity” when the media compares her to the Greek mythological ﬁgure who was brought from theEast by Jason, and who sacriﬁced herself for him so that he could obtain
the Golden Fleece, yet was abandoned, and therefore killed their children in revenge. Angela analyzes this newly-created myth: “the attorneyargued a Medea-like compulsion exists among Japanese women to react
to inﬁdelity by killing their children,” and opines that although “Medea
is despised in the West, I believe she killed because she knew Jason’s

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new wife would enslave her children” (123). Using sound bites of news
media reporters and references to them via other characters, Houston
recreates the mythological narrative voice of the American media, a
powerful voice which alters Yasako’s fate and ultimately reconstructs
the moral code and context for considering her actions from an American
perspective, eventually allowing the U.S. society to regard oyako-shinju as a family/community tragedy in a cross/inter-cultural environment.
Houston presents Yasako as an oyako-shinju survivor—a Japanese motherwho embodies the Japanese ideological codes yet who challenges the
mythological narrative codes in a foreign land.
III THE CONFLICTING SPACES OF OYAKO-SHINJUA.

The Home Space

The tragedy in Kokoro is caused by the paradox of the home space.
As if there were a foreign land outside their home, Yasako is convincedthat “America is outside, a place to visit when I take Kuniko to school”(91). Yasako’s repeated complaints about their unexpectedly prolonged
stay in the States is what Hiro consistently attempts to avoid. Yasako’s
intense sense of the loss of home results from her multilayered agony
over her sense of dislocation, isolation, and being an orphan, both outside and inside of her home. By referring to an ancient legend about theorigin of Japan, the “Sun Goddess Amaterasu,” Yasako remarks that she
is rooted in Japan. Sun Goddess Amaterasu, or Amaterasu no Oomikami,
is known as the founder of Japan and thus an ancestor of the JapaneseImperial Family, according to Japan’s oldest historrical documents, theKojiki (712 A.D.) and Nihonshoki (720 A.D.).32 Yet, Yasako regrets that
she is “transplanted” in the U.S. by the gardener/husband as a wife, mother, and orphan (90). Yasako’s departure from her home country and hermother deprives Yasako of her own sense of home as the physical andpsychological core space of her life.
Yasako’s activities outside the household are strictly controlled byHiro who, in a sense, imprisons Yasako inside of their house and requires
her to be engaged only in housekeeping and child-rearing tasks. Hiro’s
opposition to her wish to assist him at his restaurant robs her of promising opportunities outside of the house. While Hiro further domesticatesand attempts to acculturate Yasako by bringing her a recipe book andasking her to learn “how to make apple pie” instead of omanju (Japanese
cakes), Yasako asks him to “teach me how to write checks, how to use

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the ‘ATM,’” and “how to talk to her [Kuniko’s] teachers,” requests thatshow a desire for greater cross-cultural proﬁciency, even as she holds ontightly to her Japanese cultural idiosyncrasies (92). It is very important
to note that Yasako has no right to use money freely. She does not possess a driver’s licence, nor does she have any knowledge of how to takea public bus in an automobile-based society. Without any means to travel in the external society by herself, Yasako loses opportunities to adjust
to her new American life and to continue to cultivate her intellectual andcultural pursuits as she did in Japan. Her college-educated backgroundironically intensiﬁes the difﬁculty of communicating in English due toher frustration with Americans’ common inability to understand or tolerate foreign accents. This happens especially in matters relating to
Kuniko, such as when Yasako calls a hospital when Kuniko has her
broken arm, buys a book for Kuniko at a local bookstore, and complainsto Kuniko’s teacher about the teacher’s misinterpretations of Kuniko’s
behavior at school. These three episodes are subsequently narrated by
Yasako through her monologues. In spite of her struggle against displacement, Yasako’s endeavors result in frustration, oppression, disappointment, the loss of self-conﬁdence, and even her child’s loss ofrespect for her.
Yasako’s sense of being orphaned is determined when Fuyo, Yasako’s
mother, dies after Yasako’s departure from Japan. Fuyo’s spirit follows
Yasako in a manner that suggests a Japanese Buddhist practice, the ritual of Bon in mid-summer, and in the Japanese waka. Kokoro embraces
the supernatural and transcendent moment of dead souls returning to visit
the earth. Bon is one of the most important events in the Buddhist calendar, and it is held in mid-August in order to soothe the spirits of thedead. In her attempt to have a Bon festival and mourn for Fuyo in San
Diego, Yasako explains to Kuniko: “Festival of the Dead, Kuniko; ahappy time to visit with our ancestors and then light lanterns to guidethem back to their worlds” (92). Yasako also explains its spiritual importance to Kuniko in her innovative story-telling of “a world beneath thesea” where the mermaids “guide lost souls to the next world” (91).
Moreover, Yasako’s possession of Fuyo’s ashes in her home, rather thanreturning the urn to the grave, reveals her strong attachment to Fuyo.
Within a domestic sphere, time and space are expanded into the supernatural and transcendent elements of Bon, which ultimately leads Yasako
to embrace her wish to reunite with Fuyo’s spirit.
Yasako’s wish to reunite with Fuyo is also expressed in a Japanese

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waka by Sutoku-in (1119–1164), “Our lives like the river’s foam split
asunder by boulders . . . In the end, . . . in this world . . . or some other. . . we will ﬁnd each other again” (90). A popular poem which is included in Ogura Hyakunin Isshu [Ogura Anthology of Japanese Waka], it isa love poem where a poet wishes that the lovers who were once regretfully separated be reunited with each other in the future jus as the rapid
current of a river is dammed up by the rocks and separated into two
streams yet ultimately reunites as one. Like the separation within thesame river expressed in the waka, Yasako and Fuyo are alienated acrossthe ocean, and later, the sanzuno kawa, or the River Styx. Yasako’s
departure from Japan determines the fate of this mother-daughter relationship because of Fuyo’s death. Sutoku-in’s passionate love poem,
moreover, reﬂects his tragic life: he was born as the ﬁrst prince ofEmperor Toba, yet was in reality considered to be an illegitimate childof Emperor Toba’s grandfather, Shirakawa-hoo, so that he was, at age
5, enthroned as Emperor Sutoku by Shirakawa-hoo’s support but
dethroned by Toba-in (former Emperor Toba). This caused the civil war
against Toba-in, and the poet was ultimately expelled to Sanuki on aremote island hundreds of miles away from Kyoto, and died there.33
Segregated from her motherland and her own mother, Yasako is displaced in the States as Sutoku-in was expelled from the court and displaced, exiled to Sanuki, against his will. When Yasako walks into thesea with Kuniko, this waka is again recited by Fuyo, Yasako, and Voiceas if Fuyo as a ghost pulls their legs from the bottom of the sea. Yasako,
in unresolved agony over the loss of her psychological home and her
being orphaned in a foreign land, is guided by Fuyo’s spirit to the haunted sea which enables the domestic sphere to be expanded into the coreof home and home country.
Yasako’s feelings of dislocation and becoming orphanlike are notresolved because of her isolation in her pseudo home in a foreign land.
Hiro’s frequent absences, his patriarchal views, his rejection of Japanesetraditions and rituals, the sexless relationship between Hiro and Yasako,
and a difference in their opinions regarding Kuniko’s home-training andeducation, leave Yasako no tie to her husband and corrupt their homespace as a spiritual refuge.
Her husband’s household constrains Yasako, reducing her to little
more than a slave, thus positioning Hiro as an Americanized tycoon who
has the freedom to visit his mistress three times a week. Yasako is not
rewarded in her effort to become a model Japanese wife and mother in

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order to satisfy her husband’s demands. Though Hiro enforces his patriarchal view on Yasako within their house, he rejects their Japanese cultural heritage and traditions which Yasako admires, such as bowing,
observing Bon, wearing yukata, making home-made omanju, and drinking green tea. The most crucial incident is when Hiro insults Fuyo’s ashes
in the urn and his joking that they should “get out the vacuum cleaner”
when Kuniko spills the ashes on the ﬂoor (94). Outside of their household, the conﬂict between a Japanese way of life and an American way
of life is inevitable; it is more intolerable because the same conﬂicts exist
within the private household. The disparity between Yasako and Hiro inappreciation and respect of their culture, ancestors, and their spiritualspace and time is so large and deep that it cannot be remedied. Within
the home, the conﬂict between two opposing cultures and forces is exacerbated by a deeply-rooted conﬂict between a patriarchal Japanese husband and a well-educated, well-trained, submissive Japanese wife.
The loss of a physical relationship between Hiro and Yasako is a crucial factor in their “corrupted” marital life. Hiro refuses to let Yasako
wash his feet, an out-of-date Japanese practice, yet desires an open,
aggressive manifestation of love inspired by American popular culture.
The bedroom—which symbolizes the most private and closed space—istransformed into a conﬂicting space which lacks love, sex, and unity
between husband and wife. The bed which has been unoccupied by the
couple represents both the disparity between their cultural values andHiro’s inﬁdelity. Yasako’s consistent adoption of the Japanese practiceof sleeping with Kuniko in the same futon “to protect” their “souls” embodies the psychological separation between Yasako and Hiro:
HIRO: Real life, Yasako. Real life. It just isn’t right for me to sleep with
Kuniko, especially as she gets older.
YASAKO: Why not?
HIRO: Because Americans would think something else was going on. They
don’t understand about the Japanese way. They don’t understand that ourpresence protects Kuniko, or even that we leave the room when it is time for
us to be together as man and wife.
YASAKO: We are Japanese. If this country is so free, why do we have togive up being who we are to live here? Some things I can change, like learning to shake hands instead of bowing, or going to the bathroom differently
than I did in Japan. But you are asking me to change the unchangeable.
HIRO: Yasako, here we can wake up late, sing in the street without being
thought a lunatic, challenge the system, speak our minds.

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MASAMI USUIYASAKO: No. You have that freedom.
HIRO: You have it, too. If you want it. Just like all the other Japanese.
YASAKO: Like the ones who work in your restaurant?
HIRO: Come to bed.
YASAKO: For a long time now, I come to bed and you act like you don’t
want to touch me, but you want me to be there. For what? To keep you warm?
Go to bed by yourself. (103)

Yasako’s entire refusal to share the bed with Hiro is caused by Hiro’s
refusal to have sex with Yasako. The hidden agenda of Hiro’s inﬁdelity
is cunningly suggested by way of Yasako’s manipulating the concept of“freedom,” the male freedom to possess his mistress, in this case—
Shizuko Mizoguchi. The above conversation depicts the lack of understanding owing to Hiro’s blindness to Yasako’s insinuations andconcealed anger. The sexless relationship between Yasako and Hirowhich is interrelated with Hiro’s inﬁdelity is the most horrible corruption and the apogee of all the discord within their home.
The conﬂict in their husband/wife relationship is related to anothercultural conﬂict over the home-training and education of their only child.
Yasako’s clinging to Kuniko paradoxically mirrors the conﬂict which
exists in women of different generations and cultural backgrounds.
Against Yasako’s preference of a Japanese children’s song, “Haruga
Kita (Spring Has Come),” Kuniko’s favorite song, “Down the River,”embodies Kuniko’s outgoing personality, Americanized manners, andgood command of English. Kuniko who “hugs like people in American
movie” and gives Hiro “a great big television kiss” has already been
Americanized as Hiro expects (93). Kuniko as “a California original”
represents the disparity between Hiro’s pleasure in and Yasako’s anxieties over Kuniko’s Americanized behaviors and her possible loss of aJapanese cultural heritage. In addition to home-training, Kuniko’s
schooling brings out two differing opinions. Yasako’s wish to send her
to a regular Japanese school rather than a Japanese Saturday school in
the States is entirely in opposition to Hiro’s desire to create an
Americanized daughter. Hiro’s optimistic view is based on his superﬁcial understanding of cultures and his lack of responsibility and opportunities to care for Kuniko. On the other hand, Yasako is too obsessedwith a sense of responsibility for rearing her daughter to ignore theadvantages of the bilingual and bicultural training and education. Thisdifference between Yasako and Hiro regarding their only child leads tothe loss of joy, hope, and a sense of future within the family.

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The loss of Yasako’s sense of home within her nuclear family, causedby all of the cultural/sexual conﬂicts in husband/wife and parent/childrelationships that besiege her, is encoded by a sequence of imprisonment,
segregation, and isolation and causes her lunatic syndrome, depression,
and, ﬁnally, suicide attempt.
B.

The Prison Space

The prison which restrains Yasako from almost all the regular activities of a citizen ironically liberates her from all burdens and allows her
to begin real communication with others. The prison is, as Yi-Fu Tuansummarizes, “a corruption-free environment” which called for “almost
total isolation and the strict discipline.”34 The prison accommodates
Yasako as a criminal and at the same time protects her from possible
public violence toward a “baby-killer.” The prison space in Kokoro is
gradually turned into the enclosed space of Yasako’s self. Within thisprison space, paradoxically, Yasako can ﬁrst liberate herself from all
psychological restrictions. The others outside the prison, on the contrary,bring out all their powers to ﬁght against the complete absence ofYasako. To help Yasako in prison means not only to rescue her fromlegal misjudgement but from her long-trapped and imprisoned self.
Besides Hiro, Yasako’s neighbor Evelyn and her attorney Angela
attempt to understand and endeavor to communicate with Yasako inprison, since Yasako has no close female friends and relatives.35 Evelyn
and Angela have opposing perspectives, but both challenge this boundary so that their conﬂicting yet combined force modulates the esotericoyako-shinju issue and rescues Yasako from her misjudged public reputation. The prison embodies the most difﬁcult site of her guilt, shame,and dishonor, and her obsession with death.
Of an older generation, Evelyn is a neighbor of the Yamashitas’ San
Diego apartment and an Amerasian offspring of a Japanese mother, afact she reveals after a one-year silence. When she introduces herself as“Japanese and American,” Evelyn distinguishes herself from otherJapanese Americans, criticizes the Japanese Americans’ lack of understanding of Japanese culture, and nurtures and upholds her strong bondwith her Japanese mother. Evelyn’s compassion towards Yasako originates from her once-forgotten sense of identity, inherited from her mother and from her awakening to her unique cross/inter-cultural heritage
when she struggles to understand the profound meaning of Yasako’s
oyako-shinju. Evelyn plays an important role as a messenger/coun-

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selor/social worker connecting two opposed societies, as an elder “sister” for both Yasako and Hiro.
It is Evelyn who has the ﬁrst contact with Hiro after Yasako’s oyakoshinju incident, and, moreover, uses the term oyako-shinju in the play.
Evelyn is a messenger whose swift cognizance of the complicated circumstances provides Hiro with both exhortation and vindication. It is asense of guilt that traps Evelyn when she fails to prevent Yasako fromcarrying out oyako-shinju, because Evelyn recognized Yasako’s unusual behaviors before her oyako-shinju attempt.36 Evelyn’s deep attachment to the dead, both her mother and Kuniko, motivates her to counsel
Yasako. Further, Evelyn’s western way of thinking about life contributes
toward preventing Yasako from her second suicide attempt. Yasako’s
strong rejection of Evelyn in her ﬁrst visit to the jail is altered. When
Evelyn secretly brings the “special tea” which Yasako preserved at home
for a suicide attempt, Evelyn expresses her ﬁrm opposition to suicide:“Yasako-san, is suicide so honorable—when it really isn’t about shame,
but about running away from facing life . . . without Kuniko?” (127).
Evelyn’s strong will to rescue Yasako makes Yasako reconsider what
honor means for a surviving mother of a dead child. Furthermore,
Evelyn’s lucidity and her sister-like-affection crucially transform Hirofrom a selﬁsh patriarchal husband into a most compassionate and active
supporter of Yasako, and ultimately a great inﬂuence upon his wife. In
an argument with Angela, Evelyn not only shows her knowledge about
traditionally-trained Japanese women, but also presents the result of her
research on the comparative suicide rates between Japan and the States.
She insists on Yasako’s innocence, and even persuades Angela to plead
no contest at court. Evelyn constructs a bridge between Yasako, Hiro,and Angela in order to establish a foundation for emancipating Yasako
from her imprisoned self.
Angela plays two roles: an attorney ﬁghting against the American public and courts while advising self-imprisoned Yakako; and a woman of
the same generation and mother of a 5-year-old daughter. A Catholic
Italian American attorney originally from the Midwest, she represents
the collective cultural American ignorance and intolerance prominent insmall towns, and also reﬂects a woman’s perspective in a multi-racial
American society whose values are controlled by the white male public.
ANGLELA: I plan to ﬁght for a lesser conviction of voluntary manslaughter. [a beat] Problem is, Americans don’t take too kindly to people killingchildren, and it’ll be Americans staring out at you from the jury. And prob-

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ably not the kind who eat steamed white rice with their meals. This is a conservative town, full of retired Navy guys whose buddies were killed in WorldWar II. [a beat] So we’ve got a ﬁght on our hands. (114)

The force outside the prison is the enormous opposing and threatening force of the public and its administration and legislature, as well as
the political power of the American military presence, retired or otherwise. Recalling another case of a mother who survived, Angela crucially remarks that “the American public wouldn’t’ve even ﬂinched if she’dbeen burned at the stake” (118). As is reported in Japan, the hostile reaction of Americans to the Santa Monica incident and its possible judgment, either the death sentence or life-long imprisonment, are whatchallenges Angela.37
In Angela’s second role, her experience as a woman and mother,must help her dicide between two possible trial pleas, “cultural defense”
and “temporary insanity,” that could reduce the murder sentence. A
parent’s psychological condition in oyako-shinju is mostly based on apattern of the parent internalizing the problem, becoming anxious about
it in depression or suffering from psychoneurosis, and thereby relinquishing his or her hope to continue living and facing the problem.38
What Yasako desires is either “the death sentence” or to “pretend hysteria,” then go through “special tests,” and “to a hospital,” and ﬁnally to
be secretly taken to the ocean to make a second suicide attempt (121,123). What Angela has to compete with is Yasako’s internalized agony
as a surviving mother of oyako-shinju and her visualization of her own
suicide either in court via a murder charge or by her own hands.
The conversation between Yasako and Angela reveals Yasako’s intelligence and deep insight as well as her love for Kuniko, which moderate Angela’s extreme and negative directions and conclusions. The
gradual, ﬁrmly built-up communication between Yasako and Angela
proves Yasako’s “incredible bond” with Kuniko and a Japaneseparent’s strong sense of affection and attachment to their children: “Wehonor, no, we worship our children,” “We have Children’s Day” (123).
Children’s Day was established in 1948, when the Japanese government
aimed to create new national holidays under the new Constitution witha wish that Japan would become “a cultural nation” through the example of setting up a holiday just for children.39 Yasako gave her daughter
the name “Kuniko” because it means “child of the country.” She hoped
Kuniko would “feel like a child of Japan” even while in America (119).
Yasako’s sense of obligation is too strong to yield to separation by death.

188

MASAMI USUIAngela manipulates the mother’s instinct by giving Kuniko’s photo to
Yasako, hoping to affect Yasako’s will to live: Kuniko has “alreadygone, so you can’t have that. Let’s concentrate on what you can have,”that is, life (123). Using their mothers’ perspectives, Yasako and Angela
cross the abyss between them and their two countries. The prison creates ultimately a shared space rich with compassion and respect .
The most radically changed yet powerful force that challenges
Yasako’s self-imprisonment issues from Hiro who is also liberated frompatriarchal values and nourished by others’ caring. Hiro realizes his fault
and plays an active role in rescuing Yasako from public condemnation.
Hiro’s ﬁrst visit to Yasako before the initial court trial is another trial ofsorts where he confesses his faults as a failed husband and father, admits
that he forced Yasako to take all responsibility for their lives (his, hers,
and Kuniko’s), and persuades Yasako to “sleep and dream again,” to“learn to live a new way,” and “go on, learn, and repair” (124, 125).
Yasako’s hostile and cynical reaction reﬂects her harsh criticism of
Hiro’s egoism and betrayal, and her opposition fo his desire to gain comfort and possibly assuage guilt by sleeping in Kuniko’s room, which she
wants to prevent from being tainted by his presence. Within the conﬁned
and isolated space of prison, the trial between the jailed Yasako and Hiroas a betrayer/survivor is concluded in Yasako’s victory over her husband’s freedom from responsibility.
Hiro’s awakening is embodied in his transformation into “the driving
force to get signatures on petitions that he’s giving to the media and tothe court to show that Americans understand your [Yasako’s] dilemma”(127). Hiro’s intense sense of loss of Kuniko, his inescapable sense of
guilt, and his courageous challenges against the American public and its
mass media inﬂuence the public. Hiro’s public speech also contributes
to bringing out the cross/inter-cultural conﬂict in America. Hiro points
out that the cultural conﬂict is a shared experience in such an immigrantcountry as America (119). Hiro’s consistent public activities of redemption establish deeper psychological understanding among the public andthe court, making them aware of Yasako’s double dilemma of being in
a Japanese household and in a foreign land.
Both the court’s sentence and Yasako’s psychological recovery
accomplish the rebirth of home and self within Yasako. Angela decides
not to “plead no contest” because its hypothesis is tantamount to “a guilty
plea to the prosecution,” and also because it contains unpredictable legal
possibilities beyond a nation’s guidelines. The possible “ﬁrst-degree

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murder” sentence is diminished to a charge of “guilty of one count ofvoluntary manslaughter,” and the predicted life sentence is altered to“ﬁve years’ probation with psychiatric treatment and a year in County
Jail.”40 This compassionate and determined support enables Yasako toregain her sense of dignity and self-conﬁdence. Yasako’s death wish
after failing in oyako-shinju is transformed into a positive attitude toward
life, the choice that she comes to believe Kuniko would have wanted her
to make. Yasako’s gradually healed self overcomes the haunted sea
occupied by Fuyo’s and Kuniko’s spirits. When Yasako sings, “Down
the River,” she can embrace a recovered positive attitude toward life likethe song’s lively force embodied by the effervescent Kuniko.
The enclosed space of prison, which forces Yasako to face the reality of being labelled a baby killer, makes her wish her own voluntary
death is transmuted into the shared and resolved space of an inner powerby way of reconstructing the once-corrupted and trapped self.
C.

A Room of Her Own

Among various spaces, a room of her own is the most important spacefor Yasako in her search for self. The tragedy in Kokoro is anchored toundercurrents of a room of one’s own where women can express themselves in journal, poetry, and letters. Women’s private poetic space isadroitly developed into a sophisticated means of exploring women’s
inner-most psychologies, through Yasako’s journal/poetry and the letters of Shizuko, Hiro’s mistress, to Yasako. This “poetic space,” where“the two immensities” of intimacy and world are blended “when humansolitude deepens,” is originally born in an entirely opposed and conﬂicting stage, yet is gradually nourished and improved as a shared common space.41
Within the Japanese community in the U.S., Yasako and Shizuko represent two different types of women. Shizuko’s marriage to an American,
her naturalization, divorce, and three years as a waitress and mistressprove that she is a loner and survivor in a foreign land. Her good command of English and her bold, vulgar, and aggressive behaviors are
molded into a seemingly Americanized Japanese woman.
SHIZUKO: Know what I’ve got waiting for me at home? A VCR, a color
TV, a history worth less than toilet paper. But you, nomi-san, you’ve had thegood life, haven’t you? Good and clean. [YASAKO just stares at her.
SHIZUKO laughs.] My bathroom’s all cluttered with lipsticks and lotions
and eye shadows. But yours is tidy, isn’t it? Although you could use a little

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lipstick. No offense, but you look like you don’t have a mouth. And a woman
needs it to speak her mind.
YASAKO: I’d better be going now.
SHIZUKO: I’ve survived America, Mrs. Yamashita. I’m a pioneer. I’m notafraid of the dark. Are you? I think you are. I can tell by the tilt of your chinwhen you look at me. (100)Shizuko’s eloquence which is cultivated by a hard life seems opposed
to Yasako’s semi-silence which is nourished by a well-protected life.
Shizuko’s status as a “pioneer” contrasts with Yasako’s status as a prisoner. Shizuko’s straightforward, short-tempered reaction to Yasako andeven to Hiro, and her practical survival strategies, express her
Americanized personality. Shizuko’s bathroom, however, illustrates herloneliness and female subjectivity which is shared with Yasako. Shizuko
is, at ﬁrst, a victim of the “Madame Butterﬂy” stereotype which appears
to have caused the failure of her former marriage.42 Shizuko is destined
to be victimized again, a woman whose sexuality and vulgarity aredesired by a man who cannot be satisﬁed with his genteel wife. Shizuko’s
long-suppressed anger which is directed toward Yasako as “Mrs.
Yamashita” in front of Hiro, and ends with her confession of her loveaffair with Hiro, originates from the same emotional core as Yasako’s
in her manic depressive state.
Both women share the same sense of shame caused by one man. As
Shizuko remarks in her letter, “What other choice is there because of thisshame Hiro has brought into your life. Into our lives” (104). Women who
are deserted by men suffer a strong sense of disgrace, shame, and guilt
which both Shizuko and Yasako recognize because of their shared cultural background within a woman’s poetic space. In spite of theirdifference in family, social, and educational background—and the difference in how they function in the U.S. society—Yasako and Shizuko
emerge as Japanese women opposed to Hiro as the symbol of Japanesepatriarchy.
The two women’s writing space, which parallels Hiro’s absence,
encloses the women’s innermost selves, or “kokoro,” and indirectly anddirectly questions the meaning of honor. When Yasako receives the ﬁrst
letter form Shizuko, the women’s poetric space is born. It is during thenight just befor Yasako’s oyako-shinju attempt. Hiro’s comings andgoings throughout one night embody his ambivalent position between
Yasako and Shizuko. Their long-term conﬂict is compressed within a
one-night metaphorical space, a kind of “long day’s journey into night.”

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191

There, all Yasako’s oppressed emotions while enclosed in her sevenyear marriage are silently vibrating, curiously shared, and simultaneously recited by Shizuko, then violently exposed to Hiro who returns
home one night, leaves home to visit Shizuko, to return home again at
3:00 a.m., only to storm away in the morning. This long journey into
their trapped selves is a prelude to the turning point, when Yasako’s suicide attempt is triggered by Hiro’s ﬁnal and entire refusal. He shirks his
parental and marital responsibility, blaming Yasako and escaping all theconsequences of his inﬁdelity.
Shizuko’s two letters overlap with Yasako’s journal and poetry.
Readings by Yasako and Shizuko create another supernatural space andinvite them to confront the most intricate circumstances between them.
Shizuko’s ﬁrst letter questions the belonging, who will belong to theStates/Hiro and who will belong to Japan. From a woman’s perspective,it also anticipates the possibility of Yasako’s suicide attempt. The ﬁrst
letter’s recitation in unison guides both Yasako and Shizuko throughcompassionate conﬂict, from Kuniko’s injury which intensiﬁes
Yasako’s sense of responsibility and fault, to Yasako’s memory of
insults from insensitive Americans, and ﬁnally to Yasako’s poetry writing, and her stormy rebellion against Hiro. In Shizuko’s second letter,
however, the conﬂict between Yasako and Hiro is more ironically interlinked with poetic space shared by Yasako and Shizuko. Thus even in
conﬂict, compassion arises between Shizuko, who has been informed of
Yasako’s manic depressive illness by Hiro, and Yasako, to whom
Shizuko confesses her three-month pregnancy of a boy-baby, a pregnancy which is not told to Hiro. The two women reach the same conclusion expressed by Shizuko, “We Japanese are funny, aren’t we? Eachstruggling to be the one who ends up with the most honor, but the ﬁght
gets so ugly that it’s all blown to smithereens and nobody ends up withanything” (110–11).
The most horrifying episode, which occurs between Shizuko’s twoletters and between Hiro’s disappearances, is when Yasako displays
symptoms of manic depressive illness. Yasako’s manic depressive illness and rebellion emerge as reversals of her submissive manner, seenin her distinct words, aggressive attitude toward Hiro, and her hair loss.
HIRO: Go to sleep, Yasako. What’s bothering you every single night, walking the ﬂoors like a ghost? [a beat] It’s Japan, right? We’ll go back to visit,
okay?
YASAKO: We will?

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MASAMI USUIHIRO: [casually] Yeah. Maybe for Christmas.
YASAKO: [devastated ] Christmas? Not Christmas.
HIRO: Yes. A nice present for you. Five months away. Plenty of time to plan.
[She nervously pulls at her hair. A tuft comes out.]
HIRO: What—what’s the matter with your hair?
YASAKO: . . . everything is falling apart. So much noise.
HIRO: Yasako. Please. Sit down. Let me see your hair. Let me see.
[She pulls at her hair again and more comes out.]
HIRO: [restraining her] Stop that!
[She yanks away with a force that surprises him. She grabs the suitcase.]
YASAKO: [thrusting suitcase at him] Here.
HIRO: What is this?
YASAKO: Your necessary things. [a quick beat] Go. Please.
HIRO: Come here. Let me hold you.
YASAKO: I SAID TO GO.
HIRO: Yasako, I am not having an affair, okay? I am just trying to manage
some problems at the restaurant. Can’t you understand?
YASAKO: What I understand is that we have no honor. (108)

Yasako’s somnambulism and hair loss represent her unresolved psychological agony over her strong sense of guilt and obsession with women’s duties, which have already destroyed her inner self. There is irony
and cruelty in Hiro’s ﬁve-months-in-advance suggestion of a separation
or a possible divorce as his Christmas present, which Shizuko predicted
before and which consequently upsets Yasako’s equilibrium. The incongruous undercurrent of the conversation between Yasako and Hiroembodies Yasako’s aversion to Hiro. Yasako’s insurrection makes her
forge ahead in her newfound boldness. Yasako’s conﬂict between being
an obedient angelic wife and a rebellious demonlike wife is promptedby Hiro’s thorough and insensitive denial of his inﬁdelity. The suggestive language that Yasako uses expresses her conﬂicted self. Yasako
insists that, according to how Hiro has behaved, “Honor is what we ﬂush
down the toilet,” and that the alternative is divorce or ﬁring Shizuko. The
wildest language is produced at this point: “And then kill you in yoursleep,” “Poison your drink or—,” “Or wait until you were in the deepest
sleep and then cut off your penis” (109).43 Yasako’s manic depressive
illness caused by her long-term unresolved and unarticulated negative
emotions of depression, sorrow, and anger is inscribed between theshared space of women’s letters.
These two women’s creative writings, expressing their innermost
selves, are symbolized by the sea, as Yasako recites in her poem: “theCREATING A FEMINIST TRANSNATIONAL DRAMA

193

sea is a bridge of light, leading back into the warmth of honor, away fromits scant reﬂections in this life, the mere images of honor, those masksof paint and clay” (107). In contrast to Yasako’s journal which exactly
yet monotonously records everyday housekeeping and child-rearing
matters, her poetry frees her and deepens her changing emotional core.
The ﬁrst poem written before oyako-shinju describes a trapped sense ofhonor and anticipates Yasako’s later attitude toward accepting death asa honorable solution, with the sea as a place where human souls can bedrowned yet celebrated. The second poem recited in jail before the trial
depicts the agony of “a mother in exile” in the sea (125). The third poem,
recited close to the end of the play, manifests life’s victory over Yasako’s
death wish. Yasako’s three poems are emblems of Yasako’s inescapableagony, changing inner struggles, and sense of resolution and redemption
in a metaphorical space.
A binary relation, created by two women’s common agony over one
man, encapsulates their most inconsolable inner selves. These muted
selves, however, evolve into intricate selves of emotions ﬁlled with compassion and depression. The vulnerable psyches are not conﬁned tothemselves, but attached to each other. The tie between Yasako and
Shizuko is, while never resolved, enlarged into two opposing fates:
Yasako’s suicide and survival without her daughter, and Shizuko’s
departure alone with her unborn illegitimate baby boy. Yasako’s resolution and redemption in her poems testify to the power retrieved fromthe bottom of a woman’s heart. The sense of commitment in Shizuko’s
letter-writing narrative voice expresses an ironic, new-born sisterhoodand ultimate separation between Yasako and Shizuko because both ofthem decide not to depend on patriarchal values. The two women’s secretwritings reveal all the facts and truths relevant to the tragic consequencesof their conﬂicts and, as a result, establish their shared poetic space ofcompassion, comprehension, and empowerment.
III CONCLUSION
Houston attempts to examine one tragic consequence of the culturalconﬂicts of Japanese female immigrants transplanted to America,
because the notion of oyako-shinju has haunted her for years. Throughher examination, Houston herself plays a role as a counselor between
two cultures and two countries, and guides us to the most profound sideof human psychology. As Houston remarks, Yasako “embodies the spir-

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it, courage, intelligence, loneliness and confusion of many Japanese
female immigrants,” including “women who arrived right after WorldWar II and younger women who came to the U.S. to attend the college,
married and stayed.”44 Kokoro was cultivated by Houston in her endeavors to evaluate the misjudged characteristics of female immigrants, toarticulate their voices in a poetic space, and to present to us a transnational feminist drama.
NOTES
1
See Wataru Sawamura, “Hito: Velina Hasu Houston” [Proﬁle: Velina Hasu
Houston], Asahi Shimbun, 5 June 1994, 3. Compared to the brief coverage of the Santa
Monica oyako-shinju in Japan (cf. Asahi Shimbun, 31 January 1985, 23), the Los Angeles
Times paid much attention to it. See also Maura Dolan, “Two Cultures Collide Over Act
of Despair: Mother Facing Charges in Ceremonial Drowning,” Los Angeles Times, 24
February 1985, Part 1, 3; “Mother Placed on Probation in 2 Drownings,” Los Angeles
Times, 21 November 1985, Part 1, 1; Janet Rae-Dupree and Jack Jones, “Children in
Arms: Mothers’s Trek Into Sea Stuns Her Neighbors,” Los Angeles Times, 31 January
1985, Part 2, 6 ; and David Reyes, “Ofﬁcers Are Bafﬂed by Murder-Suicide,” Los
Angeles Times, 16 July 1985, Part 2, 4.
2
Tadayoshi Shimamura, “Oyako-shinju no ‘nihonteki tokucho’ ni kansuru kensho nokokoromi” [An Attenpting [sic] to Study about ‘Japanese Features’ in Cases of So-Called‘Parent-Child Murder-Suicide’ in which Children are Killed by a Parent Who Commits
Suicide], Bulletin of Japan Red-Cross Nursing College 1 (1987): 42.
3
Velina Hasu Houston, “Kokoro,” in But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise: New Asian
American Plays, ed. Velina Hasu Houston (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1997).
4
Cynthia M. Wetzler, “Survival and off-off Broadway,” Rev. of Kokoro, by Velina
Hasu Houston, Pound Ridge Review, 16 March 1995, n.p.n ; and Yoshiko Yamaguchi,“Nihonjin hahako shinju jiken” [The Japanese Mother-Child Suicide Incident], in‘Zaigai’ Nihonjin [The Japanese ‘Abroad’], ed. Kazuko Yanagihara (Tokyo: Shobunsha,
1994), 107.
5
As for Houston’s Amerasian background and conﬂicts, see Houston’s essays: “The
Challenge of Diversity for African Americans and Asian Americans,” Multiracial Asian
Times, 16 November 1991, 1–2; “The Past Meets the Future: A Cultural Essay,”
Amerasia Journal 17, no. 1 (1991): 53–56; “To the Colonizer Goes the Spoils:
Amerasian Progeny in Vietnam War Films and Owning Up to the Gaze,” Amerasia
Journal 23, no. 1 (1997): 69–85; and “Uphill Fight for Asian American Plays,” Los
Angeles Times Calender, 15 September 1997, F3.
6
Houston, Interview by the author, 13 August 1999, Kyoto; also see Houston,“Japanese American/American Japanese: On Being Multi-racial Japanese in Modern
Times,” Multiracial Asian Times, 1990, 7.
7Naoki Sato, “Oyagoroshi/Kogoroshi” [Parent Murder/Child Murder], Jiten Kazoku[The Encyclopedia of the Family], ed. Hikaku Kazoku-shi Gakkai [Association ofComparative Family History] (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1996), 96.
8“Velina Hasu Houston’s Latest Work Wins Award,” Rafu Shimpo, 3 May 1994,
n.p.n.
9
Houston remarks that she intends to bring out an Asian female immigrant’s cultur-

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al conﬂict and that racial issues are not important in Kokoro (Houston, Interview by theauthor, 13 August 1999, Kyoto).
10
As for transnationalism, see Bob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake, “Introduction:
Tracking the Global/Local,” in Global/Local: Cultural Production and theTransnational Imaginary, eds. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1996), 2.
11
Inderpal Grewal and Caren Kaplan, eds., Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity andTransnational Feminist Practice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994),
17, quoted in Susan Stanford Friedman, Mapping: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 112.
12
Houston, Interview by the author, 13 August 1999, Kyoto.
13
Kathleen Foley F., “‘Kokoro’ Goes to Heart of Mother’s Woes,” Rev. of Kokoro,
by Velina Hasu Houston, Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1996, 10.
14
Michiya Iwamoto, “Oyako-shinju” [Parent-Child Suicide], 95; Michiya Iwamoto,“Oyako-shinju o meguru shochoteki shisutemu no nikkan hikaku (1): Shinwatekina
katari toshite no ‘jisatsu jiken’ no minzokugakuteki bunseki” [A Comparison of
Symbolic Systems regarding ‘Parent-Child Suicides’ in Japan and Korea: A Folkloristic
Analysis of the ‘Suicide Case’ as Mythological Narrative], Bulletin of the National
Museum of Japanese History 54 (1993): 76; Maurice Pinguet, Jishi no Nihonshi [LaMort Volontaire au Japon], 1984, trans. Nobuo Takeuchi (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobo,1986), 79. As for the prewar oyako-shinju issue, see Shigeyuki Omine, “Showa-nenkan
ni okeru oyako-shinju no igakuteki kansatsu [Medical Observations over Oyako-Shinju
in the Showa Period],” ed. Yasuko Ichibangase, Nihon fujin mondai shiryo shusei[Collected References of Japanese Women’s Problems], vol. 6: Hoken to Fukushi[Hygienics and Social Welfare](Tokyo: Domesu-shuppan, 1978), 274–82; and Tsuyoshi
Takashima, “Saikin ni okeru oyako-shinju no jokyo to bosei hogo ho seitei undo no keiki[The Recent Conditions of Oyako-Shinju and the Turning Point of Enacting theMaternity Protection Law],” ed. Yasuko Ichibangase, 171–74. The reasons for oyakoshinju are consistently the same before and after the Second World War: in pre-war
Japan, ﬁnancial difﬁculties (extreme poverty), family crisis, family illness, and in postwar Japan, illness, depression stemming from childbirth and childcare, and ﬁnancial difﬁculties (caused by gambling and loans). See Susumu Iizuka, “Michizure jisatsu,
konjaku” [The Double Suicide, Past and Present], Bulletin of Momoyama Gakuin
University 15, no. 2 (1982): 207–8.
15
As for the frequency of oyako shinju in the 1950’s, that is, during the U.S.
occupation of Japan, see Mamoru Iga, The Thorn in the Chrysanthemum: Suicide andEconomic Success in Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986),
18.
16
Shigehiro Takahashi, Boshi-shinju no jittai to kazoku-kankei no kenkoka: Hoken
fukushi-gaku teki apurochi niyoru kenkyu [The Investigations of Mother-Child Suicides
and the Construction of the Wholesome Family Relationships: From a Hygienic Welfare
Approach] (Tokyo: Kawashima, 1987), 30. Even though the new type of Western family was adopted after the Second World War, “that spirit of dependency on a group oron others continued to ﬂow deep down in the hearts of the Japanese” who “found it difﬁcult to operate as individuals.” As a result, instead of “the husband and wife turning toeach other and working together as the core of the family, as was the style of life in theWest, a strange new style of life developed in which the mother turned to the child in astrong mutual life and death relationship, creating the incongruous situation in which
they live together with the husband/father, but in total isolation from him.” See Shigehiro
Takahashi in “Child-Murder/Mother-Suicides in Japan,” PHP, May 1977: 76.

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MASAMI USUI17
Sumiko Tanaka, “Oyako-shinju” [Parent-Child Suicide], Koza gendai rinri 2[Seminar Modern Ethics 2] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1958), 200. In another examination, the rate of mother-child suicide cases is ﬁve to six times higher than father-childsuicide cases because mothers are often much closer to their children than fathers(Akihiro Ando, “Oyagoroshi/Kogoroshi 1(Shinrigaku)” [Parent Murder/Child Murder
1 (Psychology)], Jiten Kazoku, 96.
18“Sawada Miki,” Kyoto Shimbun, 10 August 1999, 7.
19
The short article on oyako-shinju was published in the States one year before the
Santa Monica oyako-shinju incident: see Lloyd Garrison, “The Puzzle of OyakoShinju,” Time, 11 June 1984, 41. The large extended family in prewar Japan had a support system, whereas “six out of ten married couples” now live without relatives andthose post-war nuclear families have to deal with all troubles by themselves. Youngmothers under the social conditions of the nuclear family have no elder family members
to consult with and isolate themselves within the restricted mother-child relationship;
thus, these mothers who cannot become independent and consequently cannot deﬁnitely separate themselves from their children are convinced that their children are part ofthemselves. See Ken Rin, “Seishin choko no tsubunka hikaku kara mita oyako-shinju”[Oyako-shinju from the Psychiatrical/Transcultural Comparative Perspective] Koza
kazoku seishin igaku Vol. 2: Seishin shogai to kazoku—bunka to kazoku [Seminar
Psychiatry of the Family Vol. 2, Mental Illness and the Family: Culture and the Family],eds. Masaaki Kato, Akira Fujinawa, and Keigo Kohiki (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1982), 324.
20
Iwamoto, “A Comparison and Korea,” 74.
21This original meaning of “showing the inside of the heart” was described in Shikido
Ookagami by Hatayama [sic] Kizan in 1678, before Chikamatsu’s shinju literature wasborn, as examined in Iwamoto, “A Comparison and Korea,” 76. As for its Buddhist origin, see Kojien [Japanese Dictionary], 4th ed., CD-ROM, s.v. “Shinju.”
22
Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior, (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1976; rpt. 1982), 195.
23
Foley, “‘Kokoro’ Goes to Heart,” 10.
24
Pinguet, Jishi no Nihonshi, 233.
25
Tanaka, “Oyako-shinju,” 197.
26
See Sato, “Oyagoroshi,” 96. Iga also remarks that “it is more merciful to kill children than to leave them in the cruel world without parental protection” and the “mother who commits suicide without taking her child with her is blamed as an oni no yo na
hito (demonlike person),” The Thorn, 8.
27
Garrison, “The Puzzle of Oyako-Shinju,” 41.
28
Iwamoto, “A Comparison and Korea,” 139.
29
Takahashi, “Child-Murder,” 64.
30
Ibid., 64.
31Interestingly, the “kogoroshi (baby killer)” label on a Japanese wife who was sentenced to a nine-year-prison term is described in Reiko Mori’s “Mokkingu bado no iru
machi” [Desert Song], an 82nd Akutagawa-prize ﬁction about the Japanese “war brides”
in Lawton near Fort Sill, Oklahoma, another large military base town in the Midwest
like Junction City. See Reiko Mori, “Mokkingu bado no iru machi,” Mokkingu bado no
iru machi (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1980), 5–83 or “Desert Song” (Mokkingu bado no iru
machi), trans. N. Brannen, The Japan Christian Quarterly, Fall 1985: 232–44 and Winter1986: 25–44. According to Mori, it is based on a true incident where a Japanese “warbride” bound her step-child to a chair and beat him to death with a baseball bat because
he concealed his school report (Letter to the author, 27 August 1999).
32
Edwin R. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf,

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1970; rpt. 1981), 12–16 and Motoo Endo, ed., Nihon Kodaishi Jiten [Dictionary ofAncient Japanese History] (Tokyo: Asakura-shoten, 1974), 1.
33
Shin Ota, “Sutoku-in. 77: “Se o hayami iwa ni sakaruru takigawa no warete mo sue
ni awanto zo omou,” Hyakunin Isshu [One Hundred Wakas] (Tokyo: Kawade shobo
shinsha, 1979), 90–91.
34
Yi-Fu Tuan, Landscapes of Fear (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1979; rpt. 1980), 198.
35
In a 1996 production at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Evelyn is played as “a strong
voice of reason” and Angela is “passionate” as an attorney. See Amy Schaumburg, Rev.
of Kokoro, by Velina Hasu Houston, Drama-Logue, 2–8 May 1996, n.p.n.. In a 1994
production by Yuriko Doi, there is one more supporter, a psychiatrist. See “‘Kokoro:
Noh Space,” Rev. of Kokoro, by Velina Hasu Houston, Drama-Logue, 30 June - 6 July
1994, n.p.n..
36
One of the causes of oyako-shinju is the Japanese social standard where there is adistinction between the inside and the outside of the family and, therefore, family problems and troubles should not be brought outside the family, but rather should be solved
only within the family. See Rin, “Seishin choko,” 324.
37
Asahi Shimbun, 20 April 1985, 23.
38
Rin, “Seishin choko,” 334.
39
To set up Children’s Day, the Japanese traditional holiday, May 5, called “Tangono Sekku” or Boys’ Festival, was chosen: “Congress members described their strong
wish at the committee meeting on July 4, 1948 that ‘Children’s Day which focuses onchildren might be very rare as a national holiday all over the world. It is signiﬁcant thatJapan as a cultural nation become the leading country to set up this holiday for children’” (“‘Bunka-kokka’ no negai o komete” [With a Wish to Become ‘A Cultural
Nation’], Kyoto Shimbun, 4 May 1998, 9.)40
Garrison remarks in 1984 that “a mother who fails in suicide after killing her children will probably be given a three-to-ﬁve year prison term, but even that is sometimes
suspended” (“The Puzzle of Oyako-Shinju,” 41). Sato’s analysis explains that the surviving mother of oyako-shinju is expected to be sentenced to less than three years inprison with an extension of time in most cases because not only the mother, but also theother people around her, should be responsible for it, according to Japanese psychology and ethics (“Oyagoroshi” 96). Among some oyako-shinju cases from 1992 through1998 in Japan, surviving mothers were primarily prosecuted for murder, yet the sentences vary according to their motivations and reasons: for example, a surviving mother (age 35) in Tokyo was accused of egotism and sentenced to a six-year-prison term
(Mainichi Shimbun, 11 August 1993); a surviving mother (age 28) in Hiroshima wassentenced to a three-year-prison term and a ﬁve-year probation because her sincere attitude toward her children was recognized (Chugoku Shimbun, 6 March 1993); a surviving mother (age 37) in Nagano was sentenced to a four-year-prison term (Shinano
Mainichi Shimbun, 23 November 1998); a surviving mother (age 38) in Nagano had amental problem so she was not prosecuted (Shinano Mainichi Shimbun, 29 February1992). The 1985 oyako-shinju case in Santa Monica, on the contrary, concluded in a
one-year-prison term and a ﬁve-year probation, as mentioned in Sato’s “Oyagoroshi,”96.
41
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958; rpt. 1974),
203.
42
For more on the history of this stereotype, see James S. Moy, Marginal Sights:
Staging the Chinese in America (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993), 84.
43
Houston culled her idea from the 1993 Lorena Bobbitt incident in Virginia, as she

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noted in an e-mail, 5 June 1998. Lorena Bobbitt ‘an Ecuadorean-born woman from
Venezuela married to a former U.S. Marine ofﬁcer’ cut off her 26-year-old husband’s
penis with a kitchen knife after having suffered a series of marital sexual assaults andattacks from her husband at the end of their four-year marriage. See also Rudy
Abramson, “Has the Bobbitt Case Escalated the War Between the Sexes?” Los Angeles
Times, 22 November 1993, E-1 and Michael Ross, “Lorena Bobbitt’s Trial for Cutting
Penis Begins,” Los Angeles Times, 11 January 1994, A-14.
44
Houston, “Playwright’s Notes,” in Kokoro (New York: Japan Society, 1994), n.p.n.