Obasan: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

Though Aunt Emily once told Naomi that she was a quiet child, Naomi disagrees with this generalization, remembering that she was confident and vocal in her house in Vancouver, but afraid and quiet out in the world. Naomi flashes back to a day in her childhood shortly after her parents bought a dozen chicks to populate the family’s chicken coop. She puts the chicks in the coop with the adult chickens, and a hen begins to kill them all. Naomi runs to Mother, who rescues the surviving chicks with a matter-of-fact swiftness that Naomi deems characteristic of Japanese motherhood. Naomi’s mother tells her, without blame or pity, that “if there is not carefulness, there is danger.”

Naomi’s thoughts shift to Old Man Gower, her next-door neighbor in Vancouver who sexually abused her as a child, and to a boy who abused her in Slocan. Her memories are interwoven with her recurring dream of captive, naked Asian women who attempt to save themselves by seducing the white soldiers holding them at gunpoint, only to be killed anyway. She flashes back to Old Man Gower molesting her when she is four years old. The young Naomi doesn’t know how to resist, because she has been taught to obey adults. She feels incapable of speaking in his presence, and every time he abuses Naomi he warns her not to tell Mother. The secret makes Naomi feel separated from her mother, and she feels even more distant and confused as she begins to crave Gower’s attention.