Introduction
Ruth Ozeki is known as a production designer of horror films and shows for Japanese television. Her movies were awarded at special festivals and brought her recognition. The experience and interest of the Japanese audience inspired her to write the novel “My Year of Meat”. The novel “My Year of Meats” by Ruth Ozeki is a satirical story combining fiction together with fact and seems to present the view of the meat industry in the USA. The title of the book does not coincide with the total plot of the story. The book combines such points as culture peculiarities and femininity rather than meat industry development. The author contrasted two main questions in her book: the problem of race discrimination and the dangerous character of modern meat products.
Main body
The intercultural problem makes people more sharply feel racial inequality. This claim is supported by the author throughout the whole story. With the introduction of the paper protagonist Jane Takagi-Little, whose parents were of different nationalities: American father and mother of Japanese origin, one starts feeling a slight sign of racial interactions. It is not by chance that the writer stresses the fact of the race differences of her parents. Race is considered to be a symbol of international social conflicts presenting the fact of different colors or features of one’s body. The whole story abounds in small and insignificant details which open a way to the vision of the national problem. The interaction of Americans and Japanese disclose the real attitude of one nation to another. Jane, as a semi-American woman, is a confident and persisting personality who has to be involved in a constant struggle for her job and life in general. The author seemed to embody the peculiarities of the whole nation in the protagonist, though she contained some characteristics of Japanese. When her activities were directed to the production of a very popular television show called “My American Wife”, she faced the question of intercultural friendship, as she had to connect her career with the Illustration of an American housewife to the Japanese women. Ruth Ozeki directs her flow of thoughts to the methods she uses to present her job in a proper way. The experience of her “business” gives her an opportunity to learn more and provides her with complete awareness about the meat industry and beef production in the country. Why she has to do this?.. It is not fair… It seems as if she fights with her conscious feeling of responsibility for Japanese housewives.
“Sometimes Akiko felt like a thief, sneaking through the desolate corners of her own life, stealing back moments and pieces of herself.” Akiko Ueno is a symbol of all “poor” and dependent wives from Japan. She was locked inside from the environment and felt “like a thief” having no opportunity to find a way out. The concept “like a thief” characterizes her as a representative of Japanese housewives among the American nation. Akiko was constantly looking for some moments in order to understand her life and her inner world, to put together “pieces of herself”. Akiko wanted to know why racial differences make her feel so when she watched the life of Americans. She is described as a miserable woman who has to suffer her husband’s whims and prepare the recipes rating the episodes of the program. Following every Jane’s program, Akiko felt differences in the way of life of two nationalities; she became deeply involved in the problem of racial inequality. The lives of two unknown people are closely interwoven in the “fight” for fairness. With the flow of events, one can observe the development of both personalities Jane and Akiko. To my personal way of thinking at this very moment two major problems of the book interact. The intercultural relations turned into something more than just usual observation. The growth of Jane’s consciousness is thoroughly illustrated with every passing episode and it is easy to notice how it influences Akiko’s view of the situation, how she changes with time. It means that Americans deserve the trust of the Japanese, who even consider American people to be just, honest and responsive.
“But Akiko is learning something more than just recipes from Jane’s programs, and slowly, before she realizes it, her life begins to change.” The complete involvement of Americans in the life of Japan is at the center of the paper. Ruth Ozeki shows the gradual establishment of strong links between the nations, which is close to the conflict. By saying “Akiko is learning something more…” Ruth presented a complete change in the inner world and moral make-up of Akiko. The experience she got from TV programs was not directed to the preparing of food but to becoming an independent and strong-willed personality. But at the same time, it made her suffer inequalities caused by different origins. Not by chance, Akiko refuses “to be the wife of her husband and to obey him”. So-called lessons of life promoted by Jane resulted in the fact that “her life began to change”. Mocked by the husband at the beginning of the paper Akiko from a naive and faultless woman turns into a strong-willed and confident personality. On the one hand, Ruth strived for showing cultural friendship, a real trust of Japanese housewives to American nationality, and a great desire to follow the example of their independent way of life. The concept “begins to change” is caused by the full awareness of the Japanese dependent position and desire to follow the example of Americans. Ruth Ozeki experienced cooperation with Japanese women and this fact left a print on the paper. But on the other hand, one can notice a fraudulent attitude of the Americans to the Japanese nation who really believed in the “wholesomeness” of their meat industry. This claim is deeply thought-provoking; one can only guess why the author decided to illustrate the real relationships in this way. How she saw these relationships…. Of course, the example of the meat industry as a link between two great nationalities is rather primitive, but one can read the real problem between the lines. Though the Americans know and fully realize the deceitfulness of their meat quality, they continue promoting it despite everything. The economical situation and financial side of their lives are put in the first place, not the human features. The whole paper is based on the lie, a great cultural lie that cannot be overcome and it brightly illustrates racial inequality.
“Ignorance becomes empowering because it enables people to live”. The feeling of racial discrimination is mainly caused by the “ignorance” on the part of other cultural societies. The most terrible is the fact that it becomes a part of our life. Ruth Ozeki tried to show how this ignorance closely interacts with the cultural conflicts that cause racial differences. Akiko feels loneliness and ignorance on the part of her husband trying to compare her life with that of Americans who are confident, independent, and resolute. This unequal position of the two nations “becomes empowering” and takes the main place in the life of Japanese housewives. Only Jane’s TV program makes them think about their way of life and try to change it.
“We are paralyzed by bad knowledge, from which the only escape is playing dumb”. Akiko and Jane are not only the representatives of two different nations but two strong women striving for cultural understanding. The concept “bad knowledge” is a general identification of major problems covering cross-cultural interactions. Ruth embodied intercultural misunderstanding and differences in the relations of two nations and described them as “paralyzing” in order to prove the significance of the problem. The feeling and awareness of racial discrimination, the realization of the dependence and absence of any freedom are shown in the description of Akiko. Though she had nothing to do but “playing dumb”, Akiko tries to illustrate her strong character and overcome the principles of the nation in comparison with other housewives who feel the racial differences watching Jane’s program.
“Some of us obey and some never perceive this notion”. The concept “obey” is an abstract line between the Japanese and Americans. Here the author brightly showed the sharp differences between two cultures and this concept can explain why nations can feel race inequality. The conflict based on the different ways of life was centered inside every Japanese housewife, which made them feel lower social position and a high rate of cultural dependence.
Speaking about such themes as the meat industry illustrated in the text, it is important to say that the author showed the only slight connection between the plot and the title of the book, though one can learn a lot of new and interesting facts about food safety in the country. I do not support the opinion and saying that the problem of the meat industry is the central one. It is only symbolically described and is a link for showing the level of trust between the nations.
Ruth Ozeki never thought to write a novel about the peculiarities of the meat industry, she just wanted to illustrate an independent woman whose life is closely connected with Japanese television; she strived for writing a satirical story with some anecdotes and funny episodes. The primary theme was directed to the commercial value of the cultures connected by means of modern television. The author’s activities and TV experience are reflected in the character of Jane; Ruth tried to describe what she had learned from the television sphere. The author used stylistic devices such as metaphor and metonymy in order to compare his characters with the symbols they show. Women were seen by the writer as cows, cattle were embodied in wives, and the body was considered to be a meat symbol – sexual and fresh.
Conclusion
The novel “My Year of Meat” covered a great variety of important issues such as racism, the state of the meat industry, prejudices, the role of the woman in Japan and America, cultural differences, the importance of career-making, and relationships. The novel is quite entertaining, involving, and provoking. It combines different genres from comedy to tragedy which makes the story to be rather intricate, aggressive, and emotional. Ruth managed to show the American nationality by means of Japanese people who consider such notions as lesbianism and infidelity to be quite different from the vision of other nations. The writer managed to describe in detail the main theme of the novel and reflect the major problems in the content of her masterpiece in order to make it understandable and involving.
References
Ozeki, Ruth L., My Year of Meat. New York, 1998.
Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Stanton, CA.
Cody, Nora “Japanese culture, American culture, race, love, sex, fertility, and its destroyers.” California Motion Magazine, 1998.
Vincenite, D. “Major points of Ruth Ozeki’s culture“. The New York Times , 2000.
Sayles, John. “Amalgamated Meat Packers and Butcher Workers of North America”., 2001.
Omi, M. & Howard, W. “Racial Formation in the US”. New York, 1994.
Hartouni, Valerie. “Containing Women: Reproductive Discourse in the 1980s”.