When The Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka

The nameless characters of "When The Emperor Was Divine" seemed to be something the author did with great intention. This novel was written with very emotionless statements and very unexpressive details. Everything seemed to be written in a "matter-of-fact" way instead of greatly describing what was going on within the story. Each character, however, had their own personality, the mother being strong and not descriptive with her feelings around her children, the daughter being independent and intelligent, and the son innocent and fun-loving.

However, the characters not having names seems to really alter the way the reader understands the novel. I am very used to creating a mental image of the characters I am reading about, each image starting generally with the character's name. Without that information it is really hard for me to keep people separated and unique in my mind. However this was the intention of the author, Julie Otsuka. She wanted the reader to realize that this was happening to many, in fact, all Japanese people within this time period. The point of leaving the characters nameless was to say that it could be ANY Japanese family that she is writing about. I believe it also brings about the idea that the American people had turned a blind-eye to the entire situation. Americans did not know their names, nor did they care about who they were, where they were going, or what was happening to them. They raided their homes, stole from them, called them names and harmed them when they did see them. The fact that they were nameless definitely speaks to the fact that American people had no care to know their names and definitely disowned them as part of this country's community at the time.

Upon their return home, they were still separated from the community. They were not welcomed back with open arms and they were still thought of as a threat and someone who should not be living next door to other, "innocent" people. This stretched through out the entire nation. The nameless characters existed everywhere and their store was a shared one.