Between Ishmael and Tashtego

Thank you for your eye-opening talk about the unique connection between Ishmael in Moby-Dick and the character Ishimaru in your novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest. I count it a great honor to participate in this conference as a respondent to your keynote lecture, “Call Me Ishimaru.” Your lecture causes me to deeply consider the intersections among Japanese, Japanese Americans, and Native Americans in the context of the American masterpiece, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Your descriptions of various parallels between the narratives, such as the stories of your grandfather Kishiro Yamashita, your father John Yamashita, and Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, invoke the themes of exile and survival under persecution by the US nation-state and its colonial politics.

As you pointed out, both Ishmael and Kazumasa Ishimaru are exiles and orphan-like figures. They are also survivors in the battle between nature and human beings. Ishimaru, as you observed, is the Japanese version of Ishmael. When I think about Ishmael and Ishimaru’s subject positions in the two novels, I immediately recall another striking similarity between these characters: their absent presence in the stories. I use this seemingly oxymoronic phrase because Ishmael and Ishimaru, although they are protagonists in the novels, are portrayed as not being heavily involved in the central theme, the battle between nature and human beings. They do exist as central characters in the novels, but passively; their passive existence eventually leads to their survival at the end of the stories.

In your analysis of Moby-Dick, you pointed out the coupling of the crew members of the Pequod: Queequeg with Starbuck, Tashtego with Stubb, and Daggoo with Flask. You also suggested that Fedallah was the counter to Ahab. You talked about Melville’s characterization: each ethnic or native harpooner works for a white officer. When we examine these pairings, we see that Ishmael stands outside them, as if outside the racial and class politics on the Pequod. He is indeed in the position of absent presence as a narrator who witnesses the crew’s mortal combat with Moby Dick. Likewise, you portray Ishimaru at the center of your novel, Through the Arc of the Rainforest, while also emphasizing his absent presence. Ishimaru does not act but exists in the midst of human desires to abuse a resource, Matacãn plastic (a fictional object). Although portrayed as a passive character, he also functions as an observer who reports people’s greedy acts.

I am interested in both Ishmael and Ishimaru’s stance vis-à-vis the societies in which they live. In Moby-Dick, Ishmael’s narrative of absent presence recalls that of an anthropologist who observes and analyzes the environment while remaining a stranger to it. In your first work and autobiographical short story, “The Bath” (1975), the spontaneous act of remaining a stranger in the nation—you used the term “a sensitive observer” (144)—is a significant skill of the Japanese American protagonist who visits Japan for the first time and has an anthropologist’s nature.

I agree with your formulation. Ishimaru in Through the Arc of the Rainforest possesses unique characteristics. The name “Ishi maru” indicates an oxymoron: ishi (stone) is one of the hardest natural resources on earth, whereas maru (round) as an adjective connotes softness, adaptability, flexibility, and tranquility. When I look at Ishimaru, I find that you inserted these opposite elements in this character by giving him an anthropologist’s stance. I recognize Ishmael’s position in Moby-Dick as also being like that of an anthropologist who attempts to analyze different cultures from his or her own, as an insider yet one who is not completely assimilated into his or her host culture. My first question in response to your lecture, therefore, is as follows: if Ishmael is the model for Ishimaru, did you see such an anthropologist-like nature in Melville’s Ishmael?

Next I would like to bring up your mention of Ruth Benedict, an American anthropologist who conducted her research on Japanese culture by collecting data from kibei during World War II [kibei was a term often used to refer to Japanese Americans born...