The Buddha in the Attic

The boat journey that brings the women from Japan to America is an important factor in establishing their collective identity and voice. The novel’s first sentence— “[O]n the boat we were mostly virgins” (vii)—immediately communicates the idea of a generation of women who are united in their journey and overall lack of sexual experience. Although a handful of the women are not virgins, and although they vary in age between 12 and 37, the boat journey and their shared anticipation of immigration and marriage unite them. The proximity of their situations, coupled with the proximity of their bodies on the boat “in steerage, where it [is] filthy and dim […] and the darkness filled with whispers” forces intimacy upon the women (4), who share their stories and identify with one another despite their differences.

At the same time, the voyage, where the women are at leisure to talk, have romances with boathands, and question an Englishman about what life in America will be like, is a unique moment in the women’s lives: a time and a place where their own individual subjectivity can flourish unhampered by labor and duty. It thus contrasts with their lives in Japan, where they were expected to be subordinate to the males in their families, and later with their lives in America, where they suppress their own needs in order to fulfil those of their husbands and employers.