No-No Boy

“The legs of the accuser were in front of him. God in a pair of green fatigues, US Army style. They were the legs of the jury that passed sentence on him. Beseech me, they seemed to say, throw your arms about me and bury your head between my knees and seek pardon for your great sin”

Throughout the novel, Ichiro grapples with feelings of guilt over his status as a no-no boy. Specifically, he worries that he has given up any claims to American identity. He wonders what, if anything, will allow him to repent for him choice. In this particular moment, after being accosted by an old friend, Eto, he feels that all he can do is beg and wait.

“It was her way of saying that she had made him what he was and that the thing in him which made him say no to the judge and go to prison for two years was the growth of a seed planted by the mother tree and that she was the mother who had put this thing in her son and that everything that had been done and said was exactly as it should have been”

Ichiro’s mother responses to his homecoming by saying that she is proud of him, proud that he is her son. This sentiment upsets Ichiro who wants to convey his pain to her; she views his jail time as a commitment to her values and to Japan, so she is unable to see the suffering of her son. To her, his commitment to Japan and remaining Japanese is all that matters. That he went to jail for his mother’s values makes him a good Japanese son but, Ichiro thinks, a poor American.

“I wish with all my heart that I were Japanese or that I were American. I am neither and I blame you and I blame myself and I blame the world which is made up of many countries which fight with each other and kill and hate and destroy”

Ichiro’s identity crisis spans the length of the book. In this moment, he blames his mother for foisting an identity on him, forcing him to remain traditionally Japanese. He also blames himself for not identifying as fully American when he was questioned.