35 pages • 1 hour read
John OkadaNo-No Boy
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Prejudice in Pluralistic America
Racism is a primary focus in the novel. Ichiro and Kenji both experience discrimination for being Japanese, and both characters spend time reflecting on the causes of prejudice. To the police officer who pulls the two friends over for speeding, it doesnot matter that Kenji served and Ichiro is a no-no boy. They are both simply “Japs” whose ability to read English and understand the culture can be questioned and ridiculed. Throughout the book when Ichiro and Kenji face prejudice, it leads them to think about the way racial bias mars the country as a whole. They both connect their persecution to rampant discrimination against African Americans especially. Before his final trip to the hospital, Kenji tries to make sense of the racism he sees around him, against those who are Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Italian, Polish and more. “Kenji thought about these things and tried to organize in his mind so that the pattern could be seen and studied and the answers deduced therefrom. And there was no answer because there was no pattern and all he could feel was that the world was full of hatred” (136). No matter which group is being singled out, the novel stands in strong condemnation of prejudiced hate.
Intergenerational Divides
Towards the end of the novel, Freddie weighs in on a fixation that grips Ichiro for much of the book—how first generation Americans are supposed to relate to their immigrant parents. Freddie tells Ichiro, “They should never come here. They had no right to come here and born me and try to make me old country too...Like an albatross `round a guy’s neck. That’s what they are” (200). While Ichiro doesnot express the feeling quite as crassly, he too feels stunted and isolated, desperate to connect with his parents but aware he doesnot understand their lives and they donot understand his. While it is too late for Ichiro and his mother to reach an understanding, the book ends on a quietly hopeful note for Ichiro and his father. Though it is a wide chasm that has to be bridged, Ichiro’s father seems to want to know more about the reality of his son’s life, telling him that they will talk, that there is plenty of time. Immigrant parents and first generation children certainly live in separate worlds but when they face this head on as Kenji and his father do a mutual sense of respect is possible.
Mosaic or Melting Pot?
The characters spend a lot of time debating what the future holds for minority groups in America. Will they continue to cleave to their own cultural group, frequenting establishments like Club Oriental and living in racially isolated enclaves like Jackson Street? While Ichiro’s mother seems happiest in an America where she need only interact with other Japanese immigrants, Kenji hopes for greater inclusion. On his deathbed, he tells Ichiro: “Go someplace where there isn’t another Jap within a thousand miles. Marry a white girl or a Negro or an Italian or even a Chinese. Anything but a Japanese. After a few generations of that, you’ve got the thing beat” (164). For Kenji, real inclusion involves Americans relinquishing tradition and giving into acculturation. The gain, from Kenji’s perspective, is a society where people are American first and the cultural background second. “It’s just a dream,” Kenji says but it is not so unlike Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, which was delivered in speech form in 1963, six years after the novel’s publication (164).
