The Man In The High Castle

Childan is the owner and operator of an American antiques store. The items he sells and the identity of his customers are an insight into his character. Childan makes a living selling a version of America to the people who are currently ruling the Pacific States of America. The occupying Japanese bureaucrats are interested in their colonial subjects, and Childan sells them a version of Americana that they find palatable. The slightly kitsch and novelty ornaments that Childan has in his store are deliberately unartistic. The customers do not want anything new or anything challenging. Instead, they want to experience a comfortable and safe version of America that they can fetishize and treat as a hobby. Childan does not sell antiques; he sells an idea of America that no longer exists.

Though Childan has a good relationship with many of his customers, he also represents the tension between Japanese and American cultures. He is an American man who grew up before the Japanese occupation but who now largely deals with the middle class of the occupying bureaucracy. As such, he straddles the line between Japanese and American cultures. He commercializes and sells American history to the people who conquered and rule America. He even speaks English in a broken, unfamiliar fashion that imitates his Japanese colonial rulers to ingratiate himself with them. Ultimately, this tension illustrates how Childan envies the Japanese and their culture. However, what he envies is not the culture itself but Japan’s dominance and power. He is racist against the Japanese while envying their culture, seeing them as both inhuman and human at the same time. He is a prime example of the lack of objective truth as he deludes himself into believing contradictory things in the same moment. He reveres the Japanese for their ability to dominate America but also loathes them for doing so, encapsulating the tension that exists in any interaction between colonizer and colonized.

Childan denigrates the Japanese for not completely understanding the American culture they fetishize, but his store is filled with fake antiques. He cannot tell the difference between real pistols and the ones produced by the Wyndam-Matson Corporation. If a supposed expert in American culture, history, and antiques cannot tell the difference between a real and a fake antique, then his failure hints at the impossibility of an objective version of reality. Instead, the antiques have value because of their subjective interpretation by Childan and his customers. Similarly, Childan cannot discern legitimate interest in history from his desire to make money. Paul Kasoura challenges Childan on this, testing whether Childan would ever make money by undermining his culture's respectability. Paul's challenge reveals, however, that Childan does subconsciously understand American culture better than anyone else. The early-20th century trinkets that Childan sells in his shop are products of an age of unbound capitalism. They are mass-produced knickknacks like the Mickey Mouse watch, disposable objects designed to make money. Childan, in trying to make money, is continuing their legacy while at the same time buying into the Japanese delusion that the cultural artifacts are more interesting and artistic than they actually are. Childan's willingness to compromise his morals to make money is a tribute to the capitalist age of his youth while his reticence to do so once challenged by a Japanese man is a concession to the reality of his imperialist present. 

Frank is defined by his relationship to ex-wife, Juliana. He thinks about her all the time, and his actions seem entirely based on how they might alter her opinion of him. Each time Frank acts, he stops a moment to consider how Juliana would react. He changes his behavior and his personality to try to become the kind of man Juliana would want to marry. However, Juliana has already married and left Frank once before, so he evidently has no real idea of what she wants or how to become that person. Therefore, the version of Juliana that influences his actions is not actually Juliana. Without Juliana present in his life for Frank to base these thoughts on, he creates a subjective version of Juliana; he shapes his identity by becoming the man he thinks Juliana wants him to be, rather than the man she might actually once have loved.

Frank Frink is an example of the essentialness of deception in The Man in the High Castle. He is not alone in his need for deception as many of the characters are hiding their true identities, either because they are insecure (Childan) or because they have ulterior motives (Joe). Frank is hiding his Jewish ethnicity because he is in danger of extermination. He has a genuine reason to fear for his life and is forced to hide his true self, otherwise he will be sent to a Nazi extermination camp. Frank must deceive to survive. His existence is a reminder of the existential threat faced by different races and the brutality of the Nazi regime, which becomes fixated on exterminating a seemingly inconsequential man. Not only do the Nazis explicitly murder Jewish people, they also figuratively kill their true identities by forcing people like Frank to hide themselves from the world. Forced into change due to fear for his life, Frank's desire to turn himself into a suitable husband for an imagined version of Juliana makes more sense. He has been robbed of his true identity and is trying to fill that void with something that makes him feel better, such as romantic love.

At the same time, Frank is an artisan. Unlike any other character in the novel, he actually creates something. Tagomi is a bureaucrat and a trade official who signs paperwork and meets people. Childan is an antiques dealer who does not even know his merchandise is fake. Frank is unique in that he actually creates material objects rather than sell or discuss said objects. Even Abendsen confesses that the I Ching was responsible for the writing process of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. As such, Frank and his jewelry products are uniquely creative and original in a world that lacks these same qualities. He is the only creator in the novel and has an effect on Tagomi, transporting the bureaucrat to another world. The irony of Frank is that he is the only figure in the novel to actually create as well as the only character whose existence makes him a target for extermination. Frank creates objects that reveal a universal truth to men like Tagomi while Frank must hide his own truth from the universe.