BOOK REVIEW : Japanese ‘Passover’: The Rudeness of In-Laws

Passover by Foumiko Kometani (Carroll & Graf: $14.95; 148 pp.)

The history of the publication of “Passover” and its companion piece, “A Guest From Afar,” is fascinating. Kometani, born in Japan, has lived in America--the Pacific Palisades--for a long time. She is the wife of a well-known screenwriter, and the mother of two sons, one of whom is autistic. Her husband, in addition to his other work, has published books on his son’s condition. All this material has been “known,” in one sense, for years. But during the time all these things were occurring, the Japanese wife was having thoughts of her own.

She began to write, in Japanese, and submit her stories to Japanese publishers. Then, suddenly, these two novellas were published. Just as suddenly, “Passover” won Japan’s most prestigious literary prize. And, disquietingly, it seemed as though the material that was “known” was not the entire story. The wife, the Japanese wife, had a story of her own, and it did not reflect very well on her husband or his family. Because her husband happened to be Jewish, many critics, who at that time had not read the book, criticized Kometani for being anti-Semitic. Now, “Passover” is out in English, translated by the author herself. It is not anti-Semitic. It may be anti-husband, anti-American, anti-family, even anti-human, but to dismiss this book as anti-Semitic would be the same as if some woman staggered in off the street stabbed in 30 places reported that she had been attacked by a Jewish killer, and then had her report dismissed as “anti-Semitic” while she bled to death on the floor.

“Passover” is the story of two cross-cultural fantasies held by two intelligent people. These fantasies clashed disastrously and the couple is almost destroyed. Michiko has grown up in Japan, detests the Japanese patriarchy and the fact that women have no voice in Japanese society. Michiko reads Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” and gets the crazy idea that women are free to do what they want in America. She comes here, looking for freedom, a voice and an identity.

The other half of this ironic joke is waiting for her here, in the form of a nice Jewish screenwriter, who (for reasons that aren’t clear in this narrative) decides to marry a Japanese wife who can’t speak much English. The autistic son in the story seems really to be a secondary character, the agent of disappointment, but not the disappointment itself. During the narration of “Passover,” the couple, Michiko and Al, together with their other, unafflicted son, take their first vacation in years. They fly to New York for one short week. But Al insists on seeing his relatives for a Passover Seder and drags his wife and son along.

His relatives ignore her for a while, then set her up to make a fool of herself. But the central mistake belongs to Michiko, who, long ago, when she read Simone de Beauvoir, forgot that that great female existentialist was laughed at when she went into French restaurants, and was considered to be a freak when she wanted to speak in her own voice. For the family of a son to get together and gang up on a daughter-in-law who has no power and no allies, is not just a Jewish custom nor a Japanese one.

It is Chinese, English, French, Slovak, Indian, Papua New Guinean. It is human. The shift in mores--the betrayal of a customed behavior--comes not from the brutes around the dinner table, but by way of the friendless daughters-in-law, the “defenseless” wives who, in the last 20 years, have developed the disconcerting habit of taking up sword or gun or pen and insisted on telling their side of the story.

The husband’s family in “Passover” is guilty of no more than the standard patriarchal rudeness to any daughter-in-law. My own father-in-law went to his grave without ever remembering my name. (And the implicit agreement in this social contract is silence on the part of the oppressed. That’s why parents abuse children, not their congressmen.) But when Japanese wives--who are supposed, in fantasy, to be submissive--write novels like this, when children come forward 40 years later to write that their parents beat them, when Michiko, in “A Guest From Afar,” reports her husband’s screaming tantrum about how she’s wrapped fish incorrectly in the refrigerator, the entire patriarchy all across the globe is threatened.

But humanity may be improved. If people can’t act like jerks anymore because someone may eventually write about it, finally, a new, rough-hewn honor system among human beings may begin to prevail.