The Buddha in the Attic Summary

During the first days of a weeks-long boat ride from Japan to California, young Japanese women compare photographs of the Japanese husbands who await their arrival in the United States. These young women, who mostly hail from the countryside, are picture brides: they’ve only seen their future husbands’ photographs and have never met in person. Their marriages were largely decided by a matchmaker and their families, who arranged for them to be paired with Japanese immigrants living in the United States.

Despite the difficult conditions on the boat and the fact that the women are enroute to start entirely new lives with men they don’t know, they believe their husbands to be handsome and financially secure, and they look forward to the prosperous conditions that await them in the United States. Many of the women also become close friends with one another, and others end up falling in love with deckhands or other seemingly kind men on the boat.

When the boat docks in San Francisco, the women realize that their husbands aren’t who they claimed to be in their letters. Instead of the handsome men in the photographs, the husbands who greet them are tired and dressed in shabby clothing. Nonetheless, most of the women try to stay positive and believe that there’s no need to worry now that they’re in the United States.

That night, the husbands take their wives to the hotels and motels they can afford—meaning that, in some cases, the young women find themselves in rooms that smell of mouse droppings and in beds with yellow-stained bedsheets. Most of the women have never been with a man sexually, and while some of the husbands are gentle or shy in bed, the majority of them are violent and forceful, treating their new wives in animalistic manners and not stopping even if the women indicate that they aren’t ready to have sex.

The women and their husbands soon disperse across the state of California, and the women realize that their husbands do not, in fact, lead the financially stable lives they claimed to. The women find themselves in fruit and vegetable fields, working the land with their underpaid husbands, who must answer to racist white bosses. Although the women are initially curious about their new bosses, as they aren’t used to white Americans, their husbands warn them to stay away from all white people and to always be as respectful as possible.

As the women struggle to pick up English and acclimate to their physically demanding jobs, many fall ill, and some white bosses even ask them for sexual favors. To make matters worse, although many bosses begin to admire their Japanese workers for being skillful workers, the white townspeople as a whole dislike living near Japanese people and sometimes take to setting their chicken coops or fields on fire.

The Japanese women and their husbands begin to live in fear. Even as some are able to save enough money to move to the suburbs and work as domestic workers rather than in the fields, they realize that they must stay at the outskirts and withstand constant acts of racism in order to live in the United States.

Many of the women soon give birth to their first children and, for the most part, go through the taxing experience of childbirth without proper medical care. Because many hospitals won’t accommodate Japanese patients, many women give birth with only their husbands to help them, and some give birth completely alone. Unfortunately, the women also quickly find themselves back to work in the fields and must bring their newborn children with them because their husbands expect them to take care of their children alone.

Despite these difficult conditions, the women and their children bond quickly, and the children instinctively begin to care for and look after their mothers. As the children begin attending school, however, they start to forget the Japanese language and culture that their parents taught them. To better fit in, the children take on American names and grow into loud, tall adolescents that their parents no longer recognize. In many cases, the women and their husbands realize that their children are ashamed of them.

War soon breaks out, and on the second day, the Japanese families hear rumors of a list. While the true nature of the list is hard to determine, they do know that people on the list have been labeled as dangerous—and are primarily Japanese. The townspeople—even including non-white neighbors—begin to treat the Japanese families with more suspicion, ignoring them and sending anonymous letters warning them to get out of town.

Although the Japanese families try to remain calm, the police eventually order them to turn in any items that might be considered “contraband,” and the government puts a travel ban and curfew into place for all individuals of Japanese descent. One by one, the Japanese husbands begin to disappear, with their wives unable to explain what happened. Finally, evacuation notices are posted, and the remaining husbands, their wives, and children prepare to leave town.

The white townsfolk watch as the Japanese families leave their homes for good, each Japanese person wearing a numbered identification tag. Months pass, and the white townsfolk wonder what happened to their Japanese neighbors. Their children especially miss their old Japanese schoolmates, but as more time passes, the townsfolk ultimately forget all about the Japanese neighbors they used to have.