Seventeen Syllables

There are two parallel stories in “Seventeen Syllables”: Rosie’s emerging womanhood and Tome’s awakening as a poet. Both stories intertwine. For instance, when Tome continues to discuss haiku in social situations even after Mr. Hayashi expresses his dissatisfaction at the Hayanos’ home, Rosie is also inspired to go against expectation by meeting Jesus in the packing shed. In both cases, this passion is eventually tempered by another person in their family: Tome’s by her husband, and Rosie’s by her mother. In the end, “Seventeen Syllables” illustrates how Japanese American women across both generations become weighed down by familial and cultural pressures. Tome’s moment of creative freedom lasts only three months.

Although the story is told through Rosie’s limited point of view, Tome’s situation emerges as the story’s primary conflict. There are multiple reasons why Tome becomes so passionate about haiku: composing haiku provides her an outlet to express things about herself that she cannot share with her husband and daughter; discussing haiku satisfies her need for intellectual stimulation, something previously lacking in her social life; it repairs a broken connection between the present and her past in Japan; and it might even give her a way to rise above her social class or, at the very least, to feel a sense of independence. The Mainichi Shimbun represents something that had previously seemed unreachable for a farmer’s wife.

The haiku as an art form also informs the structure of “Seventeen Syllables,” beyond the title. As Tome explains to Rosie in the opening scene, a haiku is “divided into three lines of five, seven, and five syllables” (8). Yamamoto’s story also roughly follows a three-part structure: First, it describes life with Tome during her emergence as a poet; then, it depicts Rosie’s sexual awakening; and finally, it ends with each woman realizing something new about themselves and each other.

In that first section, Tome’s hobby disrupts the family routine. Whereas previously husband and wife played cards together in the evening, now Mr. Hayashi plays solitaire alone “and cheat[s] fearlessly” (9). Whereas, presumably, the family’s social gatherings once were dominated by Mr. Hayashi, now they are split between the literary-minded and those, like Mr. Hayashi, who only look at the photos in Life magazine. As the narrator observes early in the story, “Rosie and her father lived for a while with two women, her mother and Ume Hanazono” (9). The latter figure “came to life after the dinner dishes were done” and “often neglected speaking when spoken to” (9). She broke free from the role of farm worker, cook, housekeeper, and wife. She became, arguably, a more independent version of herself—for a short period of time.

Yamamoto’s story is often read as a parable about the effects of patriarchal repression. Mr. Hayashi dismisses his wife’s hobby as frivolous and responds with escalating forms of emotional abuse—either because her new hobby brings change to his little world or because he is jealous of the success it brings her. At the story’s end, it appears as if he regains control of that world and is successful in breaking Tome’s will. But Yamamoto, who rarely casts her characters as heroes or villains, is not without some empathy for Mr. Hayashi. Aunt Taka describes him as “a young man of simple mind […] but of kindly heart” (19). Being “simple,” he does not understand haiku the way Tome can, and so he cannot participate in his wife’s new hobby even if he wanted to. He belongs to a social class believed to be below the one Tome imagined for herself, and haiku is associated with a Japanese leisure class more educated than his own.

In the second section, Rosie becomes interested only in her own problems, which is typical for someone her age. The narrative implies that, unlike Mr. Hayashi, Rosie possesses the intellectual capacity to appreciate haiku, if she makes the effort. But she is “lazy” (8) when it comes to her language learning and afraid to be laughed at if she tries. Rosie’s rejection of Tome’s hobby is less about controlling her mother than it is about her own freedom. In this case, Rosie wants to break free from issei pressure to adopt and carry on traditional Japanese culture. Rosie, for instance, sings “Red Sails in the Sunset” (15), a song popularly performed by British and American singers, in the bath after her experience with Jesus in the shed. At Japanese school, she does impressions of British and American comedians (15). Her romance with Jesus suggests a break from her ethnic lineage. Even her name, “Rosie,” is more American than the Hayano girls “Haru, Natsu, Aki, Fuyu” (9).

Rosie is preoccupied with thoughts of Jesus up to the moment her father “utter[s] an incredible noise, exactly like the cork of a bottle popping” (17), and leaves the tomato fields to confront Tome and Mr. Kuroda. This moment signals the story’s precipitous turn toward a resolution. The final section of the story is short, but, like the final line of a haiku, it cuts sharply to a moment of revelation for both mother and daughter. Rosie’s revelation is twofold: She watches her father destroy the print and must come to terms with the violence of the “smashing,” “explosion,” and “wreckage” (18), a violence she now knows her father is capable of. Then, when her mother asks, “Do you know why I married your father?” Rosie thinks, “[T]he telling would combine with the other violence of the hot afternoon to level her life, her world to the very ground” (18). This second violence is more abstract. It is a structural violence enacted upon working-class women, such as that which trapped Tome between suicide and her current circumstances of marriage.

Tome’s revelation is more subtle. After Rosie promises never to marry, Tome recognizes “the familiar glib agreement” that Rosie used to placate her in the opening scene, when they first discussed haiku: the same “yes, yes” sentence (8, 19). Although they both share a revelation in this moment, even their revelations remain divided by past and future. It is unclear whether Rosie believes her own experience will match her mother’s memory, or if her nisei generation will find alternatives to the issei experience.