The Unresting Wounds: Memory and Trauma

“The psychological trauma of being sent to labor camp as a political prisoner would perhaps follow him for the rest of life.” (vol.2 19)

“Not only you, many people live in extreme agony; like me, the stamp of

‘right-wing suicide’s daughter’ imprints in my life and never disappears.”

(vol.2 31)

Remnants bear shame, and have to struggle through the haunting memories and

psychological traumas. The sighs, nightmares, laments and allusions of ghostly cries in the novel imply that healing process becomes difficult for remnants. On

encountering traumatic experiences, the mind of remnants forms a mechanism to repress the “traces of past.” Based on Freudian concepts of memory, the traces of past experiences sustain for long periods of time, with the primordial affections inscribed in the mind. Influenced by Freud’s concept, Ricoeur recognizes the residues of past as active drives, rather than passive latencies. When Ricoeur discusses his

presuppositions about the persistence of the original impression, he describes the power of memory as “a primordial attribute of affections to survive, to persist, to remain, to endure” (Ricoeur 427). That is, Ricoeur considers memory not as a passive product, but as an active drive that can influence our behaviors and thoughts.

In Child of the Continent, memory serves as an active drive, and influences characters’ behaviors and thoughts. For example, when Matsumoto shakes the snowflakes out from Jiang’s scarf, he involuntarily recollects the childhood scene when he had shaken the snowflakes from his younger sister’s hairs. The behavior of shaking snowflakes off resurrects his memory. Here, we can also find the intimate relation between body and memory, with the function of senses like sights, hearing, taste, touch and smell. For instance, in the novel, the smell of disinfectant brings back the period of the implementation of National Health Insurance (NHI) for Jiang (Vol. 2 33). In addition, memory dives into the process of reasoning. For example, when Matsumoto goes out under sub-zero temperature, a thought flashes through his mind,

“It would become less colder if I stuff some straws and cayenne peppers into my shoes!” (Vol. 2 259). Such a thought surprises him by reminding him of his childhood:

when he was seven, before going out for drudgery, he used to put some straws and cayenne peppers into his shoes to avoid his toes being frostbitten. From the two examples mentioned above, we discern that memory can no longer be treated as

mental “objects.” The interplay between mind and body effectively delivers each character’s past.

The main characters such as Matsumoto, Atsuko and Jiang all live under the shadow of traumas. Trauma, according to Freud’s observation, signifies the repressed memories of terrible events experienced long ago in childhood. Traumas do not correspond to single events, but to multiple causes. In Child of the Continent, trauma has more than one cause: the impact of being abandoned, the disappointment about the collapse of ideal Manchukuo, the unfortunate embroilment of the Cultural Revolution, the torture in the labor camp, etc. Also, traumas must be formed by relations among humans. That is, a person cannot be traumatized by him/herself;

traumas occur from the relation with other people. As we see, the seven-year-old Matsumoto’s vivid dreams and recurring nightmares link to the brutal soldiers, family members and the hell-like human tragedies. Thus, the causes of Matsumoto’s

psychological trauma do not simply relate to events, but also to people, whose groan, cry and scream echo in his ears for years. What’s more, Yamasaki notices the

temporal dimension of trauma. In Child of the Continent, Matsumoto imprecates summer, because he has a feeling that “whenever summer comes, some people perish;

such feeling begins since he was seven” (vol.1 102). But in fact, not every summer follows his formula of thoughts. Matsumoto’s feelings may stem from his earlier traumatic experiences.

Furthermore, psychological traumas can be transformed into physical symptoms:

Atsuko’s fever, for instance. The high fever pushes Atsuko to the ambiguous zone between conscious and unconscious, and she groans with pain: “aches, burns . . . I fear” (Vol.3 182). Atsuko’s abrupt high fever has something to do with her traumatic experiences. Her somniloquy miraculously associates the word “burn” with her past and present conditions. The scene of the blazing inferno during the war and the fever

subtly connect with each other. Hence, Atsuko’s “sudden illness” does not come from cold weather (since she has lived at the northeast China from her childhood); however, it relates to her long repressed feelings. Even though Yamasaki does not clarify

Atsuko’s dream-world and hallucination, Atsuko’s dream-content can be traced backwards to the sensory qualities of her traumatic past. That’s probably why Yamasaki chooses fever as Atsuko’s symptom.

Traumas, to be sure, present unforgettable experiences, but an enormous trauma can also lead to amnesia. Amnesia, the loss of memory, usually results from the brain damage or the psychological trauma. Matsumoto’s cause of amnesia is closed to the latter kind. The already seven-year-old Matsumoto should have the ability to

remember and describe, but “the scene of massacre is like a black screen which has blocked his path for the previous memories” (Vol.2 290). No matter how hard Matsumoto manages to recall the past, he cannot retrieve the information before the date of Soviet soldiers’ massacre. The name and the appearance of his family members also become unreachable. It is painful for survivors such as Matsumoto to recollect, since “his mind goes blank—blank enough to make him crazy” (Vol.2 262).

Although Matsumoto deems his condition of amnesia as cerebral abnormity (Vol.1 30), his amnesia actually demonstrates a “normal” mental mechanism. The amnesiac characters claim that they have forgotten everything, but in the end, they all turn out to remember the details. For instance, Matsumoto repeats “I have forgotten my childhood” (Vol 2. 31) several times. But on hearing the sound of claps, Matsumoto comes up with the religious ceremony during his childhood. The other example can be found on Atsuko, who claims to have forgotten the childhood. But when she is asked about the games she played or the food she tasted when she was a child, she “seems to think of something and then starts to tell” (Vol.3 103). Consequently, in the

unconscious processes, “nothing is brought to an end, nothing is past or forgotten”

(Freud, 378). The indestructible traces, even though the characters keep silent, do not fade away. Through these examples, Yamasaki manifests the importance of mental power. The remnants must face the secret power in the mind since it forms a counteraction against biopolitical power. While biopolitical power continues to dominate life, remnants’ traumas and experiences of shame have become another momentum of life, and mark the singularity of individual life.

To sum up, wounds in the novel do not express possibility to recover, yet from these wounds, scarlet blood flows out and continues to speak inhuman tortures and political violence. The wounds do not heal but beseech our attentions; when we engage with the cuts determined by biopolitical segregation, we witness historical violence as well as life of remnants. Every personal account owns singularity. What’s more, through literature, the continuity of historical wounds prevents the society from collective amnesia, and reminds individuals of “duty toward the Other.” The duty here does not suggest moral or legal obligations; instead, it implies a human relation of being with the Other. To explain the “duty toward the Other,” I analyze Yamasaki’s implication of salvation in the novel from the dimension of community, and reflect on contemporary media to reconsider public representation of Manchukuo remnants.