Toshio Mori
Toshio Mori was a Japanese American writer born on March 20, 1910, in Oakland, California. Growing up in the San Leandro area, he developed a passion for reading and writing, influenced by notable authors such as Stephen Crane and Sherwood Anderson. Mori is best known for his collection of short stories, *Yokohama, California* (1949), which portrays the vibrant Japanese American community in Oakland during a time of socio-political upheaval. His stories celebrate a cohesive and enterprising neighborhood while also addressing themes of individuality and human dignity, often inspired by Zen Buddhist principles.
During World War II, Mori was interned at the Central Utah Relocation Center, where he continued to write and edit the camp newspaper. His experiences during this period informed his work, particularly in stories that reflect the optimism and resilience of the Japanese American community despite the challenges they faced. In recent years, Mori's contributions have gained renewed attention within Asian American studies, leading to the republication of his works, which are now recognized as integral to the Asian American literary canon. Mori's storytelling not only captures the essence of his community but also emphasizes themes of belonging and perseverance in the face of adversity.
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Subject Terms
Toshio Mori
Writer
- Born: March 20, 1910
- Birthplace: Oakland, California
- Died: April 12, 1980
- Place of death: San Leandro, California
Best known for his depictions of the pre–World War II Japanese-American community living in Northern California, Toshio Mori was a skilled and insightful fiction writer.
Birth name: Toshio Mori
Area of achievement: Literature
Early Life
Toshio Mori was born on March 20, 1910 in Oakland, California. He grew up in San Leandro, about twelve miles from Oakland, in the early decades of the twentieth century. His father and mother, Yoshi and Hidekichi Mori, raised four sons, Toshio being the third. Yoshi worked sixteen hours a day tending plants in a nursery, an occupation that would also engage his son throughout his life. In his spare time, Toshio took an interest in reading and writing fiction. He studied works of short fiction in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and Liberty magazines. As an avid reader, he discovered the world’s great writers and read them carefully, including Stephen Crane, Guy de Maupassant, Honoré de Balzac, Katherine Mansfield, and Anton Chekhov. Among American writers, Mori was particularly influenced by Sherwood Anderson, whose stories of eccentric villagers in fictional Winesburg, Ohio inspired him to find characters in his own Japanese American community.
Life’s Work
Mori is perhaps best known for his work Yokohama, California (1949), a collection of short stories about the Japanese American community in the Oakland area. The book was scheduled for publication in 1942 but was delayed by World War II. It was reprinted by the University of Washington Press in 1985.
The stories in Yokohama, California describe a neighborhood and its network of friends and family. The Japanese American community in the book is active, cohesive, enterprising, and proud of being American. Young and old attend a baseball game between entirely Japanese American teams. A pretty Japanese American woman is admired as an all-American girl. An enterprising eleven-year-old builds a door-to-door business buying and selling magazines. Friends play the stock market with great optimism, though they rarely have the funds to do more than simulate investment. Raising children is done wisely and with pride. However, as in Anderson’s fiction, eccentrics inhabit Mori’s fictional world. The Seventh Street philosopher, for example, operates a laundry and delivers long, rambling lectures to townsfolk. Teruo, a flower shop employee, cannot help but serve customers the freshest flowers even if it means his boss will fire him. Other characters face their sense of loneliness and isolation with courage and perseverance. Mori reveals a human dignity in all his characters.
Mori’s understanding of human dignity was influenced by Zen Buddhism. According to his son Steven, who wrote a foreword to Unfinished Message: Selected Works of Toshio Mori (2000), Mori was interested in satori, the Zen concept of enlightenment through personal experience. Even the most humble of his characters play a part in this. For example, in “The Woman Who Makes Swell Doughnuts,” the narrator gratefully describes a kindly neighbor’s doughnuts as the essence of her personality, one so tangible that it might be tasted. In “The Eggs of the World” and “The Trees,” a disagreement over a person’s particular essence divides friends. In all of his work, Mori shows deep respect for personal uniqueness as a means of awakening one to the true nature of existence.
Like thousands of other first- or second-generation Japanese Americans, Mori spent World War II at a relocation camp. He was interned at the Central Utah Relocation Center at Topaz, where he edited the camp newspaper Trek and continued to write fiction. In Mori’s story “Tomorrow Is Coming, Children,” a grandmother in a camp speaks warmly of her early dreams of immigrating to California and her love of her adopted country. The hardships of internment itself do not diminish her sense of belonging in America. She tells her grandchildren that tomorrow will bring relief and a fulfillment of America’s earlier promise. A second story about the war, “Slant-Eyed Americans,” is also included in Yokohama, California. It describes the disbelief of members of the Japanese American community at the news of Pearl Harbor, the sympathy of neighbors who are not of Japanese descent, and the hope that a brother who is serving in the United States military will come to represent their own loyalty. In both stories, optimism conquers heartache. The tone is typical of Mori. His work does not dwell on bitterness or anger.
Significance
Japanese American poet Lawson Fusao Inada has noted that with the advent of Asian American studies programs in universities throughout the world, a new interest in Toshio Mori’s work arose. This led to the republishing or initial publishing of works such as his only novel, Woman from Hiroshima (1978), The Chauvinist and Other Stories (1979), and Unfinished Message (2000), which included the previously unpublished novella “The Brothers Murata,” completed in 1944 while at Topaz. These works, along with Yokohama, California, form a distinctive and essential part of the Asian American literary canon.
Bibliography
Lee, Rachel. “Asian American Short Fiction: An Introduction and Critical Survey.” A Resource Guide to Asian American Literature. Ed. Sau-ling Cynthia Wong and Stephen H. Sumida. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2001. Print. Highlights Mori’s “The Brothers,” a story that compares the conflict between two child siblings to the Japanese incursion into Manchuria in the 1930s.
Mori, Toshio. Yokohama, California. Intro. Lawson Fusao Inada. Orig. intro. William Saroyan. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1985. Print. Includes an introduction by friend and fellow writer Saroyan, as well as a scholarly introduction by Inada that places Mori’s work in its cultural and literary context.
Yogi, Stan. “Japanese American Literature.” An Interethnic Companion to AsianAmerican Literature. Ed. King-Kok Cheung. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print. Discusses the divided opinions created by the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and situates Mori in the optimistic camp: those who believed that progress toward acceptance as American citizens was only temporarily interrupted by the exigencies of war.