Chapter IV: In a Stranger's Backyard

1. Who is narrating this chapter?
2. What has changed while the family was away?
3. What has happened to the family’s furniture and to the money they were supposed to get for renting their house?
4. Why doesn’t the narrator tell us what words have been written on the wall? What earlier episode in the book does this recall?
5. Why does the family choose to sleep in the back room? What sort of things have happened to other people coming back from the camp? Who might be saying the words printed in italics on page 112?
6. How quickly do the children and their mother adapt to freedom? What habits of their internment do they still cling to?
7. How do the family’s neighbors treat them on their return, and how does this compare to their behavior earlier? On the rare occasions that someone actually asks where they’ve been, why does the mother respond so vaguely?
8. How much money is the family given on its release? What is the significance of this sum?
9. How does the narrator describe the men coming back from the war? What do the fragments of dialogue tell us about them? What is the effect of these stories of Japanese atrocities? Does it lessen your sympathy for the family? How do these stories make the children feel?
10. What measures do the children take to fit in following their return? How does their new behavior correspond to popular stereotypes of Japanese Americans?
11. “If we did something wrong, we made sure to say excuse me (excuse me for looking at you, excuse me for sitting here, excuse me for coming back). If we did something terribly wrong we immediately said we were sorry (I’m sorry I touched your arm. I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, I didn’t see it resting there so quietly, so beautifully, so perfectly, so irresistibly, on the edge of the desk. I lost my balance and brushed against it by mistake, I was standing too close, I wasn’t watching where I was going, somebody pushed me from behind, I never wanted to touch you, I have always wanted to touch you, I will never touch you again, I promise, I swear…)” [pp. 122-23] Are these things the narrator is actually saying or only thinking? Who is being addressed? How does the emotional tone of the paragraph change as it progresses?
12. Why do the children keep seeing their old possessions around the neighborhood, and why does their father appear among them? Are we meant to take this literally or as an ironic metaphor? In what ways does this passage echo earlier false sightings of the father?
13. Why does the mother take a job? What reason does she give for turning down the job in a department store? What does she say are the secrets of being a successful housecleaner?
14. How does the narrator describe the father? How does this description compare to earlier ones?
15. How has the father changed during his incarceration? How do the children seem to feel about these changes?
16. Toward the end of this chapter Otsuka writes: “Speech was beginning to come back. In the school yard. On the street. They were calling out to us now. Not many of them, just a few. At first we pretended not to hear them, but after a while we could no longer resist.” Who is calling out? What is it that the narrators are unable to resist? Do you find this passage hopeful or ominous?

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Trachtenberg, Peter. Teacher's Guide: When the Emperor Was Divine. NY: Anchor Books, 2003. 16 March 2007 .