Say, Allen. 1999. Tea with milk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 0-395-90495-1

Say, Allen. 1982. The bicycle man. Oakland: Parnassus Press. ISBN: 0-395-32254-5.

Tea with Milk is a beautifully illustrated picture book that tells the fictionalized account of Allen Say’s mother’s journey from her home in San Francisco to Japan and her struggle to find a balance in her place between the two cultures. Raised in San Francisco to Japanese parents, Masako lives a very traditional life at home. She drinks green tea and eats rice and miso soup, but lives as an American outside her home. Called May by everyone but her parents, she eats muffins and pancakes with her friends and drinks her tea with milk and sugar.

Upon her graduation from high school May’s family relocates to a small town in Japan where she must eat on the floor and wear traditional Japanese kimonos. There, they too refer to her as Masako and she must repeat high school so she can improve her Japanese. Worse, she is to marry a husband her parents choose for her. Masako must learn tea ceremony, flower arranging, and calligraphy “to be a proper Japanese lady.”

May quickly becomes homesick for the United States. She takes a train to Osaka and is surprised to find that it is much like her beloved San Francisco. There are cars and trolleys, and even department stores.  May finds a job at a department store, first as an elevator girl and soon after as a guide for foreign businessmen. It is there she meets a man who has also lived abroad and had to adapt to different cultures like her. After he tells her, “Home isn't a place or a building that’s ready-made and waiting for you, in America or anywhere else,” May begins to accept Japan as her home. She and the man marry and have a son who grows up to drink tea with milk and sugar like his parents.

The Bicycle Man is also a story about Say’s family. An autobiographical story, The Bicycle Man is set after World War II during the time Japan was occupied. The Bicycle Man is Allen Say’s first critically successful book and while the illustrations differ greatly from more recent works, like those in Tea With Milk, the book is clearly written from the perspective of an “insider” and has Say’s same appeal.

The book is written from a first person perspective of a Japanese schoolboy. His school has a sports day, during which children will compete in races and other athletic events. The students’ parents come to watch the day’s events bearing “tiered lunch boxes and kettles filled with tea.”

The highlight of the day, however, is when two American soldiers appear. At first a silence falls upon the day’s excitement. Then the children become curious about these two men who look so different from them. The soldiers proceed to make a spectacle of themselves, entertaining the crowd with bicycle tricks and silly antics, and ultimately becoming the highlight of the day. They leave having won the biggest prize of the day.

Say illustrates both books. Using his trademark watercolor illustrations in Tea With Milk, Say depicts May with honesty. Her utter displeasure at having to wear a kimono and revisit high school—this time as gaijin (foreigner)—is clear by her expression.

The Bicycle Man is beautifully illustrated in pen and ink with wash. Ann Charters who reviewed the book stated, “Say’s impeccable drawings captured the straight-forward 1940s style of children’s illustrations in the American books that I had grown up with, yet the setting and characters were unmistakably Japanese and the book was introduced by classic orange and blue Japanese-style woodblock designs on its endpapers.”

Both books are awash with cultural markers, from the American flag on the front of the house in San Francisco and the kimonos May must wear to the Japanese flags carried by the students on sports day. The clothing and architecture in Tea With Milk are authentic. Say depicts traditional Japanese foods—miso soup, rice and green tea and contrasts those with American omelets, fried chicken, and spaghetti. His character undergoes cultural rites like learning tea ceremony.

May has short, straight black hair, pale skin, and slanted eyes. But she also likes to wear loud red dresses and speaks impeccable English.

While the beautiful mountain setting that opens The Bicycle Man could be anywhere, the homes on the hill are built in traditional Japanese style. The female students have short, straight black hair while the male students all have short black hair, cut close to their heads. They wear headbands during the race, in red and white—the colors of the Japanese flag, and some children carry Japanese flags. Others carry large signs with words written in Kanji or bamboo poles with streamers.

Parents wear robes and thong slippers with socks. When they come to watch the day’s events, they bring straw mats. Lunch consists of “pickled melon rinds and egg rolls, spiced rice and fish cakes.” In the pictures, parents and children eat with chopsticks while seated on mats on the ground.

On the other hand, the Americans are large and goofy. The white man has flaming red hair and the black man was “the tallest man I had ever seen.” Meanwhile their clothes were sharply creased and their shoes “shone like polished metal” indicating discipline along with their joviality.

In addition to providing cultural markers, Say shows his readers the similarities between the cultures. May is relieved and at home to find Osaka, a city that shares her familiar big city atmosphere where there are cars, a department store, and a theatre. Though the students in The Bicycle Man can’t communicate through language with their American visitors, it is apparent that they share a common desire to make new friends and enjoy life. As W.A. Handley said in a review of the book for School Library Journal, “It is not the differences between cultures that is so evident but their similarities.”

Fifteen year old Anne really liked Tea With Milk. She said “It teaches important lessons like the value of determination, independence, and women’s rights.”

While the books and their subject matter are very different, both are heavily influenced by Say’s life or those of his family. His knowledge of the subject matter is evident, while his ability as a storyteller and illustrator helps to bridge cultural gaps—he brings readers unfamiliar with Asian culture into his world and helps those who have experienced his same trials identify with his story.

Works Cited

Charters, Ann. 2002. MELUS 27 (Summer no 2): 254. Available from EBSCOhost (database online). Accessed 20 June 2005.

 

Handley, W.A. 1983. School Library Journal 29. (January no 5): 66. Available from EBSCOhost (database online). Accessed 20 June 2005.