Justify the title of The Enemy

‘The Enemy’ is an apt title that has the Second World War as the background. Dr Sadao, being a skilled
surgeon saved the life of an escaped American prisoner of war, his enemy, who was wounded seriously
and had been washed ashore. Torn between his duty and his integrity as a doctor, he chooses to save
the enemy’s life first and then hand him over to the police. His inner conflict and professional ethics
makes him choose the first option. His servants too, desert him for fear of getting into trouble. He is fully
aware of the fact that harbouring a prisoner of war would endanger his own life as well.

The doctor’s professional ethics urge him to treat the ‘enemy’as a patient. Neither Dr Sadao nor Hana,
at any stage consider him their friend. Yet they treat him as a fellow human being should be treated. The
title is therefore appropriate.

Moral/ Message of the lesson – The Enemy

The theme of racism is reflected in the story in several ways. When Sadao recalls how he met Hana, he
remembers that he didn’t become serious with her until he was sure that she “had been pure in her
race” because otherwise, his father wouldn’t have approved. Yumi refused to touch the American, let
alone wash him before the operation, and when he left she “cleaned the guest room thoroughly…to get
the white man’s smell out of it.” Sadao has strong feelings about white people. He thinks that they are
“repulsive” and that “it was a relief to be openly at war with them at last.” He also believed that
Americans were full of prejudice, and it had been bitter to live there, knowing himself they’re superior.
With the backdrop of the Second World War, the author highlights the horrors of war by portraying the
helpless American sailor, who was tortured.

Main characters of the chapter

Dr. Sadao Hoki :
Dr. Sadao Hoki is the protagonist of the story and Hana’s husband. A skilled surgeon educated in
America, Sadao is wholly responsible for saving the life of Tom, an American prisoner of war who
washes up on the beach alongside Sadao and Hana’s isolated home on the Japanese coast. Sadao is an
emotionally complex character who struggles to come to terms with his inexplicable impulse to save the
life of an American, who is supposedly his enemy, and his staunch Japanese patriotism (which
increasingly reads as outright nationalism and racial prejudice).

Sadao’s arc is anti-epiphanic, ending with his deeply prejudiced thoughts about all the Americans he’s
known throughout his lifetime. However, the story suggests that the reason he helped the prisoner of
war—putting his and his household’s safety on the line in doing so—is because of the latent human
impulse to be good and kind.

Alongside his nationalism, Sadao is also a proponent of traditional Japanese gender roles, requiring his
wife to be a meek, subservient housewife who tends to the servants and follows Sadao’s orders
unflinchingly. Even though the couple met at college in America, Hana generally conforms to this role
gladly and seems to value Japanese customs.

Despite upholding strict gender roles—with Sadao often coming across as cold and domineering—the
couple appears to genuinely and tenderly love one another, even if those feelings are largely unspoken.
Many of the decisions Sadao makes about how to deal with Tom stem from Sadao wanting to alleviate
his wife’s severe anxiety at housing the prisoner.

Hana: Hana is Dr. Sadao Hoki’s wife. The couple met at a university in America, but “waited to fall in
love” until their parents back in Japan could properly approve of and arrange the marriage. Hana shows
a deep love for Japanese customs and the old way of living, seen through her traditional house
(peppered with patios and courtyards) and her role as a subservient housewife.

She largely bends to Sadao’s will, often without resentment, and upholds him as the head of the
household. Hana’s main task is overseeing the servants—who, in turn, tend to her household and
children—and ensuring that her husband is always fed first and taken care of.

Although she appears less overtly racist than her husband, she too distains Tom for being white and
American. She is also more afraid of going against the cultural grain by dangerously housing and saving
the white man, who is clearly a prisoner of war.

Tom makes her uncomfortable and anxious, both because of his Americanness and because his presence
poses a severe threat to her and Sadao’s safety, given that aiding a prisoner of war and political enemy
is against the law.

Nonetheless, she finds herself taking care of the American even though she doesn’t really want to,
washing him tenderly while thinking racist thoughts. Hana, like Sadao, demonstrates the human impulse
to be altruistic and take care of fellow humans, but also shows how racial prejudice and nationalism
cloud such thinking.

Tom : Tom is a teenage American prisoner of war who was captured and tortured by the Japanese but
somehow escaped. He washes up on the beach near Dr. Sadao Hoki and Hana’s isolated house, and they
discern that he’s a prisoner of war from his recent bullet wound (reopened by one of the rocks out at
sea), his blonde hair, and his U.S. navy cap.

Even though Tom is unconscious or sleeping for much of his time with Sadao and Hana, his mere
presence forces them to grapple with their conflicting impulses to help a fellow human and to be loyal
to one’s country. When he is conscious, Tom is scared of Sadao but also deeply grateful to the surgeon
for saving his life—praise that Sadao coldly shrugs off.

After saving Tom’s life through surgery, Sadao knows that he can’t allow the American to stay, but nor
can he turn the American over to the authorities—the boy will surely die a torturous death. Sadao
arranges for the General, an influential patient of his, to have a few assassins come to Sadao’s house in
the middle of the night to silently kill Tom and do away with his body.

When the assassins fail to show up night after night, Sadao decides to take matters into his own hands
by helping Tom escape by boat to a nearby island, where he’s bound to be saved by a Korean fishing
boat. The plan works, and Sadao is ultimately baffled as to why he couldn’t just kill Tom, given that
Americans are his enemies and he hates all white people.

In the story, Tom is the catalyst for human kindness, forcing Sadao and Hana to consider the universality
of humankind and the inherent human impulse to be kind.
The General :The General is a sickly man in the Japanese military who suffers from some sort of
physical condition that Dr. Sadao Hoki treats. According to Sadao, the General will only be able to
survive one more “attack”—he suffers from something that has to do with his gallbladder.

Because Sadao can keep the General reasonably healthy and can tend to him so expertly, the General
feels indebted to Sadao and is willing to help—and keep quiet—about Tom. The General promises to
send a few assassins to Sadao’s house to silently kill Tom and do away with his body, releasing Sadao of
the burden of having to figure out what to do with the prisoner.

Ultimately, the General doesn’t follow through with the deal and sheepishly admits to forgetting about
the situation altogether. This claim is treated as somewhat suspect in the story, leaving open the
possibility that the General, too, didn’t want the American to die because he saw him as a fellow human
rather than an enemy.

This interpretation is bolstered by the fact that the General, like Sadao, went to college in America, and
perhaps his Princeton education and connection to America forced him to see people of other races and
nationalities as fellow humans rather than political enemies or objects of racial prejudice.

However, it’s possible that the sickly General—whose very position implies fierce patriotism and a
generally pro-war sensibility—truly did forget to send the assassins and did consider Tom an enemy. The
General is possibly the same person as General Takima, though the story doesn’t confirm this.

The Gardener : The elderly gardener is one of the servants who works for Dr. Sadao Hoki and Hana. Like
the cook, he’s been an instrumental part of the household ever since Sadao was just a boy. He is fiercely
loyal to Sadao’s father, who is dead at the outset of the story. The gardener is especially skilled with
flowers and moss; in his younger years, he created “one of the finest moss gardens in Japan” for Sadao’s
father. He refers to Sadao’s father as “my old master” and Sadao as “my old master’s son,”
demonstrating his lopsided loyalty to Sadao’s father over Sadao.

This, coupled with his old age, suggests that the gardener clings to traditions, superstitions, and
mindsets of the past. Even though Sadao and Hana are fairly traditional, the gardener aligns himself with
Sadao’s father’s belief in racial purity, Japanese superiority, and the “old Japanese way” of doing things.
Like the other servants, the gardener resents Sadao for saving Tom—besides his racist reasons for
believing Tom should die, he also superstitiously believes that saving Tom from the sea will make the sea
take revenge on Sadao and his family.

The gardener eventually cuts ties with the family and leaves the household because of Tom. However,
like the other servants, the gardener returns once Tom is gone, suggesting that the gardener was too
engrained in the household—and too devoted to the memory Sadao’s father—to truly leave.

Yumi:
Yumi is one of the servants at Dr. Sadao Hoki and Hana’s house. She largely tends to the children and is
seen with them far more than Hana herself is. Like the gardener, she is openly prejudiced against Tom
and speaks critically of Sadao and Hana for saving a white man.

She is so frightened by Sadao and Hana’s lawbreaking and shocking empathy for the enemy that she
stubbornly refuses to follow orders and eventually leaves the household altogether with the gardener
and the cook. Her tear-soaked departure comes as an emotional blow for Hana (who is in charge of the
servants) and for Yumi herself, who cares for the two children as if they are her own.

She is distraught at the thought of what would happen to the children if their father was found out as a
“traitor.” When Tom escapes, Yumi quickly returns to her post and resumes taking care of the children.
However, Yumi insists on burning Sulphur in the guest room, where Tom had been staying, “to get the
white man’s smell out of it.”

Sadao’s Father
Dr. Sadao Hoki’s father is dead from the outset of the story, but his presence lingers throughout the
story due to Sadao’s reflections and the servants’ loyalty to their “old master.” At the start of the story,
Sadao thinks about how his harsh, domineering father, “who never joked or played with him,” pushed
Sadao toward the best education possible, even if that meant sending him to a university in America.

In life, Sadao’s father was a Japanese nationalist who believed firmly in racial purity—Sadao could only
marry Hana if she was purely Japanese. He cleaved to the “old Japanese way” of doing things, seen by
the way he properly arranged Sadao and Hana’s marriage (even though they met in college in America)
and ensured that his bedroom was outfitted in a traditional Japanese fashion and contained only
Japanese-made furniture and goods.

The cook and the gardener both worked for Sadao’s father when Sadao was just a little boy, and as such
they are far more loyal to their “old master” than the “young master.” When Tom enters into the
picture, it is this loyalty to Sadao’s father (plus an understandable dose of fear of being seen as traitors
by the authorities) that lead the gardener and the cook to quit and leave the household after several
decades of working there.

When Tom “escapes” (that is, when Sadao helps him steal away to a nearby island where he’s bound to
be picked up by a Korean fishing boat), the servants return, suggesting that their roots in the household
and their devotion to Sadao’s father’s memory was far too deep to sever permanently.