"Perhaps I was unnecessarily curt with her that morning, but then it was presumptuous of Niki to suppose I would need reassuring on such matters. Besides, she has little idea of what actually occurred during those last days in Nagasaki. One supposes she has built up some sort of picture from what her father has told her. Such a picture, inevitably, would have its inaccuracies. For, in truth, despite all the impressive articles he wrote about Japan, my husband never understood the ways of our culture, even less a man like Jiro. I do not claim to recall Jiro with affection, but then he was never the oafish man my husband considered him to be. Jiro worked hard to do his part for the family and he expected me to do mine; in his own terms, he was a dutiful husband. Indeed, for the seven years he knew his daughter, he was a good father to her. Whatever else I convinced myself of during those final days, I never pretended Keiko would not miss him."
- A Pale View of Hills pg. 90
Previously before this passage, Niki is telling Etsuko about how her poet friend was inspired to write about Etsuko's experiences in Nagasaki and presumably her decision to move to leave Japan and her husband to move to Britain. She prefaces by saying how "So many women,' she said, 'get stuck with kids and lousy husbands and they're just miserable. But they can't pluck up the courage to do a thing about it. They'll just go on like that for the rest of their lives" and ties this statement to her mother by saying "You ought to have been proud of what your did with your life."
In a lot of ways, Niki is a reflection of her father, whom Etsuko left Jiro to be with, in that like her father she only has a screened memory of what Etsuko's life must be like beforehand and romanticizes through their Western gaze: unnamed husband seems to implicitly stated to be a reporter or journalist, wrote a few articles that are "impressive" but totally doesn't know the culture so to me that's probably an implication that his articles skews on an Orientalist sensationalism rather than some kind of cultural sensitivity; Niki judges Etsuko's prior life to be backwards, and that leaving that life is some kind of empowerment act, while the unnamed husband chose to interpret Jiro as oafish and also in the text insinuates that it's because of Jiro that Keiko turned out the way she is before her suicide.
Niki also prioritizes other people's interpretation of events above the actual person who is being subjected to the interpretation. She states that her poet friend is brilliant in that "It's amazing how well she understands people. She's been through quite a bit herself." It's like saying that her poet friend knows Etsuko just as well as if she had met her, and that by making Etsuko the subject of the poem, it's in a way de-mystifying her and placing her in a specific narrative, which is that of an empowered woman who left a traumatized country and presumably an unhappy marriage. This perception of her mother is also given secondhand from her father, who as a journalist, authoritizes his own perception of Japan and decided that some aspects of its culture must be this way despite being totally ignorant about the nuances.
Such as Jiro. Why would Etsuko say her husband thought Jiro oafish? It comes from the historical feminization of Japan in Western narratives. Japan is not only a victim, but one that has to be reshaped through westernization so that they can be "liberated," or becoming more free and turning away from backwards beliefs like having an emperor or being imbued with divinity. And without even going into the text, what are the usual racist perceptions of Japanese men by westerners? There's things like "oh the Japanese are so overtly humble, they're value authority over individuality, they'd rather sacrifice their lives for their work or their country." The overarching narrative of western perception of Japanese men is that they are just not masculine or have the virtues that are associated with masculinity. The Western narrative of emasculating Asian men occurred before WWII and is justified even more in the United States' victory in Japan after WWII, and their decision in the occupation of Japan is to focus on the female Japanese narrative sculpted in their hands which includes actions such as "rehabilitating" Japanese women who survived the atomic bombings by giving them plastic surgery to reconstruct their appearances, dubbing them "Hiroshima maidens" or "Atomic Bomb Maidens."
Which is why the term "oafish" is used by Etsuko's English journalist husband. It'd be one thing if Jiro was described by either Etsuko or unnamed husband said that he was abusive or it was an unhappy marriage (which is what Etsuko seems to say it is; in the text their interactions are depicted as a pretty typical salaryman husband and wife going through their own domestic microaggressions), but saying that he is "oafish' suggests that unnamed journalist husband knew him enough to form a judgment that isn't just "oppressive Asian man" but that Jiro, in connection with his culture that journalist husband doesn't understand at all, is lacking in some kind of standards.
But I think what makes up the meat of this exchange is how much Niki and Etsuko are opposed to each other. Niki's character seems to imply that she is more interested in understanding her mother through other people, whether it be through her dad or her poet friend who apparently understands Etsuko more than Niki herself. She seems to feel very comfortable in objectifying her mother by being the subject of a poem from her friend who despite "been through a lot herself" shouldn't know anything about Etsuko because it suggests that her experiences in Nagasaki and the trauma of the atomic bomb is some kind of "universal" sentiment. It's made clear through Etsuko that she doesn't like anything of what Niki might have thought of her but chose not to reveal her true feelings to her. Which also includes how despite how she felt about Jiro, he and Keiko actually got on well with each other which is more than how she thought about her own mother-daughter relationship with her.
The screen memory for Niki is that narratives such as her mother's are there for the consumption of other people who are not directly related to her experiences, with her culture being distilled for Western perceptions and her own experiences being artful fodder for strangers, all the while saying that she is somehow empowered, and that unlike her so many other women get stuck in apparently dead-end marriages and shackled with children. Which is really, a very unkind thing to say about her own sister Keiko.
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