Chorus of Mushrooms

Chorus of Mushrooms (1994), a magical realism novel by Hiromi Goto, follows three generations of women in a Japanese-Canadian family while combining fiction and myth with feminist themes. Chorus of Mushrooms is Goto's debut novel, and the work won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region, as well as the Canada-Japan Book Award (as co-winner). A resident of British Columbia and the mother of two children, Goto has also written poetry, short stories, children's books, and young adult novels.

Chorus of Mushrooms takes place in the rural town of Nanton in Alberta, Canada, where the Tonkatsu family makes its living as mushroom farmers. Within the three generations of the Tonkatsu women are illustrated the various responses to the challenges faced by immigrants in assimilating to a new culture. Obāchan Naoe, the grandmother, knows English but refuses to speak it. In contrast, her daughter, Keiko, has abandoned her Japanese heritage and culture in an attempt to be "as white as her neighbor" so that she might better fit into her Canadian home; she even changes her name to Kaye. Granddaughter Muriel sits between these two extremes, trying to reconcile her dual identities while also resenting the fact that her mother has not taught her about her Japanese heritage or the Japanese language.

Naoe is born into a wealthy, respected family, but when she is only five years old, her family is forced to leave their home due to an envious plot against them. She spends her life traveling from city to city and country to country before finally settling in Canada. Her husband cheats on her, and she feels trapped by her loveless marriage and her Western home. She experiences a sort of breakdown, neglecting to care for herself or Keiko.



Naoe has now been in Canada for twenty years and refuses not only to speak English but to even leave the house. She spends her days sitting in her chair, loudly speaking in Japanese even though Muriel cannot and Keiko will not converse with her. Naoe says, "I speak my words, speak my words, and I say them all out loud. I yell and sing and mutter and weep from my seat of power."

Because Naoe and Muriel speak different languages, they must form a system of communication that relies on touch and other non-verbal cues, as well as telepathy. At night, they share dried squid and rice crackers (Japanese snacks forbidden by Keiko), and Naoe tells stories that Muriel understands via their telepathy. "I snuggled my head in Obāchan’s bony lap and closed my eyes to listen," Muriel says.

Naoe rechristens Muriel with the Japanese name Murasaki and tells her stories about Japanese myths and legends or about her memories from her homeland. These stories combine with the masculine tradition of the Canadian West to subvert them, such as when Naoe becomes a star at the Calgary Rodeo. She also meets a Canadian truck driver who studied in Japan and speaks the language. Naoe converses with him, noting that he speaks Japanese with a Western drawl. Later she meets him again and is surprised to find that his Western drawl has gone. She admits that she may have imagined the drawl based on her own expectations of how a Western truck driver would speak Japanese.



Despite her ignorance of her Japanese heritage, Muriel remains something of an outsider in her predominantly white home. The kids at school tease her and give her Valentines with geishas on them. Later on, her boyfriend, Hank, asks her about Oriental sex and becomes grouchy when she doesn't know what he's talking about.

Because they cling to different cultures and languages, Naoe and Keiko's relationship is strained. Naoe remarks that Keiko is "a child from my heart, a child from my body, but not from my mouth." However, they don't always fight. When they stop speaking and instead rely on non-verbal communication, such as the shared rituals of washing their hair, Naoe and Keiko are able to find common ground and maintain their bond. Keiko also relies on her mother to clean her ears, which Naoe knows is a sign of trust between them.

Naoe comes to believe that the three generations have lived together for too long. She says, "Keiko and Murasaki need to grow without my noisy presence and I need to live outside the habit of my words." She leaves the house suddenly and without explanation, which traumatizes Keiko most of all because her relationship with Naoe is based on physical touch.
Muriel, meanwhile, continues to communicate with Naoe through their shared telepathy. To ease Keiko's feelings of abandonment, Naoe instructs Muriel to cook her Japanese dishes and to ask to have Keiko clean her ears. In this way, mother and daughter form a bond based on physical touch whereas before they had difficulty communicating despite both speaking English. In the end, Muriel realizes that successful immigrant integration happens neither from total abstinence from the new culture nor a wholesale rejection of the old culture, but rather an embrace of both identities.