47 pages • 1 hour read
The Man In The High Castle
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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
In an alternative version of 1962, Imperial Japan has taken control of the West Coast of the United States of America after winning World War II. The area they control is named the Pacific States of America. In San Francisco, Robert Childan owns American Artistic Handcrafts, Inc. The store sells items of Americana to wealthy Japanese customers. Childan waits for the arrival of a "valuable shipment" (5) for a man named Nobusuke Tagomi. Childan resents Tagomi's demanding attitude; Tagomi is impatient for the order to arrive because it contains a gift for an important Swedish trade official named Baynes. The gift comes from outside the region, so it is technically contraband. The gift is an original recruiting poster from the American Civil War; when the order does not arrive, Childan agrees to go to Tagomi's office with a selection of alternative antiques.
Before Childan leaves, a young couple enters the store. Thankful that they do not seem like one of the "gum-chewing boorish draftees with their greedy peasant faces" (6), Childan talks to the couple, who invite him to their home to show them several special antiques they might buy to decorate their home. The couple introduces themselves as Paul Kasoura and Betty Kasoura. Childan is intrigued by the couple, especially Betty. He runs late for his meeting with Tagomi and thinks of the items he could present to Tagomi to bolster his "reputation in top connoisseur circles throughout Pacific, not excluding Home Islands" (7). As he prepares, he thinks about the state of the world. The Japanese control the West Coast of the United States and Nazi Germany controls the East Coast. The two competing powers are separated by a weak, politically neutral zone named the Rocky Mountain States.
At the same time, a man named Frank Frink lies in bed and thinks about being fired from the factory for spouting "the wrong kind of talk" (8) to his boss and now worries about finding a job in Japanese-controlled America. He listens to the radio, which describes how the Germans are sending rockets to Mars and hope to colonize other planets. The Japanese are struggling to assert control over their imperial interest in South America. Frank remembers how the Nazis killed billions of Africans in a failed experiment. While he does not like the Japanese, he acknowledges that they have not killed nearly as many people as the Nazis. Frank changed his name from Fink to Frink to hide the fact that he is "a Jew" (8). Frank looks at his copy of a Chinese fortune-telling book named the I Ching. The book, combined with a set of yarrow stalks, claims to advise people about the future because it was created by "the sages of China over a period of five thousand years" (11). Frank asks the I Ching about how to deal with his former employers, the Wyndam-Matson Corporation. The stalks fall in a certain way, and Frank interprets their layout to mean that he should be modest. He also inquires about his ex-wife, Juliana, whom he still loves. As he asks the I Ching about his future, he wonders who else is "consulting the oracle" (12).
Chapter 2 Summary
Tagomi consults the I Ching as he waits for the arrival of Childan. He needs to purchase a gift from Childan for a client. The client—a Swedish diplomat named Baynes—is travelling from Europe to America on a rocket, and Tagomi hopes to win his favor. Tagomi's secretary is named Miss Ephrekian. She helps Tagomi record the outcome of his I Ching consultation; Tagomi worries about the ominous results so he decides to consult a subordinate. Mr. Ramsay is an American man who works with the Imperial Japanese forces (these collaborators are referred to as pinocs). Ramsay, despite his attempts to ingratiate himself into Japanese culture, is of true "American ancestry" (14) and thus knows more about the kind of antiques that Tagomi believes will make a good gift for Baynes. The gift is important, as Baynes works for a plastic manufacturer and the Japanese government needs the technology. Germany has colonized Mars using the benefits of plastics and Japan has fallen "at least ten years" (15) behind. However, a cryptic cable from Tokyo has warned Tagomi that Baynes is "not what he seemed" (16). The I Ching results convince Tagomi that Baynes is a spy.
Childan gathers several American antiques and travels to Tagomi's office. While riding in a pedecab, he rehearses the Japanese protocol and the "various modes of address" (17) that he will be expected to use. He also thinks anxiously about slavery, a policy reintroduced in the German-controlled South of the United States where Black people have been re-enslaved by the Nazis. Childan resents the complicated Japanese protocols that he must use and wonders about life under the Nazis, who seem to have been far more "successful" (17) in recent years. He is sympathetic to the brutal Nazi treatment of Polish and Slavic people but worries that they might have "let their enthusiasm get the better of them" (18) when they killed billions of Africans. Childan has more faith in the white Germans than the Japanese people who occupy his country. Nevertheless, he is still indebted to the Japanese man named Major Ito Humo who first introduced Childan to the antiques business through a traditional children's card game. Childan arrives at Tagomi's office and cannot help but notice that he is one of only a few white people present.
Chapter 3 Summary
From her home in Canon City, Colorado, Juliana watches "one of those Nazi rocket ships" (21) pass over the Rocky Mountains. Juliana is a judo instructor and, after a class, she goes to a diner to relax. At the diner, she meets two truck drivers. One, a young Italian man, tells her about his time driving trucks through German-controlled areas. He plans to head back into the German-controlled zones the following day as he cannot imagine living in "a town like this" (23) in the impoverished Rocky Mountain States. When the Irish cook mentions the Germans' brutal treatment of diverse groups (including Jewish people), Juliana carefully avoids the subject. She does not like the Germans, blaming their brutality on the syphilitic mind of their former leader Adolf Hitler, who she regards as "that awful man struck down by an internal filth" (24). The Italian truck driver introduces himself as Joe and offers Juliana a pair of nylon tights if she will drive him to a nearby motel.
Baynes rides the rocket to San Francisco. During the flight, he chats to the person next to him. The fellow passenger is a dedicated Nazi artist named Alex Lotze. They talk about art; Lotze's views are colored by his dislike of Jews. Baynes, recognizing Lotze's unrepentant racism and thinking about the "insane" (27) Nazi ideology, jokes that he is actually "a Jew" (28). Baynes claims that he has undergone surgery to hide his ethnicity from the Nazis, just as many high-ranking members of the Nazi party have done. He warns Lotze that these important men will lock him up if he dares to report Baynes's secret. The rocket lands and Baynes is met at the airport by Tagomi. Baynes receives a gift from Tagomi: an antique wristwatch featuring Mickey Mouse, purchased from Childan, that he says is the "most authentic of dying old U.S. culture" (29). Baynes is unimpressed but accepts the gift graciously, noting Tagomi's earnest desire to please him.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The Man in the High Castle introduces readers to an alternate reality in which Japan and Germany won World War II. The novel does not explicitly reveal the exact circumstances of how this happened nor the material consequences of the Axis victory. Instead, the early stages of the novel portray the subtle ways that American culture has changed as a result of the Japanese and German occupation. Cars are seemingly absent from this version of San Francisco, for example, and the use of pedecabs (a vehicle implied to resemble a rickshaw) rather than taxis is an example of how the presence of the Japanese colonial forces has altered the course of American history and culture. Similarly, all contemporary or modern American art is considered degenerate and uncouth. As a result, it has been almost entirely eradicated from society, and people show no interest in purchasing, viewing, or producing such works. Instead, people like Childan make a living selling a version of the American past to the current colonial rulers of America. In this alternate reality, the antiques of the American past are novelty items. Childan sells kitsch knickknacks and ornaments to Japanese hobbyists who treat American culture as a pastime. The treatment of American art and culture in the opening pages of the novel illustrates how the United States has lost the war and become subsumed into the Imperial Japanese cultural bureaucracy. This version of America is a novelty rather than a superpower.
The Japanese treatment of American culture is not unique. When Tagomi receives a coded message from the Japanese Home Islands, he notes that his superiors have used a specific type of code that employs literary references to obfuscate meaning. The German codebreakers do not understand the nuances of Japanese culture and literature, so the true meaning of the message is kept hidden. Both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany perform a kind of cultural chauvinism that is based on their respective ideologies. Japan and Germany both view their culture as inherently superior; they believe that cultural superiority (intelligence and manners for the Japanese; ethnicity and traditionalism for the Germans) grants them the right to rule over large swathes of the world. This supposed cultural superiority, however, blinds them to the nuances of other cultures. Just as the Germans cannot penetrate the meaning of Japanese literature because they do not value Japanese culture, Japanese culture cannot treat the American equivalent with anything other than a similar patronizing air. Tagomi mocks the Germans for not understanding the Japanese coded message; however, he turns to his American-born subordinate because he struggles to understand the nuances of American antiques (and has already purchased many fakes). Japan and Germany are both guilty of an arrogant cultural chauvinism due to their totalitarian, fascist ideologies. The irony of this is that they both accuse the other of being inferior while committing the same errors.
If German and Japanese cultures in The Man in the High Castle are chauvinistically, performatively dominant, then the role of Frank Frink is to show the explicitly dark implications of this alternative history. Frank is a Jewish American. After Germany and Japan won World War II, his ethnicity has made him a target for extermination. Nazi Germany has continued its treatment of the Jews and the holocaust has spread to the United States. Elsewhere in the novel, characters mention the construction of concentration camps in New York and admit that any Jewish person found in the United States will be killed due to their ethnicity. Frank is forced to hide his cultural heritage. He changes his name and lies about his past. While American culture is reduced to a novelty, Jewish culture is rendered a death sentence. The Imperial Japanese policy is to deport all Jewish people to Nazi Germany, illustrating their complicit passivity in the genocide of an entire race. Frank's hidden identity reminds the audience that the Imperial Japanese are not moral or upstanding; they do not protect or value Jewish lives in any way that can distinguish them from the Nazis. In this alternate reality, Frank is forced to create an alternative reality of his own. He hides his objective ethnicity beneath layers of deceit and subjectivity, creating a new world for himself to escape persecution.
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