The Japanese Wife EMS

The Japanese Wife, by Charles Bukowski, is an ode to Japanese women, and the narrator's Japanese wife. He describes these Japenese women as "real women" who are "closing the wounds men have made". He soon after describes American women in a very negative manner, saying they "care less than a dime" and "always scowling, belly-aching", among other things. It is interesting that he includes "but American women will kill you like they / tear a lampshade". Right after saying that Japense women will close wounds, he immediately says how American women would easily kill you. These lines become even more interesting during another section of the poem, when the narrator describes how his wife "broke out the bread knife / and chased me under the bed". The difference between the American women's violence and the Japanese wife's violence is how the American women are described as killing without caring too much, while the wife was provoked. The narrator broke down the locked door, and he seems to aknowledge that he did wrong. After the ordeal with the wife, "she didn't mention attorneys, / just said, you will never wrong me again". This seems very reasonable, and a very calm thing to do, something that the "derailed" American women would likely not do. The poem takes a more tragic turn when it is revealed that the wife died. This is when the poem seems to turn into a nostalgiac piece. We are told how the narrator had to hide all of his Japanese prints covering his walls, and hid them in his shirt drawer. When he hid these, "It was the first time i realizes / that she was dead, even though i buried her".