Hurting from Remembered Pain: Reincarnation, Memory and

Trauma in Tan Twan Eng’s The Gift of Rain

Goh Cheng Fai

While the first Malayan English language novel, Chin Kee Onn‟s Ma-rai-ee

(1952) was born out of the trauma of the Japanese Occupation (1942-45), the

trauma of the war is still relevant in 21st century Malaysian Literature in English.

Novels relating to the traumatic periods of the Japanese Occupation continue to be

written and published, including Tan Twan Eng‟s The Gift of Rain (2009), which is

about the recollections of the war fifty years after by Philip Arminius Khoo-Hutton.

This paper looks at the way in which the philosophical belief in reincarnation – a

major theme in the novel – is portrayed as an extended form of memory through

different lifetimes; it also looks at how trauma can affect this form of “memory”,

and its relation to trauma studies. Philip‟s recollections of the war, narrated in the

first-person, reveal his dawning realization of the connections he has with his

mentor, Endo-san, in previous lives. Philip and Endo-san carry with them

“memories” of violent past mistakes, and have “chased” each other for several

lifetimes, their destinies intertwined, in order to make reparations of violence and

betrayal committed centuries earlier.

This paper also seeks to find connections between the ideas of repetition and

reincarnation, as well as paying for the mistakes of past lives, to concepts such as

“working through” and the “breach of consciousness” in trauma studies. It also

looks at how the trauma of past lives can disrupt the sense of temporality in the

present life, which is an extension of the idea that “trauma and traumatic memory

can alter the linearity of historical, narrativised time”‟ memories of the trauma of

past lives also haunt characters in the narrative present through meditative visions

and soothsayers. Analysis of these issues will allow for new ways of thinking and

talking about trauma and traumatic memories.

Key Words: Pacific war, Contemporary Malaysian literature, memory, trauma,

reincarnation

*****

In Trauma Fiction (2004), Whitehead notes that there has been “an increasing

fascination with history and memory in literary studies” in the past two decades.

She also claims that the rise of trauma fiction in recent decades is inseparable from

the turn to memory in literary and historical studies.1 A similar fascination with

history and the memory of the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore

(1942-45) can be found in Anglophone Malaysian novels published in the 21st

century – including Tan Twan Eng‟s The Gift of Rain (2009) – which shows that

World War II and the Japanese Occupation remain as recurrent themes in the

public imagination of Malaysia. Warfare, and the many narratives about it, is

inseparable from the history of trauma studies. The shell-shocked soldiers of World

War I inspired the first studies of trauma and war neuroses, while World War II led

to the studies of Holocaust victims and other victims of war, and the Vietnam War

drew the attention of trauma studies to PTSD. While war and trauma are

inseparable as concepts, and the various connections between war and trauma form

a major preoccupation in my thesis as well as in The Gift of Rain, this paper

focuses rather on a different aspect of trauma and its representation, and how it can

relate to the philosophical belief of reincarnation as it is represented in the novel.

The Gift of Rain is a story about Philip Hutton, son of an English businessman

and Chinese woman living in Penang, a British Colony in Malaya, when the

unthinkable happened: the Japanese invasion and occupation of Malaya and

Singapore. The novel is divided into two roughly equal parts, separated by the date

8 December 1941, which splits the narrative into life before and after the arrival of

the Japanese. The narrative focuses on the teacher-student relationship of Philip

and Endo-san, a Japanese spy who teaches Philip the Japanese martial art of aikido.

In the narrative, Philip discovers that everything was not as it seemed, and that he

and Endo-san were trapped in a karmic cycle that has lasted for centuries. Philip‟s

situation is made more complicated when he reluctantly decides to co-operate with

the Japanese during the Occupation, leading many to call him a Japanese “running

dog”. The war, which has led to the deaths of all his family members, as well as the

death of his teacher, Endo-san, leaves Philip with a deep sense of trauma.

The novel takes the form of a frame narrative, and begins with the inner

thoughts of the present-day Philip in which he reminisces about an ancient

soothsayer who told him that he was born with the gift of rain. Within this

narrative frame of the past and of memory, the present day Philip then narrates the

story of his more recent encounter with a Japanese woman called Michiko

Murakami, who visited him in 1995, 50 years after the end of the Second World

War. Within the narrative of this encounter with Michiko lies a third layer of

narrative: one where Philip tells the story of what happened during the war, fifty

years ago, to Michiko, Endo-san‟s former lover who asks Philip about Endo-san‟s

life in Malaya. Reluctant at first, Philip eventually opens up to Michiko about the

past, of the time he has spent with Endo-san before and during the Occupation.

One of the important episodes in this story with regards to Philip and Endo-

san‟s connection in a past life is the encounter Philip has with a soothsayer in the

Snake Temple in Penang, where he takes Endo-san for a visit. The soothsayer tells

Philip in a trance-like state that “you and your friend have a past together, in a

different time. And you have a greater journey to make. After this life.” Upon

hearing this, Endo-san says to a puzzled Philip: “so the words never change,

wherever I go”. This is the point in the novel that deals with the idea of the Wheel

of Becoming (bhavachakra), as well as the notions of karma and reincarnation.

Endo-san, a Buddhist, explains to Philip, a Christian, about the Buddhist belief that

humans have past lives, and are reborn at the end of each life. This cycle of rebirth

will continue until all past mistakes and weaknesses have been redressed, and then

the soul can reach Nirvana, or the state of enlightenment, which is „free from pain

and suffering and desires, free from time‟, which Philip then likens to his Christian

concept of heaven.

At a different point in the novel, Endo-san reminds Philip of their conversation

at the Snake Temple, and as they were walking down a beach, he asks Philip what

he felt when they met for the first time, and Philip replies that it is as though he‟d

known Endo-san before, and that the feeling was like “a telescoping of time”.

Endo-san tells Philip that they had known each other a long time ago, many

lifetimes ago, and that they have known each other for many lifetimes. Here he

stops, points to the trail of footprints left behind in the sand and compares it to their

past lives, some of which cross at certain points; the sand in front of them he

compares to “lives yet to be lived”. Endo-san tells Philip that because their lives

ended “in pain and unfulfilled, without completion”, they were then forced to live

again and again, to meet, and resolve their lives.

Whitehead writes that in Freud‟s model of the consciousness, trauma “resulted

from a rupture or breach in the protective shield of consciousness”, and that trauma

is less likely to occur if the subject is prepared for the “onslaught of external

stimuli”, and that the symptoms of a trauma victim “acts as a means of trying to

establish these mechanisms of preparedness after the fact.2 By looking at the novel,

we can observe certain similarities between the representation of reincarnation and

how trauma is seen, in terms of time and memory. In The Gift of Rain, there is a

grievous mistake committed in the past causes a rupture in karma between Endo-

san and Philip. The cause of this rupture is revealed when Philip, in a moment of

deep meditation, enters a deep meditative trance. It is during the trance that he

experiences the beheading of his past self by Endo-san‟s past self, sometime during

the 17th century in Japan, during the reign of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Philip‟s

past self has been sentenced to death for conspiring against the shogun, and he was

to be beheaded by Endo-san‟s past self. After the trance, Philip describes his neck

as “hurting from remembered pain” at the point where Endo-san beheads him.

In an examination of past life memories by Ian Stevenson, it is suggested that

“there are far more claims of rebirth for individuals who died prematurely and/or

violently than for those who died under more normal circumstances. It is also

suggested that the “suddenness of the death left the deceased so disoriented that he

or she was desperate to return to a normal embodiment”. The second is that the

“suddenness left the deceased with “unfinished business” that required re-

embodiment”.3 Because of the betrayal of Philip‟s past self by Endo-san‟s past self,

their destinies become tangled in what is described by Endo-san as an “eternal

knot”, a bond that ties the two of them together, until it can be untied through the

act of reparation. This bond results in karmic cycle of repetition which causes

Philip and Endo-san to chase each other through several lifetimes, and in each

lifetime, attempt to make reparations for the great mistake done in the 17th century.

These chasings can be compared to traumatic flashbacks that haunt victims of

traumatic events in the sense that they are uncontrollable, involuntary re-

enactments of the traumatic event that caused them, and they become literal

repetitions through time. The reparation for this past mistake that resulted in the

karmic imbalance is finally made when the tables are turned on the Japanese, and

they lose the war. As a war criminal, Endo-san is tried and placed under arrest by

the returning British, and in an act of reparation, Philip has to behead Endo-san to

save him from dying a dishonorable death as a prisoner of the British. This action

reverses the karmic imbalance between them and releases their entanglement with

each other.

Besides causing repetitions through several lifetimes, trauma can also cause

elements of past lives to be experienced simultaneously in the present. Edkins

argues that trauma refuses to take its place in history as done and finished with, but

demands an acknowledgement of a different temporality, “where the past is

produced by – or even takes place in – the present”.4 It is also interesting to note

that Philip‟s narrative to Michiko ends at the point right after he beheads Endo-san,

which points to that event as the main cause of the trauma; the rest of the narrative

has led up to that point in time. The trauma of Endo-san‟s death has caused Philip

to be stuck in the past. Caruth argues that trauma is “the confrontation with an

event that, in its unexpectedness and horror, cannot be placed within the schemes

of prior knowledge”.5 Edkins furthers claims that “trauma and traumatic memory

alter the linearity of historical, narrativised time”.6 She also explains that

traumatized persons live in two different worlds: “the realm of trauma and the

realm of their current ordinary life”. In this parallel existence, the two realms

cannot come together or be synchronized because of the “different temporalities

each invokes”, in which the events that occurred during the period of the trauma

are experienced “in a sense simultaneously with those of a survivor‟s current

existence”, and have not been incorporated into a narrative.7

In the case of the Gift of Rain, there is a literal reenactment of the trauma that

caused the destinies of Philip and Endo-san to become intertwined, and the irony of

the situation is not lost on Philip: he sadly calls it out, saying that “time,

mischievous time, cruel time, forgiving time plays tricks on us again and again”.

There is a heavy and intentional sense of repetition created here: a sense of time

shifting, just like how the linearity of time is distorted in the narratives of

traumatized victims. One of the ways this repetition is portrayed is having the final

chapter of Philip‟s narrative about Endo-san repeat some of the events and motifs

that have already taken place. Endo-san‟s first greeting of Philip, “May I speak to

the master of the house?” is echoed in the last chapter, on the day of the last time

that he sees Philip. This sense of repetition would bring a sense of familiarity to the

reader, and brings about the sense of a confluence of past and present. In trauma, it

is said that the victim lives simultaneously in the past and in the present, unable to

escape the sense of trauma, until and unless it has been incorporated into a

narrative, so that the trauma can become incorporated into history and finally

become forgotten. Another example of the confluence between the time of the past

life and the present life is during the meditative state when Philip quite literally

experiences a flashback from a past life, where he is beheaded. Philip describes the

experience as “timeless” and experiences both the past and the present seemingly

simultaneously.

Besides the idea of reincarnation and the afterlife, the novel also brings up the

idea of predestination: that our lives have been predestined, and that the decisions

in this life have already been decided for us based on our past lives. This idea is

contrasted with the idea of free will when Philip‟s grandfather explains the origins

of Philip‟s middle name, Arminius, which comes from a Dutchman called Jacobus

Harmensz, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century. Harmensz believes

that “a person‟s salvation lay in the exercise of free will, and not through the grace

of God”, and that man‟s life has not been pre-determined. Philip‟s close friend,

Yeap Chee Kon, sees life as a consequence of choices made in previous lives,

which is a view that causes Philip to doubt that new life, the reincarnated life, is a

tabula rasa. Kon tells Philip that “some mistakes can be so great, so grievous, that

we end up paying for them again and again, until eventually all our lives forget

why we began paying in the first place. If you are able to remember, then you must

make the greatest effort to put things right, now, before you forget again”. This

idea of making reparations for mistakes of the past bears great resemblance to the

idea of reinscribing trauma into narrative to make the self whole again.

By looking at these ideas about reincarnation and predestination closely, the

significance of the close relationship between Endo-san and Philip becomes much

clearer. One of the most important relationships in the novel is the one between

Philip and Endo-san, which is more than that of student and teacher. They also love

and respect each other dearly. It is revealed that they share a strong bond of destiny,

more than once. Besides that, their bond as student and teacher is also emphasized,

and the saying that “next to a parent, a teacher is the most powerful person in one‟s

life”. Philip‟s narrative also involve certain moments where he realizes that the

relationship he has with Endo-san is more than that of a teacher and a pupil. He

contemplatively says, during an important moment in the novel, after Philip‟s

conversation to Kon about predestination, that he and Endo-san “had passed

beyond the boundaries that encircled the pupil and the master”. He also tells us that

“Endo-san has been more than my parent, much more than my teacher.

The way in which reincarnation is represented, and its relation to trauma is that

a past mistake causes a disruption of some form to karma, similar to how the shield

of consciousness is breached by a disruptive force, which leads to the subject being

traumatized. The disruption to karma causes the subject for whom the karma is

disrupted to experience repetitions in their future lives, in an attempt to rebalance

the karma and end the repetition, much like how traumatized subjects experience

repetitions of the traumatic event that caused their trauma. There is also a temporal

element in the way that the impact of past lives on the present is represented, and

the instances where the confluence of past and present happen in the narrative. The

representation of the confluence of time and how it is experienced is also an

important element in representing trauma in literature, as trauma survivors are

described to be living in two different temporalities, as the traumatic past cannot be

incorporated into history, and into narrative. The process of reparation in the novel,

and the idea of putting things right again so that Philip and Endo-san would not

have to repeat the past in future lives is also similar to the process of recovery in

trauma, where you have to first know what is causing the repetition, and then find

ways to address the trauma, including bearing witness and narrating the trauma. By

helping to kill Endo-san on his own terms, Philip ends the karmic imbalance

between them. However, it is only after he narrates his tale to Michiko that he is

able to fully come to terms with his own actions and with the trauma that the war

has left him with.

Notes

1 Anne, Whitehead. Trauma Fiction. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

2004). 81. 2 Anne, Whitehead. Theories of Memory: A Reader. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 2007), 187. 3 Norman C. McClelland. „Deaths, violent and premature‟, in Encyclopedia of

Reincarnation and Karma. (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland &

Company, Inc., 2010), 73. 4 Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics. (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003), 59. 5 Cathy Caruth. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1995), 153. 6 Edkins, Trauma and Politics, 40.

7 Ibid.

Bibliography

Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1995.

Edkins, Jenny. Trauma and the Memory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2003.

McClelland, Norman C. „Deaths, violent and premature‟, in Encyclopedia of

Reincarnation and Karma. Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland &

Company, Inc., 2010.

Tan, Twan Eng. The Gift of Rain. Newcastle upon Tyne: Myrmidon, 2007.

Whitehead, Anne. Theories of Memory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press, 2007.

Whitehead, Anne. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

Goh Cheng Fai is currently working on his MPhil degree at the University of Hong

Kong, where he studies narratives of trauma and memory of the Japanese

Occupation in 21st century Anglophone Malaysian Literature.