The short story Seventeen Syllables is about how the bicultural life between the immigrant Japanese and the second generation living in America. Rosie Hayashi, the second generation, lives in a farming community with her parents. Her mother Tome lives a somewhat second life at night. After working on the fields with her family, she writes haikus which she reads to her daughter to see if they sound right. Rosie doesn’t understand Japanese well, and has to think it over of translating English to Japanese in her mind. What Rosie learned from her mother was that she could have had a step-brother. Tome was in love with a man in Japan, but then she had learned terrible news which was: “an excellent match had already been arranged for her lover.” She was stricken with grief when she was pregnant with a child that could possibly lead that baby to be a stillborn due to the stress of her depression. It turned to the point of suicide that she asked her sister for help to go to America and find someone to marry, and she married a Japanese man. Tome’s life is different to Rosie’s when she tries to find something she likes to do, and that was writing haikus. When Tome goes out to see her sister and brother in law, they would talk about haikus for hours on end while her husband could only focus on work. What came to mind is Confucius laws in terms of relationships which started from China in the Han Dynasty. They are the Five Bonds: Ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and friend and friend. There was a hierarchical system that men are dominate and loyal to their lords while the women are loyal to her husbands and family. This has changed during WWII with women being dedicated to their country and also to their home, like how Tome is. But more importantly, what her husband wants her to be instead of writing haikus and winning the contest which resulted him destroying her painting prize. R