Snow Falling on Cedars

Content Warning: This guide references violence, combat, and racial prejudice.

The mystery over the precise cause of Carl Heine’s death sets the novel’s plot in motion. Because there is ample evidence to support both the claim that Heine was murdered and the defense’s assertion that his death was accidental, the truth is difficult to discern. Several characters become focused on studying the clues on the boat and on the body of Heine, hopeful that an objective truth will be revealed. Obscuring the truth, however, is the prejudice against Japanese Americans that lingers from the war. Some citizens presume Kabuo is guilty of Carl Heine’s death simply because Kabuo is Japanese—this hatred is something jurors must set aside if justice is to prevail in the trial. Indeed, the imprisonment of the Japanese Americans just a few years prior echoes here: Though the US government had little to no cause to imprison the families of Kabuo and Hatsue, it asserted that their ethnicity was just cause, insisting that their Japanese ethnicity would automatically make them loyal to the enemies. In this way, the novel reveals the way human fault and bias can stand in the way of justice.