According to Franklin S. Odo in his Afterword of All I Asking for Is My Body, Milton Murayama understood the themes of the novel to be “the Japanese family system vs. individualism, the plantation system vs. individualism” (108). 

In an article titled “Japanese Family” by Anne E. Imamura printed in Asia Society in 1990, Imamura explains that the Japanese “family rather than the individual is considered to be the basic unit of society.” While Mr. and Mrs. Oyama spent their formative years in Japan, their children received a different upbringing, and as first-generation Americans, they are more likely to identify themselves as individuals, rather than as part of a family. 

When his father forbids Kiyo from playing with his friend, Mr. Oyama describes Makot as “bad.” When Kiyo asks what makes Makot bad, his father answers, “Because his home is bad. His father is bad. His mother is bad” (9). Because the Oyamas see the family as the basic unit of society, as opposed to the individual, they do not consider that Makot might be different than his parents. For the Oyamas, the sins of the father are visited upon the children. 

While the Oyamas consider Tosh to be unfilial, he really straddles the two systems.