Buffalo

The Buffalo appears in The Man in the High Castle as a striking and ambiguous object, most notably as a mounted head displayed in the San Francisco home of Nobusuke Tagomi. It is introduced during a tense evening conversation between Tagomi and Mr. Baynes, the man who will later be revealed as Rudolf Wegener. When Baynes asks about the head, Tagomi identifies it as "nothing less than creature which sustained the aboriginal in bygone days," framing the animal not as a mere trophy but as a relic of a vanished way of life. The buffalo head thus enters the novel as a piece of Americana, an object of the kind that Robert Childan sells, yet it carries a weight that the commercial artifacts of Childan's store do not. It is a remnant of the natural world, transformed into a cultural artifact, and its presence in Tagomi's home signals the Japanese fascination with the history of the conquered continent.

The Buffalo as a Symbol of Historicity

The buffalo head participates directly in the novel's central meditation on historicity, the quality that supposedly inheres in objects with a genuine past. Tagomi's description of the buffalo as the creature that "sustained the aboriginal" links it to a deep, pre-colonial history, one that predates the European settlement of America and the subsequent Japanese occupation. Unlike the forged Colt .44 revolver that Robert Childan unwittingly sells, or the two Zippo lighters that Wyndam-Matson uses to demonstrate the arbitrariness of authenticity, the buffalo head possesses an undeniable historicity. It is not a reproduction; it is the actual skull of an actual animal that once roamed the plains. Yet, as Tagomi's own words suggest, its meaning is not intrinsic but assigned. The buffalo's historical significance is a matter of interpretation, much like the value of the Mickey Mouse wristwatch that Tagomi gifts to Baynes, or the Civil War artifacts that Childan trades in. The buffalo head, in this sense, becomes a test case for the novel's question: does an object carry its history within it, or is historicity merely a story told about it?

The Buffalo and the Natural World

The buffalo also represents the natural world, a realm that is largely absent from the novel's urban, politically charged settings. The head is a fragment of the wild, brought indoors and mounted for display, a gesture that mirrors the way the Japanese conquerors collect and display American cultural artifacts. Tagomi's description of the buffalo as the sustainer of the aboriginal people evokes a time when humans and animals lived in a direct, symbiotic relationship, a stark contrast to the world of the novel, where nature has been subordinated to technology and ideology. The German Reich has drained the Mediterranean and turned it into farmland; the Japanese are burning jungles in Brazil; and the Nazis have depopulated Africa. The buffalo head, in this context, is a reminder of a lost ecological balance, a world where the buffalo was not a trophy but a source of life. Its presence in Tagomi's home, alongside the I Ching and the other trappings of Japanese culture, suggests a longing for a simpler, more authentic relationship with the world, one that the novel's characters, trapped in their political and social hierarchies, cannot achieve.

The Buffalo and the Collector's Gaze

The buffalo head is also an object of the collector's gaze, a practice that the novel examines through the characters of Robert Childan and his Japanese clientele. Childan's entire business depends on the Japanese desire for American historical artifacts, and the buffalo head, as a piece of Americana, fits this pattern. Yet the buffalo is not an artifact of the kind Childan sells; it is not a manufactured object but a natural one, and its collection is not a matter of commerce but of personal taste. Tagomi's possession of the head suggests a different kind of collecting, one that is not driven by the market but by a genuine, if unexamined, connection to the past. The buffalo head, in this sense, stands in contrast to the forged artifacts that circulate through Childan's store, and to the mass-produced Edfrank jewelry that Childan will later champion. It is an object that cannot be faked, and its authenticity is not a matter of documentation but of material fact. The buffalo head thus serves as a quiet counterpoint to the novel's pervasive anxiety about authenticity, a reminder that some things are real, even if their meaning is not.