Buddhism in America

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Wilson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Immigration Laws ◽  
Asian Immigration ◽  
American Buddhism

Buddhist history in the United States traces to the mid-19th century, when early scholars and spiritual pioneers first introduced the subject to Americans, followed soon by the arrival of Chinese immigrants to the West Coast. Interest in Buddhism was significant during the late Victorian era, but practice was almost completely confined to Asian immigrants, who faced severe white prejudice and legal discrimination. The Japanese were the first to establish robust, long-lasting temple networks, though they, too, faced persecution, culminating in the 1942 incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, a severe blow to American Buddhism. Outside the Japanese American community, Buddhism grew slowly in the earlier decades of the 20th century, but it began to take off in the 1960s, aided soon by the lifting of onerous immigration laws and the return of large-scale Asian immigration. By the end of the 20th century American Buddhism had become extremely diverse and complex, with clear evidence of permanence in Asian American and other communities.

Asian American Children’s Literature

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Park Dahlen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
Asian Diaspora

Asian American children’s literature includes books of many different genres that depict some aspect of the Asian diaspora. In total, the books should depict the breadth and depth of Asian diasporic experiences. Children’s books published in the early 20th century include mostly folktales, while books published after the 1965 Immigration Act tend to include contemporary fiction, poetry, and biographies. They address topics such as immigration and acculturation as well as capture landmark moments and experiences in Asian American history, such as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the transnational, transracial adoption of Asian children to the United States. Books published at the turn of the 20th century have broached newer topics, such as mixed-race identities, and are written in a variety of genres including fantasy. As noted by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, the number of books by and/or about Asian Americans published is disproportionate to the total number of books published each year and to the population of Asians in the Americas. Also some Asian American writers continue to publish on topics unrelated to their identities. Academic researchers, practitioners, and writers have addressed various aspects of how this body of literature represents Asian Americans, mostly noting distortions and erasure and offering suggestions for improvement, emerging topics, and engagement with young people.

Nikkei Baseball

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel O. Regalado
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Meiji Era ◽  
Asian American Identity

Nikkei Baseball examines baseball's evolving importance to the Japanese American community and the construction of Japanese American identity. Originally introduced in Japan in the late 1800s, baseball was played in the United States by Japanese immigrants first in Hawaii, then San Francisco and northern California, then in amateur leagues up and down the Pacific Coast. For Japanese American players, baseball was seen as a sport that encouraged healthy competition by imposing rules and standards of ethical behavior for both players and fans. The value of baseball as exercise and amusement quickly expanded into something even more important, a means for strengthening social ties within Japanese American communities and for linking their aspirations to America's pastimes and America's promise. Drawing from archival research, prior scholarship, and personal interviews, this book explores key historical factors such as Meiji-era modernization policies in Japan, American anti-Asian sentiments, internment during World War II, the postwar transition, economic and educational opportunities in the 1960s, the developing concept of a distinct “Asian American” identity, and Japanese Americans' rise to the major leagues with star players including Lenn Sakata and Kurt Suzuki and even managers such as the Seattle Mariners' Don Wakamatsu.

The Complexity of Generational Status and Ethnic Identity of Japanese Americans

2020 ◽  
pp. 106648072097751
Author(s):  
Lorine Erika Saito
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Intergenerational Ties ◽  
The Impact

Japanese Americans comprise multiple generations, with a first wave of immigrants entering the United States in the 1800s. The current generation of Japanese American descendants today includes over five generations. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the ethnic identity of fourth- and fifth-generation Japanese American adults. Forty participants were interviewed as part of a larger study and deemed exempt by institutional review board. Results indicate that ethnic identity for multigenerational Japanese American adults is complex, with factors that include the impact of historical and intergenerational ties to World War II, continuance of family and cultural traditions, and identity as American but perceived as “forever foreigner.” Family counselor recommendations include considering historical background of Asian American and minority groups, rethinking educational curriculum through transformative social and emotional learning.

Japanese Americans in Academia and Political Discourse in Japan

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Okiyoshi Takeda
Keyword(s):  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Asian American Studies ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The U.S

I am a political scientist specializing in Asian American politics. Although I earned my PhD in the United States, my initial interest was in the U.S. Congress and not in Japanese American studies or Asian American studies. What shifted my interest toward Asian American studies was that I had witnessed firsthand a campus sit-in at the Princeton University president’s office, where students were fighting for the establishment of an Asian American studies program. Witnessing such an incident, I realized that Asian Americans were an understudied topic in the field of political science. There is also a tendency for scholars from Japan to focus exclusively on Japanese Americans and to disregard other Asian American ethnic groups. Since I did not start out my study on Asian Americans in a graduate school in Japan with an interest in Japanese Americans, I have been able to avoid taking that kind of path....

Contemporary Asian American Dance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutian Wong
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Chinese Text ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Wide Range

Contemporary Asian American dance includes a wide range of choreographic approaches, movement vocabularies, aesthetic traditions, and philosophies toward the body. Referencing either time or genre, the “contemporary” in contemporary Asian American dance can refer to work that includes high-art concert productions that utilize modern and postmodern movement vocabularies, reworkings of traditional Asian movement practices, or popular dance practices. Contemporary Asian American dance also encompasses work that is created by Asian American choreographers, choreography that addresses Asian American experiences or history, or work that is performed by Asian American dancers. As a field of study, Asian American dance studies is concerned with an analysis of how the critical reception of choreography by Asian American choreographers is entangled with the history of Orientalism in both American modern dance history and the racialization of Asian Americans in US history. Beginning in the early 20th century, choreographer Michio Ito (1892–1961) navigated his training in German expressionist dance with public expectations of performing recognizable Japaneseness in the face of growing anti-Japanese sentiments on the West Coast of the United States in the years before the United States officially entered World War II. In the later half of the 20th century, Mel Wong (1938–2003) faced similar issues after leaving the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to pursue his own choreography. While Merce Cunningham’s adoption of the Chinese text the I-Ching was considered a choreographic breakthrough in the development of chance procedure that would revolutionize the definition of what is considered dance, Mel Wong faced critics and funding organizations who found Wong’s own use of ritual and Asian philosophy to be incomprehensible or inauthentic. The question of authenticity in relationship to the use of traditional Asian vocabularies runs the gamut from the performance of depoliticized folk dance forms such as those performed by the San Francisco Chinese Folkdance Association to the purposeful invention of Japanese American taiko repertory by organizations such as San Jose Taiko during the 1960s Asian American movement. In contrast, choreographers such as Eiko (1952–present), Koma (1948–present), and Shen Wei (1968–present) are not concerned with the question of Asian American authenticity and have been creating work that stakes a claim in universal themes of humanity and the environment or the relationship between movement and visual art. Understanding the work of choreographers such as Eiko & Koma and Shen Wei as contemporary Asian American dance is enabled by the transnational turn in Asian American studies to include work by choreographers whose work does not directly represent traditional understandings of the Asian American experience rooted in themes such as the trauma of immigration, intergenerational conflict, or national belonging.

“A Living Artist with Open Eyes”: the Transnational Journey of Mitsu Yashima

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
Valerie J. Matsumoto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
The Us ◽  
Asian American Movement

Mitsu Yashima (1908–1988) was a political dissident and artist in two countries. In prewar Japan, she became a proletarian rights activist; during World War ii she continued to oppose Japanese militarism by working for the United States government. In her later years, she opposed US militarism during the Vietnam War. In San Francisco, she became an admired cultural worker in the Asian American movement. Examining her life offers rare glimpses of a woman’s efforts to forge a career in the male-dominated art worlds of twentieth-century Japan and the US. Her transnational life expands the boundaries of Japanese American history, which has long focused on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century immigration to the US West and Hawaiʻi. Her activism also challenges the perception that only third-generation Japanese Americans joined the Asian American movement of the 1960s-1970s. Yashima’s concern for human rights and peace fueled her art, political engagement, and community building.

Japanese Reinvention of Self through Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans

2012 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujin Yaguchi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Modern Japanese History ◽  
American Society

This article investigates the relationship between Asian American and modern Japanese history by analyzing the image of Japanese Americans in postwar Japan. Based on a book of photographs featuring Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i published in 1956, it analyzes how their image was appropriated and redefined in Japan to promote as well as reinforce the nation’s political and cultural alliance with the United States. The photographs showed the successful acculturation of Japanese in Hawai‘i to the larger American society and urged the Japanese audience to see that their nation’s postwar reconstruction would come through the power and protection of the United States. Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i served as a lens through which the Japanese in Japan could imagine their position under American hegemony in the age of Cold War.

Japanese American Buddhism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihiro Ama ◽  
Michael Masatsugu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
American Buddhism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to the United States at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, but the development of Japanese American Buddhism, also known as Nikkei Buddhism, really began when Japanese migrants brought Buddhism with them to Hawaii and the continental United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been influenced by, and has reflected, America’s sociopolitical and religious climate and the US relationship to Japan, to which generations of Japanese Americans, such as Issei (literally, first generation, referring to Japanese immigrants), Nisei (second-generation American-born offspring of the Issei), and Sansei (third generation), responded differently. While adapting to American society, Japanese American Buddhists maintained their cultural practices and ethnoreligious identity. The history of Japanese American Buddhism discussed in this article spans from the late-19th Century to the 1970s and is divided into three major periods: the pre-World War II, World War II, and the postwar eras. Japanese American Buddhism is derived from the various Buddhist organizations in Japan. The Nishi Hongwanji denomination of Jōdo Shinshū, a form of Pure Land Buddhism known as Shin Buddhism in the West, is the oldest and largest form of ethnic Japanese Buddhism in the United States. In Hawaii, Nishi Hongwanji founded the Hompa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii (HHMH) in Honolulu in 1897. On the continental United States, it established the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) in San Francisco in 1898, currently known as the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA). Other Japanese Buddhist organizations also developed in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. They include the Jōdo-shū, another sect of Pure Land Buddhism; Higashi Hongwanji, another major denomination of Jōdoshin-shū; Sōtō-shū, a Zen Buddhist school; Shingon-shū, known as Kōyasan Buddhism; and Nichiren-shū. The characteristics of Japanese American Buddhism changed significantly during World War II, when approximately 120,000 persons of Japanese descent living in the West Coast states were incarcerated because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The postwar period witnessed a rapid transformation in the status and visibility of Japanese Buddhism in the United States. This transformation was driven by the promotion of ethnonational Buddhism by Nisei and by the growth of interest in Zen Buddhism among the general American public. The positive reception of Japanese Buddhism in the United States reflected and reinforced the transformed relationship between the United States and Japan from wartime enemies to Cold War partners. While they experienced greater receptivity and interest in Buddhism from nonethnics, they could no longer practice or espouse Jōdo Shinshū teachings or adapted practices without clarification. Debates concerning the authenticity of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and Japanese American Buddhist practices were interwoven within a longer history of American Orientalism. By the 1960s, Japanese American Buddhist communities were transformed by the addition of a small but vocal nonethnic membership and a new generation of Sansei Buddhists. Demands for English-speaking ministers resulted in the creation, in 1967, of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, the first graduate-level training program in the United States endorsed by Nishi Hongwanji. This article is an overview of Japanese American Buddhism with a focus on the development of the Nishi Hongwanji Shin Buddhist organizations in the United States. English scholarship on the development of other Japanese Buddhist organizations in the United States is still limited. Throughout the history of Japanese American Buddhism, Nikkei Buddhists negotiated with America’s political institutions and Christian churches, as well as with Euro-American Buddhists, over Buddhist and cultural practices to maintain and redefine their ethnoreligious tradition. Buddhist temples provided the space for them to gather and build a community of shared faith and cultural heritage, discuss their place and the role of Buddhism in American society, and express their concerns to America’s general public.

Ballad for Incarcerated Americans: Second Generation Japanese American Musicking in World War II Camps

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTA ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
American Popular Music

AbstractDuring World War II, the United States government imprisoned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens, half of whom were children. Through ethnographic interviews I explore how fragile youthful memories, trauma, and the soundscape of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) Incarceration Camps shaped the artistic trajectories of three such former “enemy alien” youth: two pianists and a koto player. Counterintuitively, Japanese traditional arts flourished in the hostile environment of dislocation through the high number ofnisei(second generation) participants, who later contributed to increasing transculturalism in American music following resettlement out of camp. Synthesizing Japanese and Euro-American classical music, white American popular music, and African American jazz, manyniseiparadoxically asserted their dual cultural commitment to both traditional Japanese and home front patriotic American principles. A performance of Earl Robinson and John Latouche's patriotic cantata,Ballad for Americans(1939), by the high school choir at Manzanar Incarceration Camp demonstrates the hybridity of these Japanese American cultural practices. Marked by Popular Front ideals,Ballad for Americansallowedniseito construct identities through a complicated mixture of ethnic pride, chauvinistic white Americanism allied with Bing Crosby's recordings of theBallad, and affiliation with black racial struggle through Paul Robeson's iconicBalladperformances.

Existential Crisis of the Japanese American Woman: A Study of Post War Japanese American Fiction

Ensemble ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-56
Author(s):  
Nitusmita Bhattacharyya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
American Woman ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Native Community ◽  
American Women ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Existential Crisis ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War

The Japanese American women, during the Second World War, suffered from subjugation at different levels of their existence. They had been subjected to marginalization based on their sexual identity within their native community. They were further made to experience discrimination on the basis of their racial status while living as a member of the Japanese diaspora in the United States during the War. The objectification and marginalization of the women had led them to the realization of their existence as a non -entity within and outside their community. However, the internment of Japanese Americans followed by the declaration of Executive Order 9066 by President Roosevelt and the consequent experience of living behind the barbed wire fences left them to struggle with questions raised on their claim to existence and their identity within a space where race and gender contested each other. In my research paper, I have made a humble attempt at studying the existential crisis of the Japanese American women in America during the War.

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