Diasporas without a consciousness: Japanese Americans and the lack of a Nikkei identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Takeyuki Gaku Tsuda
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Ethnic Populations ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
Japanese Descent

Some scholars have recently suggested that the concept of diaspora should be regarded as a type of identity or consciousness instead of as a transnational ethnic community. While it is undeniable that some dispersed ethnic populations identify as diasporic peoples, older “economic diasporas“ sometimes have lost their transnational social cohesion and do not have a diasporic consciousness. I illustrate this by examining the experiences of Japanese Americans, an important part of the “Japanese diaspora“ of Japanese descendants (Nikkei) sca ered throughout the Americas. Because they have become assimilated in the United States over the generations, they no longer maintain any notable diasporic identi fication with the ethnic homeland or to other Japanese descent ethnic communities in the Americas. Even when they encounter Nikkei from other countries, national cultural diff erences make it difficult for them to develop a diasporic identity as Japanese descendants with a common cultural heritage or historical experiences.

Bilingual and Bicultural Education. Alternative Educational Approaches to Ethnic Communities

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay Georgiev
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Ethnic Communities ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Educational Integration

The article presents the characteristics of bilingualism according to modern linguistic theories as well as the approaches of elaboration and implementation of bilingual educational programs in Europe and the United States. The advantages of the socio-cultural approach in selection and implementation of educational integration programs are outlined, with the emphasis on the so-called productive training.

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.

Camera Men: Techno-orientalism in Two Acts

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 939-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL MCKAY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Bubble Economy

During the years of Japan's “bubble” economy, writers and artists in the United States became increasingly susceptible to “Japan-bashing,” a discourse that objectified Japanese for their trade practices, overseas purchases, and tourist presence. In the following article, I draw upon a range of cultural texts, from Truman Capote's novellaBreakfast at Tiffany'sto Michael Crichton's novelRising Sun, in order to investigate how the trope of the camera-toting Japanese expatriate encapsulated the fears of the era. I then move to explore the ways in which Japanese Americans negotiated these tropes in their writings, paying particular attention to Ruth Ozeki's novelMy Year of Meats. I hypothesize that Japanese Americans remained aware of the phenomenon of “Japan-bashing” throughout the era, yet did not confront it in a sustained fashion. Instead, tropes were either dismissed out of hand or, as in Ozeki's case, incorporated into a narrative before undergoing a process of gradual dismantlement.

Social Cohesion and Alienation: Minorities in the United States and Japan

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 166
Author(s):  
Koji Taira ◽  
George A. de Vos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
The United States

Diasporicity and Japanese Americans

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeyuki Tsuda
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Social Connections ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Geographically Dispersed ◽  
Transnational Ties ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
Japanese Descent

This chapter situates Japanese American cultural heritage and transnational ties to the ethnic homeland in a broader diasporic context and proposes the concept of diasporicity to address the relative strength of a geographically dispersed ethnic group’s transnational connections and identifications both with the ancestral homeland and to co-ethnics residing in other countries. Although Japanese Americans are members of the Japanese-descent (nikkei) diaspora, prominent national differences prevent them from identifying with other Japanese-descent nikkei as peoples with a common ethnic heritage. However, like other diasporic groups, they have much stronger social connections to their ethnic homeland than they do to other Japanese descent communities in the Americas.

Bonds and Barriers

2021 ◽  
pp. 260-294
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
World War ◽  
Enlisted Personnel ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

Chapter 7 follows nonblack minorities through their training and service in the United States. America’s World War II military, from its top leaders to its enlisted personnel, simultaneously built and blurred a white-nonwhite divide alongside its black-white one. On the one hand, the blurring stemmed from a host of factors, including the day-to-day intermingling of troops, the activism of nonblack minorities, and, paradoxically, the unifying power of the black-white divide among nonblacks. On the other hand, this blurring had its limits. White-nonwhite lines cropped up in some of the same places black-white ones did and in some different ones, too, especially those related to national security and Japanese Americans. In the end, these lines remained in place throughout the war years, despite continuous blurring. They did so in part because of these racialized national security concerns and because of the power of civilian racist practices and investments.

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