Redefining Japaneseness

Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland

By Jane H. Yamashiro

SERIES: Asian American Studies Today

Rutgers University Press

There is a rich body of literature on the experience of Japanese immigrants in the United States, and there are also numerous accounts of the cultural dislocation felt by American expats in Japan. But what happens when Japanese Americans, born and raised in the United States, are the ones living abroad in Japan?

Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan navigate and complicate the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive interviews and fieldwork in the Tokyo area, Jane H. Yamashiro tracks the multiple ways these migrants strategically negotiate and interpret their daily interactions. Following a diverse group of subjects—some of only Japanese ancestry and others of mixed heritage, some fluent in Japanese and others struggling with the language, some from Hawaii and others from the US continent—her study reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness.

Making an important contribution to both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration, Redefining Japaneseness critically interrogates the common assumption that people of Japanese ancestry identify as members of a global diaspora. Furthermore, through its close examination of subjects who migrate from one highly-industrialized nation to another, it dramatically expands our picture of the migrant experience.

Based on excellent and extensive research, Redefining Japanesenessis a comprehensive look at a previously understudied area. Yamashiro has produced a work of the highest academic quality. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, author of When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities

Not only does Yamashiro give us engaging portraits of how Japanese Americans navigate the social and cultural terrain of contemporary Japan, but she also provides a fundamental rethinking of the analytic frameworks by which migrant identities have been contextualized and understood. Michael Omi, University of California, Berkeley

Yamashiro’s insightful and ethnographically rich account of the migration of Japanese Americans to their ancestral homeland and its impact on their identities is an important intellectual contribution to numerous fields of study. Takeyuki Tsuda, Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University

Jane H. Yamashiro’s Redefining Japaneseness is an innovative and provocative addition to Asian American studies….Yamashiro’s Redefining Japaneseness gives readers a solid understanding of Japanese American identity construction in Japan while also reflecting upon her subjects’ identities after their return to the United States. Journal of Asian American Studies

Based on excellent and extensive research, Redefining Japanesenessis a comprehensive look at a previously understudied area. Yamashiro has produced a work of the highest academic quality. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, author of When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities

Not only does Yamashiro give us engaging portraits of how Japanese Americans navigate the social and cultural terrain of contemporary Japan, but she also provides a fundamental rethinking of the analytic frameworks by which migrant identities have been contextualized and understood. Michael Omi, University of California, Berkeley

Yamashiro’s insightful and ethnographically rich account of the migration of Japanese Americans to their ancestral homeland and its impact on their identities is an important intellectual contribution to numerous fields of study. Takeyuki Tsuda, Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University

Jane H. Yamashiro’s Redefining Japaneseness is an innovative and provocative addition to Asian American studies….Yamashiro’s Redefining Japaneseness gives readers a solid understanding of Japanese American identity construction in Japan while also reflecting upon her subjects’ identities after their return to the United States. Journal of Asian American Studies

JANE H. YAMASHIRO is a visiting scholar in the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Note on Terminology

Introduction

2Japanese as a Global Ancestral Group: Japaneseness on the US Continent, Hawaii, and Japan

3Differentiated Japanese American Identities: The Continent Versus Hawaii

4From Hapa to Hafu: Mixed Japanese American Identities in Japan

5Language and Names in Shifting Assertions of Japaneseness

6Back in the United States: Japanese American Interpretations of Their Experiences in Japan

Conclusion

Appendix A: Methodology: Studying Japanese American Experiences in Tokyo