August 01, 2004
Preserving Nisei in a Hapa Future
While the rest of the Asian American population continues to soar, Japanese Americans are actually declining in numbers. But their dwindling numbers haven't prevented younger generations of Japanese Americans (now well into their 5th generation) from attempting to retain elements of their cultural heritage. From the NYTimes:
- "If people in my generation don't get involved, who's going to take over?'' she asked.
Ms. Cherry's transformation from typical American teenager to ethnic ambassador is a statement about how young Japanese-Americans have struggled to hold onto an identity of their own. Shrinking population numbers, high intermarriage rates and the legacy of the rush to assimilate after the World War II internment experience created an uncertain cultural path for the sansei (third generation) yonsei (fourth) and gosei (fifth).
Ms. Cherry is among a minority awakening to an unsettling realization - it is up to them to fight the forces of cultural extinction, even if most of them may not speak Japanese, or have visited Japan or, increasingly, even look Japanese.
This is something we ethnic marketers like to call "retro-acculturation". But retro-acculturation only goes so far; it's never as powerful as the original forces of acculturation that accompany immigrant experiences (and those of their offspring).
One of the beautiful things about living in our so-called nation of immigrants, post-sixties, is that there is far greater acceptance for individuals to embrace a hyphenated identity today. However, while I think the notion of holding onto remnants in one's heritage is commendable -- it will always be a struggle based on cultural hindsight, and an imperfect recollection of an unlived past.
Even now, distinct expressions of Japanese American identity would be practically unrecognizable to most people in Japan today, and many Japanese natives would most likely dismiss Nisei festivals and such as the follys of 'gaijin'. Nevertheless, outward expressions of cultural pride and celebrations of cultural heritage prevail despite the odds:
- The number of Americans who identify themselves as Japanese declined to 796,700 in the 2000 census, from 847,562 in 1990, partly because of low immigration and birth rates. The wave of new immigrants from other parts of Asia, including China, South Korea and the Philippines, now dwarfs Japanese-Americans, who once made up the largest Asian group in the United States.
The trends have left some Japanese-Americans feeling as if they are disappearing.
Although Buddhist temples, sports leagues and families sustain the ethnicity, many longtime Japanese-American organizations and institutions are losing members or eroding. Only three Japantowns are left in California, where there had once been dozens.
And "outmarriage,'' mostly to whites and other Asians, is diluting the ethnicity to the point that Larry Hajime Shinagawa, director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College in New York, said most Japanese-Americans face only two directions - assimilating into "whiteness'' or adopting a "pan-Asian'' identity.
How do you ensure your ethnic roots survive, when a growing number of descendants now possess dual (or more) cultural heritages? Well, you retro-acculturate them of course!
- In their movement to maintain their ethnicity, Japanese-Americans have become more accepting of those with partial Japanese ancestry, known as hapas, or part Asian.
Eric Tate, a 34-year-old lawyer in San Jose whose mother is Japanese and father African-American, said he co-founded one of the first hapa student groups in the early 1990's as a student at the University of California, Berkeley in response to feeling unwelcome by Japanese-American groups and sports leagues.
Mr. Tate said the tide had turned. Along with those who identified themselves as Japanese in the 2000 census were more than 350,000 who cited Japanese and other backgrounds, the highest rate of multi-ethnic identification of any Asian group.
"There's been a shift in paradigms from 'Oh, outmarriage is a problem' to 'Aw, shucks, we have to make these people embrace the culture because there won't be anybody left to embrace it,' '' Mr. Tate said.
People, this is really nothing new -- it's as American as ice cream moichi, er, apple pie. To paraphrase Obama, in no other country is this story possible. Read the whole thing as they say.