Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland

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.

Author: Jane H. Yamashiro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 01/24/2017
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780813576367
ISBN10: 0813576369
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Asian American Studies & Pacific
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social

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