Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies: Conversations on Race and Racializations

Published by University of Hawaii Press 2016

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies

Conversations on Race and Racializations

Edited by: Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro
With contributions by: Michael Omi , Yuko Konno , Fuminori Minamikawa , Andrea Geiger , Yuko Matsumoto , Valerie J. Matsumoto , Wesley Ueunten , Sachiko Kawakami , Eiichiro Azuma , Rika Nakamura , Masumi Izumi , Mari J. Matsuda , Noriko K. Ishii , Lon Kurashige , Okiyoshi Takeda , Yoko Tsukuda and Duncan Ryuken Williams

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824867621

Overview
Contents

About this book

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies is a unique collection of essays derived from a series of dialogues held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Los Angeles on the issues of racializations, gender, communities, and the positionalities of scholars involved in Japanese American studies. The book brings together some of the most renowned scholars of the discipline in Japan and North America. It seeks to overcome past constraints of dialogues between Japan- and U.S.-based scholars by providing opportunities for candid, extended conversations among its contributors.

While each contribution focuses on the field of “Japanese American” studies, approaches to the subject vary—ranging from national and village archives, community newspapers, personal letters, visual art, and personal interviews. Research papers are divided into six sections: Racializations, Communities, Intersections, Borderlands, Reorientations, and Teaching. Papers by one or two Japan-based scholar(s) are paired with a U.S.-based scholar, reflecting the book’s intention to promote dialogue and mutuality across national formations. The collection is also notable for featuring underrepresented communities in Japanese American studies, such as Okinawan “war brides,” Koreans, women, and multiracials.

Essays on subject positions raise fundamental questions: Is it possible to engage in a truly equal dialogue when English is the language used in the conversation and in a field where English-language texts predominate? How can scholars foster a mutual respect when U.S.-centrism prevails in the subject matter and in the field’s scholarly hierarchy? Understanding foundational questions that are now frequently unstated assumptions will help to disrupt hierarchies in scholarship and work toward more equal engagements across national divides. Although the study of Japanese Americans has reached a stage of maturity, contributors to this volume recognize important historical and contemporary neglects in that historiography and literature. Japanese America and its scholarly representations, they declare, are much too deep, rich, and varied to contain in a singular narrative or subject position.

Author / Editor information

Takezawa Yasuko :

Yasuko Takezawa is a professor of anthropology at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.Okihiro Gary Y. :

Gary Y. Okihiro is a professor of international and public affairs and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University.Kurashige Lon :

Lon Kurashige is associate professor of history at the University of Southern California.

Yasuko Takezawa (Editor)
Yasuko Takezawa is a professor of anthropology at the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

Gary Y. Okihiro (Editor)
Gary Y. Okihiro is a professor of international and public affairs and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University.

Reviews

Art Hansen:
Although this work is primarily targeted at other scholars and advanced university students within their common transpacific field of inquiry, its well-grounded and illuminating introduction, 14 essays, and 7 perspectival responses to the book’s contents have much to offer a general readership. . . . This book is an important milestone in Japanese American studies and its core message for how the Japanese American community should be studied and represented in the future needs to be heeded.

Masako Iino, past president of Tsuda College, Tokyo, Japan:
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies sits on the cutting edge of research in Japanese American studies. Each section features unique juxtapositions of diverse perspectives, illuminating issues like community making and unmaking, gender and racial politics, and representations and elisions in the scholarly record. The final section on “positionality” is enlightening, exploring the ways in which scholars occasionally encounter prejudice in both Academia and society at large, and are often exposed to eye-opening experiences when crossing national boundaries. An excellent model of international joint research.

Paul Spickard, University of California, Santa Barbara:
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies: Conversations on Race and Racializations is an intellectual feast, and an enormously useful and challenging book. Nineteen scholars—roughly half from Japan and half from the continental United States, Canada, and Hawai‘i—took part in several years of trans-Pacific conversations and meetings. No scholar of Asian American studies can afford to ignore Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies. Many scholars of ethnic studies more broadly will benefit from spending time in the pages of this book. And scholars in all fields would do well to imitate the long-conversation method that went into its making.

Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, UCLA Asian American Studies:
Takezawa and Okihiro make a sustained case that Japanese American studies is best conceptualized in terms of an interactive “trans-Pacific” dynamic rather than simply a transnational, diasporic, or even global, framework. Consequently, because of its innovative ideas, foci, and methodologies, this will become an invaluable, state-of-the-art collection.

Lily Anne Welty Tamai:
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies expands the intellectual breadth and depth of Japanese American studies because it deliberately brings together the conversations of scholars in North American and Japan to dismantle the hierarchy within the scholarship in the field. . . . [It] is accessible to those at both undergraduate and graduate levels. For scholars interested in current issues within Japanese American historiography, this is an important book, and it will have a long shelf life.

This volume, a first in Japanese American studies, involves US and Japanese scholars discussing positionality, language, insight, and interpretations within the historical context of early immigration and Japanese American incarceration and racialization, as well as initiating conversations on Japanese imperialism and enthonationalism [sic] and its impact in the Japanese American community. Essential.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Note to the Reader Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
TRANS-PACIFIC Japanese American Studies
Introduction Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I: ORIENTATION
CHAPTER 1: Shifting Grounds in Japanese American Studies Reconsidering “Race” and “Class” in a Trans-Pacific Geopolitical-Historical Context Yasuko Takezawa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
PART II: RACIALIZATIONS
CHAPTER 2: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being The Contemporary Racialization of Japanese/ Asian Americans Michael Omi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
CHAPTER 3: Negotiating Categories and Transgressing (Mixed-) Race Identities The Art and Narratives of Roger Shimomura, Laura Kina, and Shizu Saldamando Yasuko Takezawa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
PART III: COMMUNITIES
CHAPTER 4: Trans-Pacific Localism and the Creation of a Fishing Colony Pre–World War II Taiji Immigrants on Terminal Island, California Yuko Konno Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
CHAPTER 5: Vernacular Representations of Race and the Making of a Japanese Ethnoracial Community in Los Angeles Fuminori Minamikawa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
CHAPTER 6: Negotiating the Boundaries of Race, Caste, and Mibun Meiji-era Diplomatic and Immigrant Responses to North American Categories of Exclusion Andrea Geiger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
PART IV: INTERSECTIONS
CHAPTER 7: Americanization and Beika Gender and Racialization of the Issei Community in California before World War II Yuko Matsumoto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
CHAPTER 8: Sansei Women and the Gendering of Yellow Power in Southern California, 1960s–1970s Valerie J. Matsumoto Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
PART V: BORDERLANDS
CHAPTER 9: Nakayoshi Group Postwar Okinawan Women’s Articulation of Identity in America Wesley Ueunten Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
CHAPTER 10: What Brings Korean Immigrants to Japantown? Commodifying Racial Differences in the Age of Globalization Sachiko Kawakami Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	238
PART VI: REORIENTATIONS
CHAPTER 11: The Making of a Japanese American Race, and Why Are There No “Immigrants” in Postwar Nikkei History and Community? The Problems of Generation, Region, and Citizenship in Japanese America Eiichiro Azuma Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
CHAPTER 12: Reorienting Asian American Studies in Asia and the Pacific Rika Nakamura Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	288
PART VII: PEDAGOGIES
CHAPTER 13: Teaching Asian American Studies in Japan Challenges and Possibilities Masumi Izumi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
CHAPTER 14: Japanese American Progressives A Case Study in Identity Formation Mari Matsuda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	342
PART VIII: DIALOGUING SUBJECT POSITIONS
Notes from Shinagawa, July 28–29, 2012 Gary Y. Okihiro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
Thoughts on Positionality Noriko K. Ishii Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	372
Asian American History across the Pacific Lon Kurashige Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	378
Japanese Americans in Academia and Political Discourse in Japan Okiyoshi Takeda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	385
Location, Positionality, and Community Studying and Teaching Japanese America in the United States and Japan Yoko Tsukuda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	389
Positions In-Between Hapa, Buddhist, and Japanese American Studies Duncan Ryûken Williams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	393
Toward More Equal Dialogue Yasuko Takezawa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	396
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	401
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407

Language: English
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 456
Illustrations
- Other: 17 color, 7 b&w illustrations

eBook

Published: September 30, 2016
ISBN: 9780824867621