Japanese American Ethnicity

In Search of Heritage and Homeland Across Generations

Bibliographic Data

ID20009750
AuthorsTakeyuki Tsuda (0000-0002-6300-8419, corresponding author)
Year2017
Pages352
Publication date2017-05-19
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueJapanese American Ethnicity (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherNew York University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18574/nyu/9781479821785.001.0001
OpenAlexW4236774341
Open LibraryOL27437058M
ISBN9781479821785
LanguageEN
Citations received23

This book explores the contemporary ethnic experiences of Japanese Americans from the second to the fourth generations and the extent to which they remain connected to their ancestral cultural heritage. As one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated and well-integrated in mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally “Japanese” foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance in a multicultural America where racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. Different generations of Japanese Americans have responded to such pressures in ways that range from demands that their racial citizenship as bona fide Americans be recognized to a desire to maintain or recover their ethnic heritage and reconnect with their ancestral homeland. This ethnographic study argues that the ethnicity of immigrant-descent minorities does not simply follow a linear trajectory in which increasing assimilation gradually erodes the significance of ethnic heritage and identity over generations. While inheriting the assimilative patterns of previous generations, each new generation of Japanese Americans has also negotiated its own ethnic positionality in response to a confluence of various historical and contemporary factors. In addition, this book analyzes the performance of ethnic heritage through taiko drumming ensembles, as well as placing Japanese Americans in transnational and diasporic contexts

Ethnic group · Geography · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Children of immigrants · Cultural assimilation · emigration and immigration · Ethnic identity · Ethnic relations · History · Japan · Japanese americans · race relations · Racial identity · Social life and customs · Taiko (Drum ensemble) · united states

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