Japanese American ethnicity : in search of heritage and homeland across generations / Takeyuki Tsuda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tsuda, Takeyuki, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Japanese Americans--Ethnic identity.

Japanese Americans.

Japanese Americans--Cultural assimilation.

Japanese Americans--Social life and customs.

Children of immigrants.

Taiko (Drum ensemble).

History.

United States--Ethnic relations.

United States.

Ethnic relations.

United States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Taiko (Drum ensemble)--United States--History.

Children of immigrants--United States.

Japan--Emigration and immigration.

Japan.

Emigration and immigration.

United States--Emigration and immigration.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 323 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2016]

Summary:

As members of one of the oldest groups of Asian Americans in the United States, most Japanese Americans are culturally assimilated into mainstream American society. However, they continue to be racialized as culturally "Japanese" foreigners in a multicultural America in which racial minorities are expected to remain ethnically distinct. In Japanese American Ethnicity, Takeyuki Tsuda 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. Tsuda argues that the ethnicity of immigrant-descent minorities does not simply follow a linear trajectory in which cultural assimilation increasingly erodes the significant of ethnic heritage and identity over the generations. Instead each new generation of Japanese Americans has negotiated its own ethnic positionality in different ways. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with Japanese American in San Diego and Phoenix, Tsuda also place Japanese Americans is transnational and diasporic context, and analyzes the performance of ethnic heritage through the examples of taiko drumming ensembles. He shows that young Japanese Americans today are reviving their cultural heritage and embracing its salience in their daily lives more than the previous generations have done. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Ethnic heritage across the generations: racialization, transnationalism, and homeland

History and the second generation

The prewar Nisei: Americanization and nationalist belonging

The postwar Nisei: biculturalism and transnational identities

Racialization, citizenship, and heritage

Assimilation and loss of ethnic heritage among third-generation Japanese Americans

The struggle for racial citizenship among later-generation Japanese Americans

Ethnic revival among fourth-generation Japanese Americans

Ethnic heritage, performance, and diasporicity

Japanese American taiko and the remaking of tradition

Performative authenticity and fragmented empowerment through taiko

Diasporicity and Japanese Americans

Conclusion: Japanese Americans ethnic legacies and the future.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781479821785

1479821780

9781479810796

1479810797

OCLC:

944956252