I am putting together a short (6 min) presentation about growing up Japanese American and media potrayals of Japanese Americans. Does anyone have any stories they would like to share about growing up multicultural (doesn’t have to be US)? Also, I am looking for more info on breaking a completely homogeneous view of Japan. I am also looking for portrayals of Japanese Americans or mixed-parentage people in Japanese media. If you just have a particularly weird example you would like to point out, that’s fine too! Here are some notes I have so far: Japanese Americans and Asian Americans *My own tendency for the label “Japanese American”: I lump together people who have mixed parentage, or have Japanese parents, came to America from Japan when small, are “sansei”, etc – if I meet you in the US and you have some cultural connection to Japan, I tend call you Japanese-American or Asian American. *Growing up speaking Japanese (or not, depending on who you were) * Everyone I know who grew up Japanese American knows about Doaremon and watched Totoro. (Actually, I have met a lot of Americans who have no connection to Japan otherwise but did watch “My Neighbor Totoro” when they were younger.) Is this a sweeping generalization? *Celebrating Japanese holidays in America: New Years, tanabata, etc. *Sushi across the years: in grade school (1990’s) sushi was still weird food. Now I see little kids grab sushi from the deli section at supermarkets and put it in their parents shopping cart. Also America has created brown-rice avocado-salmon-cream-cheese California rolls….which are delicious. *Manga boom and Ghibli boom in 2000’s: having grown up with manga and Ghibli movies but having it be separate from the rest of American culture, it was odd but kind of cool that, suddenly, it was everywhere in the US. * The brief fad (1997-2000ish?) where Japanese and Chinese characters were on clothing and tattoos everywhere. And often written mirror image, upside down, or proclaiming ghibberish or something insulting. However, I did make about 2 dollars off this fad by drawing Japanese characters on classmates arms and charging 50 cents per character. * Paperwork and Forms: White? Other? Asian Pacific Islander? There is no Japanese American box to check off? Why can’t I check off multiple boxes? * US typecasts: Academic expectations to “Of course you’re good at DDR, you are Japanese.” (This could be expanded.) Japanese Americans or other Japanese-mixed people portrayal in Japan * Graphic, basic info or something to break apart the “Homogeneous Japan” image. (I need help with this.) *The invisible foreigners. Maybe the ramen poem from the recent API AJET publication. * “Hafu” and why I dislike the term. What is this, half a person? Which half? Does the other half not count? How about “double” instead? Or Japanese-American, Asian American. (Are there any other terms I am not aware of?) * Why do I see no one like me in Japanese Media? Portrayals of the blond blue eyed “Japanese-American” person; the beautiful celebrity; and the mixed kid who grew up in Japan, went to Japanese school and is assumed to have not picked up Japanese culture. -Example of manga portrayal of Japanese-American or American/European: automatically blond and blue eyed? Europeans and Americans come in all shapes and colors. Also I don’t actually know anyone mixed who looks like that. I have seen a few local Japanese people who have blond dyed hair, if that counts. -Example of other manga portrayal: so this other character has brown hair. But apparently, even while growing up in Japan and going to public school, this “hafu” character is still treated by the other characters as lacking knowledge of Japanese culture. -Be mixed and be automatically a beautiful celebrity. Oh, why thank you… Wait, I feel like I am not being treated as an actual human, or much less as a Japanese person. My main career option is to be scouted as a model and sell soap? What’s going on? Or, to quote from a manga, “He’s hafu, you’ll never be as good looking as him?” Also, again, this is pretty weird to me, because no one I knew in the US got this beauty model treatment just for having mixed parentage. (This ‘Celebrity mixed person’ part could use more research.) *There could be more points on Okinawa army base and WWII Japanese-American treatment, or Post-WWII children from American Occupation. However, with my limited time, I may just keep it to “This is what I/my generation grew up with”. I would love to hear any stories people might have about this!
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 08:10:31 +0000
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