Redefining Japaneseness - (Asian American Studies Today) by Jane H Yamashiro (Paperback)

About the Book

Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan experience both racial inclusion and cultural dislocation while negotiating between the categories of Japanese and "foreigner." Drawing from extensive observations and interviews with Japanese Americans who are geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse, Jane H. Yamashiro reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness. Her findings have major implications for both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration and global diasporic identity.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Jane H. Yamashiro's Redefining Japaneseness is an innovative and provocative addition to Asian American studies....Yamashiro's Redefining Japaneseness gives readers a solid understanding of Japanese American identity construction in Japan while also reflecting upon her subjects' identities after their return to the United States."-- "Journal of Asian American Studies"

"Based on excellent and extensive research, Redefining Japanesenessis a comprehensive look at a previously understudied area. Yamashiro has produced a work of the highest academic quality."--Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu "author of When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities"

"Not only does Yamashiro give us engaging portraits of how Japanese Americans navigate the social and cultural terrain of contemporary Japan, but she also provides a fundamental rethinking of the analytic frameworks by which migrant identities have been contextualized and understood."--Michael Omi "University of California, Berkeley"

"Yamashiro's insightful and ethnographically rich account of the migration of Japanese Americans to their ancestral homeland and its impact on their identities is an important intellectual contribution to numerous fields of study."--Takeyuki Tsuda "Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University"

About the Author

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