Read broadly, the body of Japanese American literature can be interpreted as an ongoing construction of identity at numerous levels: individual, collective, political, and generatoinal. Throughout various historical periods, Janapese American authors have grappled with major issues of their times and in the process have examined the boundaries of ethnicity and nationality, often arriving at increasingly complex and sometimes antagonistic definitionst of Japanese American identity.

Generational identity has been central to 'nikkei,' the term used to refer to people of Japanese ancestry living in North and South America. Japanese Americans have developed distinct terms for each generation:
1) 'Issei' refers to immigrants ho arrived in Hawai'i and the US mainland between 1885-1924
2) 'Nisei' to second-generation Japanese Americans
3) 'Sansei' to the third generation.

History:
• After the imposition of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that barred immigration of Chinese labourers and after th eliftin gof internal Japanese edicts restricting emigration, young Japanese male laborers began settling in Hawai'i and the western US in 1885. initially an almost exclusively male population who worked in agricultural, mining, and railroad jobs, the Japanese in the US were the only Asian American community in the early 20th century to develop families. Federal laws prevented the immmigration of Chinese and Filipino women, but Japanese women were allowed into the country. Because of this, stable Japanese American communities formed in Hawai'i, California, Oregon, and Washington prior to WWI.
• Historical and political factors such as alien land laws prohibiting Japanese ownership of land and the 1921 Supreme Court decision in Ozawa v. U.S. denying Japanese naturalization rights contributed to a sense of generational identity among issei. The internment during WWII of over 110,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps affected the issei but perhaps had its most profound impact on the nisei, most of whom were born between 1910 and 1940 and were adolescents or young adults during the war years. Simultaneously influenced by their parents' Japanese values and the 'American' ideas of their peers, nisei negotiated between two cultures, but ultimately considered themselves Americans. Consequently, the mass internment raised fundamental questions for them regarding race relations and the definition of nationality.
• Although most sansei were not yet born at the time of internment, the event has marked the third generation physically mainly through the silence issei and nisei maintained about the complexities and traumas of the war years. Many sansei were also affected by the various social movements of the 60s and 70s and sought to recover the history of their parents and to shape a self-conscious Japanese American culture.


Issei writing in English:

• Although most issei were relatively well-educated, the demands of their daily lives left little time for them to master the English language, let alone time to write. Issei did, however, compose poems (haiku, tanka, and senryu) and other literary works, many of which appeared in Japanese-language newspapers in major cities in Hawai'i and along the West Coast.
• The few issei who did write in English are unique and do not reflect the concerns of the majority, who, for the most part, were plantation workers and small-business owners in Hawai'i, and farmers, small-business owners, or domestics on the West Coast.

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann - the most flamboyant of early Japanese American writers in English. Born of a German father and a Japanese mother, Hartmann was well known as an artist, art critic, writer, and aesthetician at the turn of the century. He introduced avant-garde European writers and artists as well as Japanese art and literature to American audiences. He may have been the first author to compose haiku in English. A noted figure in the Greenwich Village cultural milieu of the fin de siècle, he consciously cultivated an identity as the 'king of Bohemia' and influences many noted artists and writers of his time.

Etsu Sugimoto - four novels about life in Japan. First came to the American public's attention with the publication of her autobiographical novel, A Daughter of the Samurai (1925). Raised in the aristocratic class of Japan, she received a thorough education in the English language and Western culture. She saw herself as a cultural ambassador between Japan and the US, a role many nisei were to assume in the prewar years. Her novels present a romantic view of Japanese culture and customs that Sugimoto saw disappearing due to Japan's rapid modernization.

Bunichi Kagawa - wrestled with an identity as a Japanese American. He had the closest link with Japanese American communities and wrote poems that appeared in their newspapers. In the 1920s, he had immigrated to join his father in the Los Altos area of northern California. Hidden Flame (1930), a volume of poetry; the question of identity; the opening section of the book is titled 'Identity,' and the title poem conveys an austere sense of isolation and self-reflection that characterizes many of the other poems in the book.


Establishing and identity: prewar nisei writing:

• Beginning in the late 1920s, a number of nisei began writing poems and stories for the English-language section sof Japanese American newspapers on the West Coast. Iwao Kawakami - English-language editor of the newpaper The New World-Sun; he encouraged budding nisey literary talents by initiating a story and essay contest, from which a story and essya club among his young nisei readers developed.
• Influence of Western literary traditions. Other works by nisei - highly formal verse, extravagant love poems, murder mysteries, stories in which protagonists are indistinguishable from other Americans except for their Japanese names - reflect not only the popular literary forms of the period, but also a nisei desire to claim those traditions as their own.
• Nisei literature of the 30s and 40s also reveals the growing concern of the second generation about international tensions, domestic race relations, and self-awareness as a distinct ethnic group. Chiye Mori's 1932 poem 'Japanese American' was one of the first nisei works to explore explicitly the intersection between peresonal identity and international politics. She lays out in definite terms the frustration and politically precarious position of the nisei. The political critique of both the US and Japan was bold for a young nisei.
• Other nisei writers were interested in politics, particularly in cross-cultural relations within the US, and in building bridges between nisei and other American ethnic groups. A leading figure among thi group of nisei was Mary Oyama, who wrote in various forms for the Japanese American press all along the West Coast. She attepmted to forge a nisei identity as second-generation Americans. She looked to other ethnic Americans for models and corresponded with well-knwon writers of the time. She was a cofounder of the League of Nisei Artists and Writers.

Taro Katayama's short story 'Haru': Explores internal conflicts resulting from cultural rather than political tensions. Chronicles the emotional turmoil of a young nisei who agrees to an arranged marriage. Remakable for its psychological insight and control of style and plot. Katayama shows how economic, cultural, and pschological factors force the protagonists, Haru, to marry a man she finds repulsive.

Toshio Mori - perhaps the best-known Japanese American authors to prewar audiences.
§ Yokohama, California - a series of stories about the Japanese American inhabitants of a fictional town situated across the bay from San Fransisco in the late 30s. Mori focuses on the seemingly mundane and reveals the profound in daily life; the ways in which the smalles incidentals of daily life carry significant meaning.
§ He also portrays distinctive Japanese American characteristics. Stories dealing with issei refer back to a heritage in Japan. Even more subtly, Mori records Japanese American norms and cultural expressions.


Identity in question: Internment literature:

• The wholesale internment of over 110,000 nikkei without trial or hearing raised serious questions for Japanese Americans, especially the nisei. For some, it resulted in a fierce embracing of a thoroughly 'American' identity. For others, it led to bitter disillusionment over what were perceived to be the empty rhetorical promises of American equality and justice. Others fell between these two extremes, as Japanese Americans attempted to cope with the truamas of forced removal from their homes and internment in desolate camps scattered throughout the US.

Camp literature:
§ Mirrored the struggles of Japanese Americans during the era. Three camps published English-language magazines: Tulean Dispatch (Tule Lake, California), The Pen (Rowher, Arkansas), and Trek (Topaz, Utah).
§ Trek - each issue opens with a lead article on the state of camp life, followed by stories, poems, articles on the geography and history of the Topaz region, and a women's column entitled 'A la Mode.' each issue of the three one published reflects tensions between 'optimistic' and 'critical' perspectives. 'Optimistic' writing is characterized by admonitions not to be bitted and to believe in America. Because camp publications were censored by government authorities, overt criticism of the interment was rare. Consequently, writeres had to mask their criticisms.
§ Toyo Suyemoto - his wartimes poems as examples of 'resistance and critique embedded within the forms and diction of poems which appear apolotical' (Susan Schweik).


Identity in flux: postwar nisei literature:

• After being targets of intense racism and hostility, many nikkei were eager to blend in and not be noticed. In an effort to rebuild their lives, many sought to merge into the American mainstream, to forget about the traumas of internment, and in some cases to escape from nikkei communities and heritage.

• Perhaps because Japanese Americans in Hawai'i, for the most part, did not experience the traumas of internment and constituted a large portion of the islands' population, it might have been easier for Hawaiian to explore Japanese American history and identity in the immediate postwar years. Three novels written by Hawaiian nisei dealt with issei history and intergenerational issues:
§ Shelley Ota's Upon their Shoulder (1951) - focuses on the trials of the issei immigrant Taro Sumida and his family both in Japan and in Hawai'i. Adopts what could be called 'karmic attitude' regarding history. Writing in the assimilationist period of Japanese American history, Ota implies that nikkei cannot escape their history, which is bound to recur in new manifestations.
§ Margaret Harada's The Sun Shines on the Immigrant (1960) - the protagonist, Yoshio Mori, climbs the enterpreneurial ladder from poor immigrant to comfortable businessman. The novel makes no attempt to tie Mori's rise to a broader Japanese American community and ends curiously just before WWII, leaving the postwar reader with a sense of disillusionment, knowing the history that follows the novel's end
§ Kazuo Miyamoto's Hawaii: End of the Rainbow (1964) - grounded in history, basde in part on the author's journals written while he served as a physician in mainland concentration camps, where he himself was imprisoned. The novel is epic in tis detail, chronicling the lives of two issei as well as the experiences of Hawaiian Japanese Americans interned during the war. The novel insists on addressing a traumatic episode in collective Japanese American history.

Hisaye Yamamoto - her stories often explore tensions between issei men and issei women, and also the relationships between nisei and issei, especially the bonds between mothers and daughters. She is one of the few nisei to address internment in the immediate postwar years.
§ 'The Legend of Miss Sasagawara' (1951) - the story is layered with implicit allusions to the suspicions hurled at Jaoanese Americans during the war. Miss Sasagawara becomes a symbol of all Japanese Americans who, especially during the war, were thought to be disloyal and consequently were interned. In its exploration of intracommunity tensions, the story also mirrors broader societal conficts.

Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter (1953) - autobiography, another literary work depicting the internment in the immediate postwar years. Provides insight into the development of a nisei identity. Chronicles the prewar discrimination and prejudice issei and nisei encountered in employment and housing. The book ends on a hopeful note.

John Okada's No-No Boy (1957):
§ Although not about internment, it is a powerful depiction of its aftermath. Set in Seattle at the war's end. The novel is a bildugsroman that focuses on the struggle of a 25-year-old nisei, Ichiro Yamada, to accept his wartime actions.
§ The double negative of the title refers to two quesitons that internees over the age of 17 were required to answer. One asked men if they would serve in the military. The other demanded unqualified allegiance to the US. The government permitted only yes or no answers, denying internees the opportunity to voice their complex reactions to these questions. For answering 'no' to both questions and for refusing to be drafted into the army, Ichiro spends two years in prison.
§ The novel depicts Ichiro's attempt to acclaim an identity as an American as he also tries to understand why he answered 'no' to the questions. He must confront an antagonistic and fragmented nikkei community in the process.
§ Okada explored the gray area between polarized definitions of 'Japanese' and 'American,' individuality and community, assimilation and cultural maintenance.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians began to explore the possibility of obtaining monetary redress for their wartime experiences ---> many thinking and speaking about their internment and foces migration and breaking decades-long silence about those years. Nisei began writing about internment and dislocation.
§ Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston's Farewell to Manzanar (1973) - a memoir that captures the details of camp life and its effect in adjucting to postwar society.
§ Joy Kagawa - a Canadian. Her novel Obasan (1981) - attests to the traumas endured by Japanese Canadians during the war. Set in 1972, it focuses on the war's effects as discovered and remembered by a middle-aged sansei woman, Naomi Nakane. Confrontation with family history, and by extension the history of Japanese Canadians. The onset of the war bring about a series of events that results in the virtual disintegration of the family. Explores also the multiple layers of silence and speech: the varying natures of silence, its oppressiveness as the mechanism of secrets but also its symbolism as a sign of strength and courage; the ways how speech can be liberating but also the source of profound pain.

Milton Murayama's All I Asking For Is My Body (1959) - the story of Japanese American family living on a Hawaiian sugar plantation in the late 30s and early 40s, the novel depicts plantation and family politics. Through the antagonistic dynamic that develops between issei and nisei, Murayama explores the complex interaction between traditional Japanese values of family loyalty and the exploitative and racially stratified plantation system. Also one of the first literary works by a nikkei to incorporate 'pidgin English' or the Hawaiian Creole English that has developed on the islands.

Wakako Yamauchi - central themes: the ambiguities of gender relationships, tensions between issei and nisei, and the confining lives of issei, especially women, who seek escape in various ways. And the Soul Shall Dance - a play based upon a story of the same name. By viewing issei women's drunkenness, adultery, and abandonment of family through a nisei lens, Yamauchi recovers and recounts the history of women rebelling against strict norms. She creates strong somen characters who pursue their desires, often in defiance of societal standards.


Expanding identities: sensei activist writing:

• The late 60s and 70s were years of self-conscious 'Asian American' literary production. Influences by the progressive and radical politics of the times, sansei writers often linked their literary work to overtly political agendas: many likened the battles for independence of colonies throughout the world with the struggles of people of color in the US.
• Sansei writers also sought to recover the traditions and literature of issei and nisei.
• These authors also recognized the politics of literature and rejected traditional literary forms in favor of styles forged from their own experiences or those of other people of color in the US as well as internationally. Many sansei women, affected by the feminist movement of the 70s, wrote with a consciousness of gender and its implications.

Lawson Inada's Before the War: Poems as They Happened (1971) - a melange of styles, themes, and influences, and foreshadows postmodern Japanese American writing of the 80s and 90s. Inada claims colloquial language as the stuff of poetry and fuses powerful emotion with contemporary idioms. Jazz has been a major influence on him, and the rhythms, figures, and strategies of music flow in his poetry.

Janice Mirikitani - Awake in the River (1978), Shedding Silence (1987) - reveal a sensibility that is deeply concerned about connections between the personal and the political.


Identity in location: sansei writers of place:

• One subset of contemporary sansei literature is characterized by a sense of rootedness in a particular geographic locale. Sansei who write from an identification with place recall nisei writing of the prewar era, especially the work of Toshio Mori. A sense of urgency, to capture Japanese American communities that are either disappearing or changing in dramatic ways. ---> Talking to the Dead (1992) - a collection of stories by the Hawaiian sansei, Sylvia Watanabe. Watanabe honors traditions associated with a particular place and community.
• Several sansei writers depict what those who are born and raised in Hawai'i refer to sa the local culture of the islands. Local culture exists in contradistinction to the tourist culture of Hawai'i and captures a mix of people and traditions. Juliet Kono's poems (Hilo Rains [1988]). Garret Kaoru Hongo's poems (Yellow Light [1982]).
• David Mas Masumoto - a connection with place is grounded in an understanding of family history in a particular region: the Japanese American farming communities of the lower San Joaquin valley of California. Silent Strength (1984).
• Rick Shiomi - a Japanese Canadian who has written plays in various styles and has captured the spirit of Canada's nikkei community. Yellow Fever and Once Is Not Enough.


A diversity of identities: postmodern Japanese American literature:

• Perhaps because the activist writers of the 70s forged a political and cultural identity as Japanese Americans, postactivist writers can take for granted the validity of writing about their experiences as ethnic Americans. Although writing from a sense of Japanese American experience and history, postmodern Japanese American writers explore other identities and sympathies that may have little or no covert connection with Japanese American culture or communitites. These authors may write from a variety of identities and places or with a sense of rootlessness that characterizes postmodernism in general.

Cynthia Kadohata - The Floating World (1989) - her hypnotic, spare prose style and her cinematic narrative structure enchance the jarring, sometimes surreal situations that fill the book. Because the characters that populate the book are unconventional, the novel points to the diversity of Japanese American experiences. Kadohata's characters, who engage in premaritalsex, behave cruelly and crudely, and speak eloquently, often defy impressions of Japanese Americans as a 'model minority.' she subtly explodes that myth and reminds readers that there is no one monolithic Japanese American experience.

Karen Tei Yamashita - she has set her two novels, Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) and Brazil Maru (1992) in Brazil, the country with the largest Japanese diaspora population. The Arc - a dazzling mixture of magic realism, satire, and futuristic fiction, the novel explores the folly of environmental ruin for short-term gain and the vain attempt to substitute material comfort for spiritual well-being.