Sometimes I Don't Think I'm Japanese
My last name is Japanese, I look Japanese, but I don't think I really am Japanese per se. I'm a Yonsei, 4th generation Japanese-American. I don't understand or speak Japanese, customs are long gone as I continue to adopt pieces of customs and cultures from all over the world map. My parents understand a little more than they speak Japanese but it was already beginning to fade with their generation big-time.
Although my parents' generation pretty much kept the Japanese-with-Japanese marriage quotient in tact, the Yonsei generation blew it all out of the water marrying outside of our race more than 75% of the time making the Japanese-American race a dying breed. If I get married, I probably will do the same as I have not yet dated a full-Japanese guy.
If you put a Japan Japanese woman next to me, it's like we are a world apart, nothing in common except the food we might eat, you know, the commonality of food is always the last to go. We dress differently, react to life on opposite ends of the spectrum, make priorities upon divergent perspectives - night and day, day and night. We have some of the same surface similarities, but we couldn't be more different on the inside.
Talking to some older caucasian men in their 60s-70s makes me nervous because I've had experiences where the minute I told them I'm Japanese (even with the -American added, it doesn't make a difference), they start talking about WWII and about what the Japanese did - "Uh oh, here we go..." Some slightly older Chinese, Korean and Phillipino men and women get this certain look of slight horror too when I say I'm Japanese (again, the -American added doesn't make a difference) because the Japan Japanese were historically brutal to the people of other Asian countries.
For a college paper for my Japanese-American history class, I attempted to conduct a telephone interview with my grandpa in Hawaii asking him what he was doing in life at the time of Pearl Harbor. He said, "I was at the dentist." No, grandpa, what were you doing with your life at that time? "I was at the dentist!" I asked him in a different way, and he proceeded to impatiently say in his Hawaiian pidgin-laced English, "What for you ask about the past? The past is the past." Clack! He hung up. Hello? Hello? After some time, I thought, maybe my Grandpa O. was much wiser than I thought.
I dipped into taking Japanese taiko drums for a time, and maybe one day I'll make my way to Japan as I've never been there, but I'm much more interested in the rest of the world, in Italy, in South America, in the rest of the U.S. and Hawaii right now. It's not that I'm in denial of being Japanese; my interests simply lie elsewhere. Being here in the U.S. for four generations does that to you - you lose the culture, language and customs (although bits of it will always be there), but in exchange you gain so much more in the way of releasing your boundaries and letting in the beauty beyond what is "yours" ~~ a natural evolution.
Although my parents' generation pretty much kept the Japanese-with-Japanese marriage quotient in tact, the Yonsei generation blew it all out of the water marrying outside of our race more than 75% of the time making the Japanese-American race a dying breed. If I get married, I probably will do the same as I have not yet dated a full-Japanese guy.
If you put a Japan Japanese woman next to me, it's like we are a world apart, nothing in common except the food we might eat, you know, the commonality of food is always the last to go. We dress differently, react to life on opposite ends of the spectrum, make priorities upon divergent perspectives - night and day, day and night. We have some of the same surface similarities, but we couldn't be more different on the inside.
Talking to some older caucasian men in their 60s-70s makes me nervous because I've had experiences where the minute I told them I'm Japanese (even with the -American added, it doesn't make a difference), they start talking about WWII and about what the Japanese did - "Uh oh, here we go..." Some slightly older Chinese, Korean and Phillipino men and women get this certain look of slight horror too when I say I'm Japanese (again, the -American added doesn't make a difference) because the Japan Japanese were historically brutal to the people of other Asian countries.
For a college paper for my Japanese-American history class, I attempted to conduct a telephone interview with my grandpa in Hawaii asking him what he was doing in life at the time of Pearl Harbor. He said, "I was at the dentist." No, grandpa, what were you doing with your life at that time? "I was at the dentist!" I asked him in a different way, and he proceeded to impatiently say in his Hawaiian pidgin-laced English, "What for you ask about the past? The past is the past." Clack! He hung up. Hello? Hello? After some time, I thought, maybe my Grandpa O. was much wiser than I thought.
I dipped into taking Japanese taiko drums for a time, and maybe one day I'll make my way to Japan as I've never been there, but I'm much more interested in the rest of the world, in Italy, in South America, in the rest of the U.S. and Hawaii right now. It's not that I'm in denial of being Japanese; my interests simply lie elsewhere. Being here in the U.S. for four generations does that to you - you lose the culture, language and customs (although bits of it will always be there), but in exchange you gain so much more in the way of releasing your boundaries and letting in the beauty beyond what is "yours" ~~ a natural evolution.
posted by M at 3:54 PM
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