What is a Nikkei Community ?
“How many Nikkei live here?” Either as businessman or as tourist, this is a question always asked. Question used to be, “How many Japanese live in this area ?” After 130 years of Japanese immigration in this area, the visitors finally understood the fact that there are generations of Americans who are descendants of Japanese settlers. However, “Nikkei community” or “Japanese community” is very complicated.
Even within the so called “Nikkei community,” backgrounds are varied socially and culturally. Early Issei immigrants relied on being Japanese and if one was from the same local area in Japan (doukyo) became comrades and helped each other. In contrary, recent immigrants are more confident and independent and even start new businesses right away and take it for granted they would be accepted into American society and not look for community help.
However, the tide is changing with undesirable movements of racists and white supremacists noticeable now. Thoughts of becoming a victim of such racially or religiously motivated discriminations are unthinkable in Japan, but what happened some seventy years ago here is starting up again.
It is important to know and understand where you, your children, friends or acquaintances stand in this society.
On this chart, I am trying to catch the major wave or trend of Nikkei immigration that one is unable to see from the Census numbers. This is not an academic study. Each block or group shows average life expectancy of 80 years old and a span of 20 years of birth date. The size of block is not proportioned to the population of the group. It is my intention to show the major trend or characteristic of the group. For example: if you are late born Nisei, it is possible, generation-wise, most of your friends are Sansei.
The dotted lines of Issei, Shin Issei, Shin-Shin Issei show the period of immigration (Time of each generation bringing in Japanese culture). When the word “Shin Issei” was used for the first time, some Issei objected because it seemed to disrespect their generation, not having experienced the hardship they went through. However, the usage was spread by international marriage groups. “Shin-Shin Issei” is a word made up by the author. I will skip the explanation of “Kibei Nisei” but feel they were a significant influence on carrying on Japanese culture, so a separate block is made from general Nisei.
One important note is a case of “Shin -Issei” men. During the Vietnam war period, regardless of nationalities, students, visitors or workers for foreign company, all were subject to U.S. military service draft (until 1973). They were even some who served in the infantry and returned wounded. Anyone who immigrated during this period including myself has uneasy feelings toward this country. “Shin-Shin Issei” are very lucky not to have experienced that.
One characteristic of “Shin Nisei” is many first “HAPA” generation who were born between Japanese and American parents are in this group. Words like “Konketsu” and “Ha-fu” were once considered inappropriate, Hawaiian word “Hapa” became common and now even refers to mix of different races other than Japanese. Near perfect bilinguality (bi-cultural) comes out from this group.
Wartime experiences made many Nisei generation reluctant to endorse traditional culture to Sanseis. Yonsei became more assimilated resulting in having the highest inter-racial marriages among all Asian populations. The last Census reported that some over 100 thousand in this area were registered as part Japanese. However how many of them are familiar with Japanese heritage or customs and even think they are members of the Nikkei community?