Organizer and Chair: Anne Sokolsky, University of Southern California

Discussant: Eri F. Yasuhara, California State University, San Bernardino

The fields of Japanese and Japanese American literature tend to be viewed as two separate entitities. Yet, the position of first generation Japanese immigrants (Issei), who were not fully included in American society, forces a reconsideration of this academic division. For most Issei, migration to another country was supposed to be a temporary situation. Yet for many, they never returned home. As a result, their emotional tie to the homeland nurtured an intellectual one. This intellectual exchange between Japan and the new land of the immigrant has yet to be fully analyzed. Yoshitaka Hibi will discuss the difficult placement of Issei literature as both the beginnings of Japanese American literature and also an extension of Japanese national literature by looking at the circulation of Issei literature in bookstores found in Japanese communities in North America. Anne Sokolsky will look at the fiction that was serialized in the Japanese language newspaper "Rafu shinpô." She will focus on the stories written by Japanese nationals and why these stories were published for Japanese immigrants. Shiori Nomura will look at the essays written by female Japanese immigrants that were published in the "Nichibei" newspaper during the early part of the twentieth century. She will discuss how these essays reflect both the prevailing wisdom regarding the social role of Japanese women but also inject new ideas about how Japanese immigrant women should behave. Kristina Vassil will look at the founder of Japanese immigrant literature, Okina Kyuin, and how, despite his "cosmopolitan" reputation, he emphasized the need for immigrant literature to reflect the space in which Japanese immigrants lived. In conclusion, by examining the early intellectual efforts of Japanese immigrants in the United States, we would like to reconsider the connection Japanese migrants maintained with Japan as they grappled for a new place to call home.

Since the late 19th century the Issei, or first generation Japanese Americans, produced a variety of materials in Japanese including books, newspapers, and magazines while living in their American communities. Much of this literature is available for us to read today. Some people consider these writings the origins of Japanese American literature, while others consider these works part of modern Japanese literature. Still others might insist on calling these works American literature. In terms of nationality, the Issei were Japanese, and yet they were also permanent residents of the United States. Looking at Issei literature through the lens of the nation-state causes considerable confusion when trying to describe what Issei literature is. To make the situation more complicated, the Issei literary environment contained not only Issei writings, but also various literature imported from Japan. Put simply, the migration of people and the traveling of books make it difficult to locate Issei literature within a system or framework based on the nation-state. The purpose of this paper will be to try to re-locate Issei literature within a broader cultural circulation and will focus on the socio-cultural background developed and maintained through the active migration of people and materials across the Pacific. Special attention will be paid to the role of bookstores in Japan towns as the "hubs" of Issei literary activity.

For Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles in the early 1900s, the Japanese language newspaper "Rafu shinpô" (Los Angeles Times) was their link to their ethnic homeland. The paper’s beginnings in 1903 were modest and the mimeographed edition no longer exists. In 1914, however, due to new management, the paper took on a professional look and continues to this day as a major source of news for Japanese Americans in Los Angeles. During the years leading to 1942, before the Japanese in California were interned and the paper temporarily closed, the newspaper serialized fiction on a regular basis. What is striking is the number of stories by famous Japanese writers that got published in a paper meant for Japanese immigrants carving out new lives in a new land. Such stories include: Mie Kichi’s "Ningyô" (Dolls, 1914), Kikuchi Kan’s "Renai no zenaku" (The Good and Evil of Love, 1933), Yoshiya Nobuko’s "Onna no kaikyû" (The Class of Women), Kawabata Yasunari’s "Sakariba no onnatachi" (Women’s Pleasure Quarters, 1942), and Nogami Yaeko’s "Utsukushiki sekai" (Beautiful World, 1942). In my paper, I will look at how these stories might have appealed to the needs of Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles as they negotiated their identities between Japan and the United States. The major question I will consider is how did the content of the stories vary over time to reflect the changing needs of Japanese immigrants as their own sense of self fluctuated between the influences from the land of their ethnic origin and the influences from the land of their daily realities.

Shiori Nomura, University of Birmingham, England

In this presentation. I will show how literary works and essays written by Japanese women living in the U.S.A. during the early part of the twentieth century represented and constructed discourses of the women's roles within and outside the home. Specifically, I will look at the literary works and essays printed in the Nichibei (Japanese American Daily), the largest Japanese immigrant newspaper in the U.S., during the period from 1914 to 1924. This newspaper was the most remarkable media source for advocating the idea of permanent settlement through family formation and social reform among Japanese immigrants. The idea was presented as a strategy opposing anti-Japanese discourses in the U.S. It was linked to racial, transnational and ethnic discourses that emphasized Japanese as being a "civilized" race well able to be Americanized and assimilated into U.S. society. Many literary works and essays contributed by women to the Nichibei reflect this idea. Their discourses on marriage and family included the issue of gender roles and the duties they were expected to perform as women. At the same time, their discourses were influenced by women's experiences of entering the U.S. labor market as important wage earners for their families and being a racial or ethnic minority. Thus, the literary works and essays by women that appeared in the Nichibei newspaper represented and formed the roles and position of Japanese women in the U.S. under the influence of a national, racial, ethnic, class and gender context of Japanese immigrant women.

Kristina Vassil, University of Michigan

These days it is clear that to view immigration as a teleological process of arrival, assimilation and eventually naturalization is outdated. Recent discourses of diaspora and transnationalism provide alternative ways of looking at movements of people and suggest various understandings of globalization. In general these discourses are perhaps best understood as recognizing the necessity for a "postnational" line of thought, a condition in which nation-states have become markers of a past global ordering. This view of the world, a view characterized by a generalized concept of humanity rather than identification with a particular nation or society, resonates with the work of Okina Kyûin, probably the most prolific Japanese immigrant writer during the early 1900s, or what has been coined the "Golden Age" of Japanese immigrant writing. Okina was a central figure in the Japanese immigrant community who, in the early 1920s, attempted to establish a distinct genre of immigrant writing. He published numerous essays in the immigrant press calling for the establishment of an "immigrant literature (iminchi bungei),"and stated that in their writings immigrant authors had a responsibility to create both accurate and vivid portrayals of their adopted homeland. Although a self-declared "cosmopolitan," Okina interestingly grounds immigrant literature in the land, or in the "chi" of iminchi. The paper will examine Okina’s concept of iminchi bungei and will focus specifically on the connection between "homeland" and Japanese immigrant writing.