- Current
Nikkei View
- About
- Roots
- Nikkei
Links
- IMDiversity Job Bank
- More
about Gil:
Gil's Home Page
Resume
Fave Web Site
1957 TimeLine
"Toy Book" Excerpt
Writing Samples
The Gillery
SUPPORT THE NIKKEI VIEW!
Amazon.com now offers a way for you to sponsor the Nikkei View column! Just click below for more information!
Search Amazon.com using keywords such as "Japan," "Japanese American," "Tokyo," and others for books or videos. I'm now an Amazon.com Affiliate. I urge everyone to support their local independent businesses first, but if you search Amazon.com from here, I earn a percentage of your purchases. It's one way you can help underwrite the Nikkei View. Thanks!
ARCHIVES
LATEST
COLUMN *
2002 COLUMNS
2001 COLUMNS *
2000 COLUMNS
1999 COLUMNS * 1998 COLUMNS
4 March, 2002
SO
HAPPA TOGETHER....
Talk of racial purity gives me the creeps. And that's the topic that fired up heated a discussion recently on the Ties-Talk e-mail list, a group that covers Japanese American issues.
| Japanese culture is a hand-me-down jumble of customs, crafts and traditions first introduced from China and Korea. So what's "pure," anyway? |
One member of the list sparked the discussion by noting the out-marriage rate of Japanese Americans, and how he thought mixing Japanese with other races would lead to less and less emphasis on their kids' Japanese roots. He's proud of being Japanese, he wrote, and planned to someday marry a full-blooded Japanese woman.
I think he's confusing culture with race. I know some "pure" Japanese who are so Americanized that they can't speak a word of Japanese beyond "Sony," "Honda" and "Pokemon" and wouldn't know how to cook rice correctly if their lives depended on it. Conversely, I know some "Happa" (also spelled "Hapa") or "Hafu" (half) Japanese who can speak Japanese like natives and honor their ethnic roots every day.
It's not the purity of the blood that keeps Japanese traditions strong in Nikkei communities like Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians - it's the culture within the home.
There are a couple of problems with trying to maintain racial purity within the Japanese American community.
First, is the concept of racial purity itself - human beings are a mongrel result of evolution and breeding over thousands of years, and there is no such thing as a "pure" race. The mere concept feeds on peoples' innate fear and prejudice. In our recent history, the pursuit of racial purity led to the Nazi murders of millions of Jews. Japanese as a people can be traced genetically to other Asian stock, especially Koreans… an irony considering how some Japanese feel about and treat Koreans. Even Japanese culture is a hand-me-down jumble of customs, crafts and traditions first introduced from China and Korea. So what's "pure," anyway?
Second, and perhaps more significant for Nikkeijin, or people of Japanese descent living throughout the world: You can't always control your heart. If you fall in love with someone who is not Japanese, so be it. I hope the man on Ties-Talk who plans to marry a full-blooded Japanese does just that, and that he has a wonderful relationship. But reality gets in the way of plans sometimes.
I know one Sansei who is married to a Mexican American woman, and their kids love both Hispanic culture and Japanese culture. I think that's great, because their parents are raising them with respect and appreciation for both sides of their family heritage.
My brother Glenn's wife Michelle is Caucasian, but she's more interested in Japanese culture than some JAs I know. The two are raising their beautiful daughters, McKenna and Sage, with a strong background in everything Japanese. At the same time my nieces are aware of their mother's Italian and Slovenian heritage - she cooks wonderful multicultural meals!
Like I said before, it's not the bloodline, it's the culture within the home that preserves ethnic roots down through generations. If you're raised without knowledge of Japanese food, without appreciation for Japanese culture, without the embedding of concepts such as "gaman" or "gambatte" (endure, do your best) or without taking your shoes off at the door, you're simply not going to be very Japanese, even if you're full-blooded Japanese.
This debate about the ethnic purity of Happas was also turbo-charged by the ongoing drama of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
I was entranced like many viewers with the performance and sportsmanship of Apolo Anton Ohno, and the story of his upbringing by his Japanese father. Never mind the unusual fact of a single-parent Dad who's Japanese (how often does that happen in Japan, I wonder?), the real story for me was the fact that Apolo's mother was Caucasian (though the media completely ignored her, as if the kid sprang out of some mystical place without the help of any woman's womb). Here was a role model not only for Asian Pacific Americans, not only for Japanese Americans, but for mixed Asian Americans.
Growing up I knew more than a few Happas, because when you're a military brat with your family stationed in Japan you get used to meeting kids who come from families where the father (usually) is an Caucasian GI and the mother is Japanese. There are lots of Happa kids around the Denver area too. Just looking around the room at the Buddhist Temple in Sakura Square any Sunday confirms this fact. I know a Happa who works at the Art Institute of Colorado and one who teaches English at Teikyo Loretto Heights College, the local Japanese-owned school. There's another who lives in Colorado Springs and is an executive for the Japanese conglomerate, Mitsui Chemical. All of these Happas speak Japanese fluently.
So there goes the theory about race mixing leading to a loss of culture and tradition.
The talk about race-mixing called to mind not only the Nazis and Jews, but our own sorry history as Americans. It wasn't so long ago - a matter of decades - when black men could be lynched if it was even rumored that he had "relations" with a white woman. William Faulkner used the topic of miscegenation - race mixing - as the tragedy behind a powerful 1932 novel, "A Light in August." An alleged attack by a black man on a white woman was the spark behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel by Harper Lee that was also set in the Depression-era South: "To Kill a Mockingbird."
I bring up these extreme examples because I'm afraid that making racial distinctions between people is in itself an extreme act. I'm not saying the Ties-Talk member who wants to only marry a Japanese woman to keep his race "pure" is on the same level as someone who would kill to prevent blacks and whites from mixing. I'm sure he's sincere in his concern about keeping his Japanese heritage alive.
But I think he's sadly misguided.
Being "Japanese" -- this thing we claim as our heritage -- isn't something in your skin or your eyes or your hair color. It's in our soul. And it's not just passed along through genetics.
NOTE: To sign up for the Ties-Talk e-mail
discussion group, go to:
http://va.apanet.org/cgi-bin/lwgate.cgi/TIES-TALK
You can also visit the Hapa Issues Forum at:
http://www.hapaissuesforum.org