are Japanese immigrants to countries in North America and South America. The term is used mostly by ethnic Japanese. are born in Japan; their children born in the new country are (, "two", plus , "generation"); and their grandchildren are (, "three", plus , "generation").
The character and uniqueness of the is recognized in their social history.Numrich, Paul David. (2008). North American Buddhists in Social Context, p. 110.
History The earliest organized group of Japanese emigrants settled in Mexico in 1897.Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Japan-Mexico Foreign Relations In the 21st century, the four largest populations of diaspora Japanese and descendants of Japanese immigrants in the Western Hemisphere live in Brazil, the United States, Canada, and Peru.
Brazilian
Brazil is home to the largest ethnic Japanese population outside Japan, numbering an estimated more than 1.5 million (including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity), more than that of the 1.2 million in the United States. The Japanese Brazilians are an important part of Asian ethnic minorities in Brazil.
American
The first members of the emigrated not directly to the mainland United States, but to Hawaii. These emigrants—the first of whom arrived on board the steamship City of Tokio in February 1885—were common laborers escaping hard times in Japan to work in Hawai'i. Their immigration was subsidized by the Hawaiian government, as cheap labor was needed for important commodity crops, especially its sugar plantations. Numerous Japanese eventually settled in Hawaii.Tate, E. Mowbray. (1986). Transpacific Steam: The Story of Steam Navigation from the Pacific Coast of North America to the Far East and the Antipodes, 1867–1941, p. 231
Emigration of Japanese directly to the mainland began in 1885, when "student-laborers" landed on the West Coast of the United States.Sakata, Yasuo. (1992). Fading Footsteps of the Issei, p. 1. The earliest of these emigrated to San Francisco. Their numbers continually increased in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Their purpose in moving to America was to gain advanced knowledge and experience to develop the modern society at home. Both students and laborers were attracted by the image of the United States as a country that welcomed foreigners. When they first arrived in the U.S., they had not intended to live there permanently, but rather to learn from Americans and to take that knowledge back home. While they encountered discrimination, they also made opportunities, and many settled in California, and later in Washington and Oregon as well as Alaska (to a lesser degree).
Canadian
Within Japanese-Canadian communities across Canada, like their American counterparts, three distinct subgroups developed, each with different socio-cultural referents, generational identity, and wartime experiences.McLellan, Janet. (1999). Many Petals of the Lotus: Five Asian Buddhist Communities in Toronto, p. 36.Ikawa, Fumiko. "Reviews: Umi o Watatta Nippon no Mura by Masao Gamo and "Steveston Monogatari: Sekai no Naka no Nipponjin" by Kazuko Tsurumi, American Anthropologist (US). New Series, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Feb. 1963), pp. 152–156. The narrative of Japanese-Canadians include post-Pearl Harbor experiences of uprooting, incarceration, and dispersal of the pre-war Japanese-Canadian communities.Oiwa, Keibo and Joy Kogawa. (1991). Stone Voices: Wartime Writings of Japanese Canadian Issei, p. 18.
Peruvian
Among the approximately 100,000 (2021) Peruvians of Japanese descent living in Peru, the Japanese Peruvians comprise a small number.
Cultural profile
Generations Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians have specific names for each of their generations in North America. These are formed by combining one of the Japanese numbers corresponding to the generation with the Japanese word for . The Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian communities have themselves distinguished their members with terms like , , and , which describe the first, second and third generation of immigrants. The fourth generation is called and the fifth is called .
is a Japanese-language term used by ethnic Japanese in countries in North America and South America to specify the Japanese people who were the first generation to immigrate there.
Originally, as mentioned above, these words were themselves common nouns in Japan referred to generations or reigns. So they are also still used in Japanese terms for personal names, such as means Queen Elizabeth II. Within the ethnic Japanese immigrant community they had come to characterize their own generations.
The , , and generations reflect distinctly different attitudes to authority, gender, involvement with non-Japanese, religious belief and practice, and other matters.McLellan, p. 59. The age when individuals faced the wartime evacuation and internment during World War II has been found to be the most significant factor that explains such variations in attitudes and behaviour patterns.
The term encompasses all of the world's Japanese immigrants across generations."What is Nikkei?" Japanese American National Museum. The collective memory of the and older was an image of Meiji Japan from 1870 through 1911. Newer immigrants carry very different memories of more recent Japan. These differing attitudes, social values and associations with Japan were often incompatible with each other.McLellan, p. 37. The significant differences in post-war experiences and opportunities did nothing to mitigate the gaps which separated generational perspectives.
GenerationCohort description The generation of people born in Japan who later immigrated to another country. The generation of people born in North America, Latin America, Australia, Hawaii, or any country outside Japan either to at least one or one non-immigrant Japanese parent. The generation of people born to at least one parent. The generation of people born to at least one parent. The generation of people born to at least one parent.Ikezoe-Halevi, Jean. "Voices of Chicago: Day of Remembrance 2006," Discover Nikkei (US). 31 October 2006.
In North America, since the redress victory in 1988, a significant evolutionary change has occurred. The , their parents and their children are changing the way they look at themselves and their pattern of accommodation to the non-Japanese majority.McLellan, p. 68.
There are just over one hundred thousand British Japanese, mostly in London. Unlike other communities in the world, these Britons do not identify themselves in such generational terms as , , or .Itoh, p. 7.
Issei The first generation of immigrants, born in Japan before emigrating, is called Issei (一世). In the 1930s, the term Issei came into common use, replacing the term "immigrant" (ijusha). This new term illustrated a changed way of looking at themselves. The term Issei represented the idea of beginning, a psychological transformation relating to being settled, having a distinctive community, and the idea of belonging to the new country.
Issei settled in close ethnic communities, and therefore did not learn English. They endured great economic and social losses during the early years of World War II, and they were unable to rebuild their lost businesses and savings. The external circumstances tended to reinforce the pattern of Issei being predominantly friends with other Issei.
Unlike their children, they tend to rely primarily on Japanese-language media (newspapers, television, movies), and in some senses, they tend to think of themselves as more Japanese than Canadian or American.
Issei women Issei women's lives were somewhat similar, despite differences in context, because they were structured within interlocking webs of patriarchal relationships, and that consistent subordination was experienced both as oppressive and as a source of happiness.Kobayashi, Audrey Lynn. Women, Work and Place, p. xxxiii. The Issei women lived lives of transition which were affected by three common factors: the dominant ideology of late Meiji Japan, which advanced the economic objectives of the Japanese state; the patriarchal traditions of the agricultural village, which arose partly as a form of adjustment to national objectives and the adjustment to changes imposed by modernization; and the constraints which arose within a Canadian or American society dominated by racist ideology.Kobayashi, p. 45. Substantive evidence of the working lives of Issei women is very difficult to find, partly for lack of data and partly because the data that do exist are influenced by their implicit ideological definition of women.Kobayashi, p. 58. In Hawai‘i, Issei women worked as washerwomen, midwives, and barbers, providing essential services to the growing immigrant population. Issei women were instrumental in fostering social cohesion and preserving Japanese culture through the establishment of community organizations. Shizue Iwatsuki founded the Japanese Women’s Society in Hood River, Oregon, which provided a vital social network for Japanese immigrant women while ensuring the continuation of cultural traditions.
Issei women divided their time between working and keeping house. Many described their lives as a constant cycle of labor, balancing agricultural work with domestic responsibilities. They frequently referred to their husbands as "Meiji men," describing them as embodying the patriarchal ideals of late Meiji Japan. These men often avoided household or childcare duties, leaving Issei women to shoulder most of the physical and emotional labor.
Aging The kanreki (還暦), a traditional, pre-modern Japanese rite of passage to old age at 60, was sometimes celebrated by the Issei and is now being celebrated by increasing numbers of Nisei. Rituals are enactments of shared meanings, norms, and values; and this Japanese rite of passage highlights a collective response among the Nisei to the conventional dilemmas of growing older.Doi, Mary L. "A Transformation of Ritual: The Nisei 60th Birthday." Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology. Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 1991).
Japanese-American photographer Mary Koga documented elderly first generation immigrants in her Portrait of the Issei in Illinois, taken between 1986 and 1989.
History The experience of emigrants is inevitably affected by a range of factors directly related to the Japanese society they left behind. As immigrants, the conflicts between the old country and the new played out in unique ways for each individual, and yet common elements do begin to appear in the history of the Japanese Canadian and Japanese American communities.
Emigrants from Japan Japan was a closed country for more than two centuries, 1636 to 1853, since military rulers from the Tokugawa family wanted to keep foreigners away from Japanese society.Spickard, Paul R. (1997). Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group, p. 7. The only exceptions were Chinese and some Dutch, but even they were discouraged from associating with Japanese citizens. Also, it was strictly prohibited by law for ordinary Japanese citizens to go abroad. Change came around the early 19th century when the visit of an American fleet commanded by Commodore Perry caused the new Japanese government to replace the Tokugawa system of economics and politics during the Meiji era to open its door to trade and contact with the outside world.
After 1866, the new Japanese government decided to send students and laborers to the U.S. to bring back the knowledge and experience necessary for the nation to grow strong.Tamura, Linda. (1998). The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon's Hood River Valley, p. xxxvii.