Correspondents' Correspondence Sansei in Japan
BERGER, MICHAEL
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Sansei in Japan Tokyo—An elderly Japanese-American...
...they make me feel like an outsider...
...they seem to think about us very simply...
...In a society that has become nearly 75 per cent urban within the last 15 years, traditional prejudices against supposedly backward country folk are easily transferred to the formerly low-status emigrants and their largely unknown offspring...
...others are bitter...
...I sure didn't learn much about Japan from the U.S...
...I don't care if I never come back...
...They're narrow-minded...
...At first," one girl recalled, "I tried very hard to become a part of Japanese society, but I discovered that unless you're born and raised here, it's very difficult to penetrate Japanese life...
...Young Japanese-Americans who live and study here also feel a cultural gap, though of a different kind...
...Even though my mother was born in this country, that was a long time ago, and there wasn't much she could tell me...
...Once this gap becomes evident, I'm afraid Japanese begin to look down on Nisei...
...Michael Berger...
...mass media either...
...He didn't get fresh at all...
...For someone from the West, the contrast is still tremendous...
...He just put his arm around me...
...For instance, I have to force myself to fit in with Japanese in social situations, to go along with the group...
...Sansei in Japan Tokyo—An elderly Japanese-American couple who recently returned to the land of their birth for the first time in over half a century observed that it was "like visiting a foreign country...
...The boys," a girl commented, "are really naive for their age by our standards, but it's nice...
...As one graduate student put it, "I have discovered that I'm not Japanese...
...We had all the standard images," another student agreed, "Ikebana (flower arranging), Kyoto, the delicate sense of beauty—but we had no idea what Japanese people were really like...
...Next, I went through a period of depression for about three months...
...You know, high school tactics—only this boy was 24...
...The majority, however, experienced a progression of reactions...
...We expect them to think as we do, yet their minds are essentially American, much more direct and logical...
...Those who are able to cope with their unexpected experience leave Japan with basically positive feelings...
...This attitude is rooted in history, for the first generation of Japanese to move to America were often the rural poor, forced to seek a better life elsewhere...
...A boy from Hawaii complained, "I can't stand these people...
...Oh, I have Japanese characteristics in my personality, but certain things here repulse me...
...and I don't think their politeness is sincere...
...I kind of liked that...
...We expect them to speak Japanese fluently, but most do not speak it very well...
...Despite these psychological barriers, there is a certain quality—at least in young Japanese—that the Sansei find refreshing...
...I realize that young people have loosened up a lot since the War, but mainly within the Japanese context...
...I must admit I had a pretty stereotyped picture of Japan...
...Now, I'm going home sort of reconciled to the differences...
...I dated one and we were sitting in a movie and I could sense that he was slowly raising his hand to put his arm around me...
...Looking at the problem from the other side, a Japanese graduate student observed: "We think of Japanese-Americans in a very complex way...
...Japanese make the mistake of expecting too much of Nisei [literally second-generation, but used as an all-inclusive term for foreign-born Japanese...
...A recent survey of some 25 Sansei confirmed that nearly all of them arrive with great expectations, and that appears to be their big mistake...
...I didn't want to have anything to do with Japanese...
...Like many young Sansei—grandchildren of Japanese immigrants to the U.S.—he always had a desire to come here, "to find the other half of me," he explained...
...Time and vast material progress had transformed Japan into "a strange nation," they said, where "there are too many people, and the life appears too busy...
...I'd try to speak Japanese, and as soon as I'd open my mouth, they'd ask, 'Nisei?' I'd tell them 'Sansei,' just to set them straight...
Vol. 55 • June 1972 • No. 13
