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Writing Japanese-American Characters



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Thu Apr 05, 2018 10:35 pm
Mageheart says...



Back when I first started writing, I was obsessed with anime. I ended up creating a character with a Japanese name, and he eventually became one of my beloved characters. The book he was originally from is no longer one that I'm working on, but he's become a protagonist in the novel I'm currently writing. I want to incorporate his heritage into my writing, and I know having a Japanese name isn't enough.

That's where you come in. I know that there's not many people on here who live in Japan or are Japanese-American, but I'm sure you've heard of good resources or books that deal with growing up as a Japanese-American teen. I've already referenced Writing with Color. Unfortunately, none of their mods are Japanese and the questions they've answered aren't the ones I'm really looking for. I'm pretty much open to anything. A website with some helpful references, a book that's written by a Japanese-American author that has at least some focus on their heritage, or even a youtuber who talks about stuff like that.

Thank you for whatever help you can give!

Edit: As suggested, here's a little more about my character. He's fifteen/sixteen, depending on the part of the book it's at. He lives in the Northeast of America - Connecticut, to be exact. He used to live in a pretty diverse area before moving to the town of Wildegate, which is slightly modeled after my not-so-diverse town. I'm not sure if I want his mother to have lived here her entire life or have moved here at a younger age, but she's his Japanese parent. His father isn't in the picture. Since he doesn't have any friends that he's really close to, he's close to his mom.
Last edited by Mageheart on Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:35 am
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Mea says...



Hi sae! I'm not Japanese, but as you probably know I've lived in Japan for two and a half years now and more importantly, I go to an international school that is substantially Japanese and Japanese-American, and there are a lot of different ways it manifests. I'll be basing what I say here on what I've seen from living here and what my Japanese-American friends have told me me.

Some really big factors are how much your character has lived in America/Japan/elsewhere, and also what language their parents speak at home and to what extent the parents follow Japanese traditions/mannerisms. All of these will really affect who they are and how and when they express their culture. As I type this, I'm literally sitting next to a friend of mine who's half Japanese, but acts completely and entirely stereotypically American, partly because it's just her personality, but also because she lived in America her whole life before moving here recently and her parents spoke English rather than Japanese at home. At the same table, I'm also sitting next to someone who speaks English just fine but is extremely Japanese in her habits and mannerisms because both her parents are Japanese and she's lived more of her life in Japan than America. (These differences are honestly fascinating - I really have found that a Japanese-American who has spent all their life in America tends to have much more in common with a white American than with a Japanese person who has spent all their life in Japan.)

Brief note: I know when people ask these kinds of questions, they're often also asking how to represent and navigate the discrimination the subgroup faces. I don't know much about the experiences America (and would expect it widely varies depending on where you are in America) but I know that here, half-Japanese people tend to bear the brunt of discrimination because they're mixed and could talk about that a little.

Anyway. This was really random and disjointed, and I'm sorry I don't have specific resources for you, but the overall thing to take away is that what will represent Japanese-American experiences "correctly" will heavily depend on your character's personality, age, the places they've lived, and their parents' background. If you talk a little more about his situation, I could maybe add more specific thoughts.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:04 am
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manilla says...



I'm Chinese American, which is pretty close. Do you think that might help?
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:25 am
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Lauren2010 says...



Like what has been said above, you should pin down whether your character is Japanese living in America, Japanese-American born in America to Japanese parents, or Japanese-American with one Japanese parent and one American parent. All different contexts for their cultural experience, which could wind up looking very typically American depending on their parents and their background.

It's also going to matter a lot what part of the country they grew up in/currently love in. Is it predominately white? What other cultural diaspora are also in the same area?

You might also consider researching the history of Japanese people in America. I am not Japanese, nor do I know any Japanese-Americans, but Japanese internment in America wasn't all that long ago and an incredibly frought time for Japanese Americans that our country tries to sweep under the rug. I would imagine it has shaped Japanese American culture in many parts of the country, though I couldn't say in what ways.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:05 am
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Lael says...



I'm Chinese American so that's not exactly the same, but my best friend is half-white, half-Japanese American. She's very proud of her culture and it's quite interesting to hear about different traditions, cultural foods, etc., from her sometimes.

Something I would suggest is also think about the fact that there's a substantial number of Japanese living in Brazil, so some who immigrate to the US may know more about Brazilian culture/speak more Portuguese than Japanese. (This is the case with my best friend, because of her mom.)

As for cultural stuff, although we are obviously American, neither of us live exactly like typical white Americans. There's a lot of little things that are different, as well as big things, that I'd have to take some time to think about. xD But a few examples (besides food) would be that my family is rather frugal and, like loads of other Asians, we don't wear outside shoes in the house (because honestly that's just dirty). I'm not saying that's only specific to Asians (or 100% accurate for every Asian family), but these are some common themes I've noticed among many people like me.

In the aspect of racial discrimination, I cannot say I've noticed facing any before (I live in a very diverse environment - but at the same time, I could've been just too naïve to catch it), but my best friend has told me about how her white side of the family (especially her grandmother) is very racist and hates her mom, while only somewhat tolerates her and her older sister. Really, that's all I have to offer there.

Also, I think that many Japanese Americans don't appreciate weaboos. My friend certainly doesn't.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:41 am
Mageheart says...



A big thank you to everyone who responded so far! I'm going to reply to each of your individual comments, but I just am really appreciative that you spent some of your time helping me out.

@Mea: You were one of the few people I could think of that lives in Japan on the site, but I didn't know that you went to an international school! I guessed what you said about people who have mainly lived their lives in America would be the case, but I wasn't exactly sure.

What you said about the discrimination makes sense, too.

I'll add this up in the first post because it might help with the search, but here's my character. He's fifteen/sixteen, depending on the part of the book it's at. He lives in the Northeast of America - Connecticut, to be exact. He used to live in a pretty diverse area before moving to the town of Wildegate, which is slightly modeled after my not-so-diverse town. I'm not sure if I want his mother to have lived here her entire life or have moved here at a younger age, but she's his Japanese parent. His father isn't in the picture. Since he doesn't have any friends that he's really close to, he's close to his mom.

@manilla: I'm not sure! I know Japanese and Chinese culture can be quite different, and what I'm really looking for is how to write about that part of his life. But maybe you can lend a hand with what the discrimination is like?

@Lauren2010: I did know about the internment camps (and am very frustrated with how eagerly we all seem to ignore them), but I currently don't know too much about the rest of their history. I'll definitely try looking it up over the weekend! (I am going to library tomorrow, so, if I'm lucky, they might have something about it there.)

@Lael: Interesting! I think I remember hearing about the Japanese people who live in Brazil, but I didn't even think of that. It would certainly be interesting if he had some relatives living there. So I'm guessing you would suggest checking out foods? There are several scenes where they're at his house, and it does happen to be around dinnertime. I'm still figuring out what his extended family is like, especially since he doesn't interact with his father, but I'll definitely keep that in mind.

(Oddly enough, the topic of anime has yet to come up in any of my drafts. I suppose it's because I'm finally expanding my interests, but my characters used to always be fans of it because I never knew what other people could be fans of. xD But it looks like I won't have to worry about that last bit!)
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:17 pm
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Lael says...



Yeah, I think looking into food would be good. I also forgot to mention the trend of many Asian parents being very strict about grades and expecting high achievement.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:47 pm
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TinkerTwaggy says...



I think another important thing is that if your character's mother moved to America when she was young, that means that she was affected by the shift in the vision of Japanese people by Americans after WWII. Y'know, they were seen as "enemies" and "bad/suspicious people" on the same level as Muslims or Black people for several decades.
Which would then affect how strict and serious the mother is, in the sense that she'd understand that her son's survival would depend on his ability to behave, not attract unwanted attention and be a good student. That itself would then affect the education she'd give him, which would then affect him as a person.

And then, socially speaking, two things may happen: he may hide his liking of Animes because everybody would assume that he watches those, and he'd prefer not being repeatedly teased on the matter, or he might develop a natural aversion towards them specifically because people expect him to be especially knowledgeable on them because "y'know, you're Japanese! Surely you know every Anime on the planet, right?" ← Talked to a few Japanese people here and there and they did mention being annoyed by that.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:03 pm
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manilla says...



@Saentiel
The racism is when people call you yellow, pull the ends of their eyes so that they're stretched out, or say things like "ching chong" or "takamunadaeee" even though they're probably not words.

The discrimination is when people stereotype nowadays, like all Asians are nerds and don't play sports. These are shabby examples, so I can leave more if you want.
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Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:53 pm
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Kale says...



I was poked about this topic existing, and as a bona-fide Japanese American, consider this my notice of intent to reply to this as soon as I have time.
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Sun Apr 08, 2018 12:28 am
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Kale says...



I had a very large and very thorough reply in the process of being written up AND THEN MICROSOFT DECIDED TO UPDATE AND NONE OF IT AUTOSAVED.

*dead*

So now you get the cliffnotes version and if you have questions, just ask.

1) Japanese Americans who grew up in the US will be more American than Japanese. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that Japanese culture places a HUGE emphasis on conforming, and so Issei feel a lot of pressure to be as American as possible, and push their Nisei children to do the same. This pressure is particularly acute in the US due to how the Japanese in particular were barred from immigrating for a long time due to the belief that Japanese immigrants wouldn't assimilate into US culture, and also as a reaction to the attitudes which lead to the Japanese internment camps.

2) Chinese American and Japanese American are nowhere near close. They have had completely different religions, and the religious traditions in Japan are so deeply ingrained, even non-practitioners observe them. Additionally Japan has a very bloody history of occupation of the rest of Asia, having committed atrocities which put the Nazis to shame, and the government of Japan is completely unapologetic. The Rape of Nanking is one of the few such events that has been documented.

3) Most Japanese Brazilians and Japanese Americans are not closely connected. While Brazil has the largest community of Japanese outside of Japan, most Japanese immigrants in the US fall into two groups: those who immigrated to the US before 1924, when immigration from Japan was completely blocked on the grounds that Japanese immigrants wouldn't assimilate, and those who immigrated after the restrictions were relaxed in 1952. In contrast, immigration to Brazil wasn't restricted like in the US, and was actually encouraged because Brazil was suffering a labor shortage.

4) People of Japanese descent to this day suffer from the attitudes and beliefs which lead to the internment camps. I have experienced such firsthand, and aside from not being that old, my mother is one of the more recent immigrants, and she also experienced things like being referred to as a Jap.

Jap is a slur, for the record. It's why Japan's country code is JPN.

5) The emphasis on academics and achievement isn't just an Asian thing; it's an immigrant thing. Unless they immigrated with wealth aplenty, education is necessary for immigrant families from non-English-speaking cultures to attain a living standard above poverty. Without education (and sometimes even with) immigrant families get shoehorned into specific types of work that all involve long hours for minimal pay. Japanese immigrants tend to fare better than most because the quality of education in Japan is much better than the US and English is a mandatory part of all students' curriculum, but there's still a huge pressure to fully assimilate into American culture and have prestigious careers, and you can only do that with excellent grades because there are these things called quota caps which disproportionately affect those of Asian descent.

6) A lot of the racism and discrimination I've suffered comes from how Asians are all apparently interchangeable and indistinguishable from each other and how all Asians are obviously going to hold onto their culture so strongly that even third generation immigrant children can't speak English. This is in addition to Japanese-specific forms of discrimination (which I briefly touched upon above) that come from not only Americans but other Asians due to the history between Japan and the rest of Asia.

In the US, a lot of the racism is often misplaced (intentionally directed towards the Chinese), and multiple times a day, I am forced to be the subject of the "games" "What Flavor of Asian?" and "Where Are You From-From?" Most people don't even ask what ethnicity I am and assume Chinese, as evidenced by their spouting complete gibberish at me and expecting me to understand. Even when they do by some miracle guess the correct language to use, their pronunciation is so mangled, they usually say something unintelligible or insulting. And then it's my fault for not understanding them perfectly and I must be disconnected from my heritage and I have to drop everything right now just to reconnect with it.

I wish I were exaggerating.

The flip-side is that people expect me to be a complete expert on everything Japanese, never mind that I'm only half and that I was born and raised in the US. As per any minority, I'm also called upon to explain/justify all sorts of "despicable" behaviors that Japanese people are guilty of, like eating dolphins. Which most Japanese don't. It is literally the one village.

Oh yeah. People also just assume that I had perfect grades in school just because I'm (half) Asian. No one believes me when I talk about the difficulties I had with math. They just think I'm trying to make them feel better. Way to completely dismiss all the hard work I put in to excel at this difficult thing. :/

On top of that, Japan herself is way racist and completely unapologetic about it. It boils down to Japan is the greatest and all others are inferior. It's the main reason why half-Japanese Americans are discriminated against in Japan: we're less Japanese and therefore lesser people for it. To a lesser extent, this also affects Nisei and on who are less than perfectly fluent in Japanese due to having being raised in a different culture than Japan.

7) East Coast, West Coast, and Hawaii are very, very different when it comes to the acceptance and prevalence of Japanese Americans, and how aware one is of one's Japanese heritage varies a lot between families and where one grew up. It's far more common on the East Coast and in families of mixed descent for the children to have no exposure to Japanese cultures and traditions outside of food and/or language, and even then, exposure is severely limited due to lack of access to necessary ingredients (especially if you live farther inland) and fears that speaking another language at home will harm the children's ability to be fluent in English.

A lot of us on the East Coast really are Japanese in name and/or appearance only. We are also very underrepresented (practically nonexistent) even among the already underrepresented portrayals of Japanese Americans.

Speaking of names, it's also not uncommon for Nisei to have two legal names which change based on the country you happen to be in at the time. I'm a pretty unusual case in that I have two completely different personal and family names due to being listed under my mother's family in the Japanese family registry (Koseki). I literally have two full legal names that vary based on which country I'm in, while most Japanese Americans who have a second name typically only vary the personal name.

Japanese citizenship is also very, very hard to get and super easy to lose unless you are a child of Japanese parents and currently living in Japan. For a while, I was a full citizen of both Japan and the US, and I even had two passports, but my Japanese citizenship has since lapsed and it's too much of a hassle to get it reinstated right now.

8) Some configurations of Japanese American are more common than others. On the East Coast, the most common configuration is Issei mother and white American father, though occasionally you'll have Issei parents. Much less common is Issei father and white American mother, and rarest of all are mixes with African Americans.

---

I am forgetting a lot of the stuff that I initially covered, but that will have to do for now. x_x

---

I FORGOT EXAMPLES.

This here is a painfully non-Japanese American perspective of things, BUT it provides a nice list of works as a starting point: https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/AL ... itlow.html

Also, George Takei of Star Trek fame has long been my hero. He has spoken a fair amount about his experiences as a Japanese American, and he also lived in an internment camp as a child.

Fred Korematsu is someone else you should really look into. He was a Japanese American civil rights activist who resisted the internment camps.
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