The Politics of Transnational History Making: Japanese Immigrants on the Western "Frontier," 1927-1941

Abstract

In 1927 Toga Yoichi, a Japanese immigrant in Oakland, California, published a chronological history of what he characterized as "Japanese development in America." He explicated the meaning of that history thus: A great nation/race [minzoku] has a [proper] historical background; a nation/race disrespectful of history is doomed to self-destruction. It has been already 70 years since we, the Japanese, marked the first step on American soil. . . . Now Issei [Japanese immigrants] are advancing in years, and the Nisei [the American-born Japanese] era is coming. . . . I believe that it is worthy of having [the second generation] inherit the record of our [immigrant] struggle against oppression and hardships, despite which we have raised our children well and reached the point at which we are now. . . . But, alas, we have very few treatises of our history [to leave behind].Thirteen years later, a thirteen hundred-page masterpiece entitled Zaibei Nihonjinshi-Toga himself spearheaded the editing-completed that project of history writing. 1 Not the work of trained academicians, this synthesis represented the collaboration of many Japanese immigrants, including the self-proclaimed historians who authored it, community leaders who provided subventions, and ordinary Issei residents who offered necessary information or purchased the product. In this instance, moreover, history writing was synonymous with history making, for the former entailed not only the privileging of specific self-images over others but even

Representações do feminino na imigração japonesa e okinawana para o Brasil

“…A agência de imigrantes na escrita de sua própria história foi problematizada por Eiichiro Azuma (2003) acerca dos issei 24 nos Estados Unidos. O historiador identifica uma tendência crescente a partir dos anos 1920 -concomitante à aprovação da Lei da Imigração de 1924 25 e ao "aniversário" 26 de 70 anos da imigração japonesa para os Estados Unidos -de 22 Nos estudos migratórios, não existe uma fronteira cronológica clara que divide as "migrações históricas" e as "migrações contemporâneas".…”

“…As historiografias sobre imigrantes japoneses, tanto nos Estados Unidos (cf. AZUMA, 2003; como no Brasil, especialmente os discursos nativos, descontinuaram esses vínculos após a Segunda Guerra Mundial ao tratar essas populações sob a rubrica dos estudos migratórios e de relações étnicas. Este capítulo procura demonstrar a dimensão generizada que esses discursos tomaram no contexto brasileiro até aproximadamente o final da década de 1920.…”