{"id":11327,"date":"2011-01-07T22:41:34","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T22:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=11327"},"modified":"2016-04-01T16:16:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T16:16:23","slug":"positioning-american-japanese-in-the-context-of-japanese-and-okinawan-nationalism-and-ethnicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=11327","title":{"rendered":"Positioning American Japanese in the Context of Japanese and Okinawan Nationalism and Ethnicity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Positioning American Japanese in the Context of Japanese and Okinawan Nationalism and Ethnicity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume II (October 2009)
\n18 pages<\/p>\n

Stephanie Otani
\n<\/a><\/strong>Stanford University<\/em><\/p>\n

have the right…
\nNot to justify my existence in this world.
\nNot to keep the races separate within me.
\nNot to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity.
\nNot to justify my ethnic legitimacy…
\nTo identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify…
\nTo create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial…
\nTo have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.<\/em><\/p>\n

~from the Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People<\/a>, by Maria P.P. Root<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

They wear war in their faces. They are the symbols of foreign domination. They embody the transgression of sacred boundaries. In Okinawa<\/a>, people of Japanese and American descent (or Amerasians) are first and foremost foreigners, no matter how Japanese or Okinawan their language, customs, mannerisms, or worldviews may be. Before they even speak, their face and skin signal to people the circumstances of their births. The rights claimed by Root in the \u201cBill of Rights for Racially Mixed People<\/a>\u201d ultimately culminate in the right to first and foremost be understood as a human being as opposed to racial anomaly or mistake. As of now, these rights are insubstantial claims for those who carry signs of American parentage in their appearance throughout Okinawa and the rest of Japan<\/a>. Instead, they continue to be externally categorized as gaijin or \u201cforeigners\u201d in their own homes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan does not contain the linguistic nor legal infrastructure to accommodate them under the idea of Japaneseness. Within Japan, Okinawa is a particularly interesting and relevant site to explore issues of cultural and political legitimacy and conflicts between internal and external identity. The historical experience of Okinawa and its struggle for political sovereignty in international affairs mirrors the experience of American Japanese and their struggle to find a sense of national belonging. It is because of the contentious physical and political space Okinawa has historically inhabited that Amerasians struggle to fit into a larger Okinawan or Japanese identity.<\/p>\n

Amerasians Within the Broader Context of Japan<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this section I will discuss the overall Japanese attitude toward multiracial people by examining the terms used to refer to multiracial people and the legal status of international couples. These two aspects of Japanese society reflect its reluctance to incorporate ethnic difference…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Positioning American Japanese in the Context of Japanese and Okinawan Nationalism and Ethnicity Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies Volume II (October 2009) 18 pages Stephanie Otani Stanford University have the right… Not to justify my existence in this world. Not to keep the races separate within me. Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,394],"tags":[1793,5098,2791,5099,969],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-japan","tag-okinawa","tag-stanford-journal-of-asian-american-studies","tag-stephanie-otani","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46406,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions\/46406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}