identity en

Jichan in America

The grandfather of my heart will always be my father’s father, Grandfather Araki (born a Kaneda but taking the Araki name as a yoshi ...

migration en ja es pt

In Brazil. 109 years.

“No one can take away what you’ve studied” was or still is a sentence repeated to exhaustion to children by generations of parents of ...

community en

4 Bad Ass Issei Women You've Probably Never Heard of

If you’re into strong women who like to color outside the lines and aren’t afraid to take what’s theirs, then you came ...

identity en

Japanese American Name Culture - Part 2

Read Part 1 >> Cultural Heritage and Assimilation The names that immigrant parents select for their American-born children say something about culture, customs, hopes, and dreams ...

identity en

Japanese American Name Culture - Part 1

Is it Eisenhauer or Eisenhower? Gonzalez or Gonzales? Yasuzo or Yasudo? Whether they are misspellings, attempts at assimilation, or expressions of individualism, the variations in ...

identity en ja es

Who are Nikkeijin?

Who does “Nikkeijin” refer to? Answering this question is not easy. Today they are defined as “Japanese immigrants who have moved overseas with the intention ...

community en

Mio-Steveston Fishermen Dialect

Whenever you hear of Mio, a poor, small fishing village south-east of Osaka in Wakayama-ken, the name ‘Amerika Mura’ comes to mind. To the villagers ...

culture en

Orchid from the North - Part 3

Read Part 2 >> In each of the previous chapters, we have seen young Yoshiko get a few tastes of the real political world around her ...

migration en

Nikkei View

Read Who, How and Why Japanese Settled in Colorado

Most books about Japanese Americans focus on the West Coast because that’s where Japanese first arrived and settled on the US mainland. So few ...

culture en

Orchid from the North - Part 2

Read Part 1 >> “Fengtian was my castle of dreams,” we heard Yoshiko say in our previous chapter, and she had myriad reasons to feel that ...