Redefining Japaneseness: Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland

Redefining Japaneseness:  Japanese Americans in the Ancestral Homeland
Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program and the Center for Japanese Studies

Thursday, March 9th, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
554 Barrows Hall
Light refreshments will be served.

Lecture and Book Signing with Dr. Jane H. Yamashiro
Introduction by Michael Omi

Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan experience both racial inclusion and cultural dislocation while negotiating between the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive observations and interviews with Japanese Americans who are geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse, Jane H. Yamashiro reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness. Her findings have major implications for both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration and global diasporic identity.

“Not only does Yamashiro give us engaging portraits of how Japanese Americans navigate the social and cultural terrain of contemporary Japan, but she also provides a fundamental rethinking of the analytic frameworks by which migrant identities have been contextualized and understood.”

Michael Omi,
University of California, Berkeley

About the Author:  Jane H. Yamashiro is a sociologist whose comparative and transnational work on race and ethnicity, culture, globalization, migration, diaspora, and identity sits at the intersection of Asian American and Asian Studies. She has previously been based at USC’s Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. She holds a B.A. from the University of California at San Diego and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. While conducting research in Japan, Dr. Yamashiro has been funded by the East-West Center and the Crown Prince Akihito Scholarship, and has been a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and Sophia University. Her academic research has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies; AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice and Community; Sociology Compass; Geoforum; CR: The New Centennial Review; and Migrations and Identities.