Subject: Generation Question
I was wondering: My parents have lived here for about 25 years
yet they're still not US citizens and will never be. I was born here
so what does that make me? I was talking to my dad about this and
he said technically I might be just an Issei but I have no clue!
He said he had no idea and we got really confused so I thought I
might ask. I know this question is really picky but I was just a little
curious. Oh, and if I married a Issei and I was considered an Nisei,
what would my child be?
Subject: Re: Generation Question
> My parents have lived here for about 25 years yet
> they're still not US citizens and will never be.
> I was born here so what does that make me?
If you were born in the U.S. that makes you a nisei.
> If I married a Issei and I was considered an Nisei,
> what would my child be?
There are two systems. Some people count in halves.
The child is a nisei or sansei depending on the parent,
so you split the difference. The other system is to go
by the highest number.
So, depending on which system you use, your child would be
either "nisei-han (nisei-and-a-half)" or sansei.
I have heard that the Nikkei way of counting generations is
different from other cultures. But this labelling of people
is all a bit superficial -- when it comes to attitudes and
cultural awareness there is a lot of overlap between groups,
depending on individual experience.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
> I have heard that the Nikkei way of counting generations
> is different from other cultures.
Most cultures in the US
count the generations from the first generation born in the US,
whereas Nikkei count the immigrating generation as the first (issei).
I always thought of myself as sansei (3rd generation) because
my grandparents were born in Japan (They didn't become US citizens
until they were quite elderly), but most other people who ask
(Chinese Americans, most groups of European Americans), think
I should be 2nd generation. Since there is such confusion here,
I just tell people that my grandparents were the ones that immigrated.
> If I married a Issei and I was considered an Nisei,
> what would my child be? I know this question is
> really picky but I was just a little curious.
In your case, because you were born in the US, you are
automatically a US citizen. Since your parents were born in Japan,
you would be a nisei -- but your Chinese American friends might
say you are first generation.
I think that even if you married an issei, most Nikkei people
I know would consider your child sansei. But some of this would
depend on the extent of cultural assimilation and language, too.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
I am a sansei married to an Italian American.
Are my 1/2 JA kids considered yonsei? Just curious.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
> I am a sansei married to an Italian American.
> Are my 1/2 JA kids considered yonsei? Just curious.
If you are sansei, my parents would have regarded your children
yonsei (regardless of what the other 1/2 is -- even if they are
half Japanese issei or Chinese "second generation" or whatever).
Not sure what others would say.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
> I am a sansei married to an Italian American.
> Are my 1/2 JA kids considered yonsei? Just curious.
My (nisei) parents would consider your children yonsei ... on the Japanese side.
My daughter doesn't know what she is ... nisei on the side of her
(shin-issei) father and Yonsei on my side. We added her up and divided
by two = sansei ... so we say. ;-)
Subject: Re: Generation Question
In our extended family we have Fifth Generation kids who are 1, 3 and 8.
For the younger two, the generation does not count their grandfather (who is
a "sansei" and is my generation) 's grandfather's FATHER who lived in Canada
(became a "naturalized" Canadian citizen) until his sons and daughters
arrived in North America and he then returned to live his remaining years of
his life in Japan.
If we count by great-grandfather as the First Generation in North America,
then the younger of two kids as really the 6th generation of their family in
North America.
My daughter, who is the other Fifth Generation from above is one from her
maternal grandfather - a sansei born in Hawaii, and can make a "claim"
(borrowing a term from the Daughters of the American Revolution) to be a
Fifth from her father as well.
But in fact our daughter can be several generations all at once depending on
which ancestral line she traces:
- Maternal Grandfather - 5th, as both of his parents were born in Hawaii to
parents from Japan.
- Maternal Grandmother - 4th, as both of her parents were born in Japan.
- Paternal Grandfather - 4th (5th?), both parents were born in Japan, his
paternal grandfather had lived in Canada as an adult.
- Paternal Grandmother - 3rd (5th?), she was born and raised in Japan, yet
both her father and her paternal grandfather, both born in Japan, also lived
in the U.S. for a part of their adult lives.
We have been all taught that such a simple pattern as Issei-Nisei-Sansei as
is the norm (probably the majority), but in reality there are many
exceptions to this.
Even when drawing lines on a family tree, even members of the same
generation may actually be a "generation" apart in terms of when they
were born.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
> We have been all taught that such a simple pattern as
> Issei-Nisei-Sansei is the norm (probably the majority),
> but in reality there are many exceptions to this.
The Issei/Nisei/Sansei categories were never quite pure, although somewhat
unique for immigrant groups in the US. My Japan-born father joined my
grandfather here in the US to work in the produce fields of the western
US in the 1920's. I guess they are both "Issei" although some have
identified my father as a "yobi-yosei" which I think means he belongs
to a group who was called to join family members. My mother was born
in the US in 1914 but grew up in Japan (Kibei Nisei) so that makes me
a Nisei-han or Nihan-sei. I communicated with my parents in Japanese
(that makes me more Nisei) but most of my JA friends were Sansei
(that makes me "feel" more Sansei). So I guess a
Ni-han-sei really would be the closest category for me.
The "Ties That Bind" conference asks us to go beyond these initial
categories and create some new definitions and terms that might work
better (without necessarily becoming pigeon-holes) to give us some
"connections" as different JA groupings. Can you think of any ?
Subject: Ties-Talk vocabulary: Generations
More than anything else, I think that the categories of Issei, Nisei,
Sansei and everything else in between or beyond are more of a state of mind
that defines ourselves as Americans and perhaps distances us from Japanese
culture real and/or perceived.
The terms Issei, Nisei, Sansei themselves also seem to identify periods in
the Nikkei timeline.
Subject: Re: Generation Question
At least in the US, we might identify ourselves by similarly aged peer
groups, don't you think? For instance, I am sansei, but most Nikkei my
age are actually yonsei from the early immigration, while others are nisei
from post War immigration. Yet, we have more in common because we grew up in
the 70s and 80s. I also seem to have more in common with similarly aged
Nihonjin, than Nikkei of different age groups in the US. Most sansei are
older than me, and probably have more in common with the Baby Boomer
generation. And young children of new immigrants, although nisei,
probably have more in common with younger yonsei (or gosei?) than say,
my mother, a nisei who came of age in the 1940s.
Given improvements in global communication and travel, I think these
distinctions will become more and more of a blur. Rather than referring
to oneself by a generational "label", I'll bet future Nikkei will say
something like, "on my mother's side, my great great grandparents originally came
from Japan, but on my father's side, my grandmother was half Korean American
and half German American and my grandfather was part Japanese, Chinese
American, and Danish." Perhaps this is already happening ...
Subject: Re: Generation Question
I think that many of us interpret the various JA generations more as
what that generation stood for.
For example, Nisei were called the Quiet Americans ...
I view being Sansei as being known for having represented the first
truly "American-based" generation. We were more an off shoot of the
post-war prosperity in the US. Because of all that was happening in the
US in the 60s-70s with the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War, and
general awakening to new sets of values ... I think of Sansei as being
the JA version of the American free speech generation. Age pretty much
nothing to do with it ... if you were Sansei, you identified with the
movement. I recall kids who were not true Sansei that somehow could not
relate to the rest of us.
It was sooo cool to gather at Jr JACL conventions and meetings... it
was communal. We smoked, we drank, we talked into the morning hours. We
talked of dreams, we aired our collective disgust with the way the
country was going. We put down how our parents were quiet and allowed
Uncle Sam to disgrace them, we identified with the Civil Rights
Movement and the slam on African Americans. Hey, we weren't shy to give
the Yellow Power fist!
Subject: Re: Generation Question
Page 1 of Section B of the Oct. 6, 1999 edition of the Wall Street
Journal has a brief but interesting article in regards to
understanding the Asian-American consumer market.
According to New York Consultant Wanla Cheng, the Asian-American
generation 1.5 consists of those Asians who were born in Asia but
raised in the United States. And this 1.5 generation can be divided
into types 1.5A and 1.5B.
The type 1.5A generation likes "to be portrayed in advertising as
part of the American landscape,"
The type 1.5B generation she says, "could be described as
'born-again Asians'." She says that type 1.5B Chinese-Americans,
despite not being able to read Chinese, would prefer to get
bilingual direct-mail advertising.
