TAKAMORI, Ayako (New York University)
Japanese Americans inside-out in Japan: testing the borders of Japanese identity.
Japanese Americans living in Japan occupy an uneasy location at the borders of Japanese identity. They are not Japanese; yet nor are they completely “gaijin.” Japanese Americans do not constitute a stable identity as an ethnic/cultural minority. In this paper, I show how this identity category is deployed strategically; its perimeters are flexible and often ambiguous. I examine ways in which Japanese Americans, themselves embodying an ontological contradiction of Japanese identity and a history of US-Japan relations, demarcate themselves varyingly as “Japanese American”, “Japanese”, and “American.” For many Japanese Americans, social and cultural exclusion as foreigners is particularly profound because their identity as Japanese Americans is often already premised upon a discourse of cultural loss and historical trauma. I suggest that Japanese Americans are pushing the outer limits of Japanese identity at the same time that they often reinstate its borders. I describe performative strategies used to stake sometimes conflicting claims of belonging and alterity. These strategies illuminate how Japan’s border is socially patrolled on the level of day-to-day experiences and social interactions between individuals. Yet while Japanese Americans are constrained by their linguistic and cultural capital, they negotiate ambiguous lines of inclusion and exclusion within Japan.