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  • Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies: Conversations on Race and Racializations eds. by Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro
  • Lily Anne Welty Tamai
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies: Conversations on Race and Racializations, edited by Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Y. Okihiro. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2016. Xii+ 400 pp. $68.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780-8248-4758-6.

In the bibliographic essay of Paul Spickard's book, Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group, he reflected on the historiography of Japanese American Studies in 1994:

[I]t is curious that one topic, Japanese American imprisonment in the World War II concentration camps, has commanded so much attention, that there are still so many topics left almost untouched, and that the range of theoretical perspectives among students of Japanese American history has been so limited. Clearly, there is still a great deal of work to be done.

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Yasuko Takezawa and Gary Okihiro have answered that call in this volume on transpacific Japanese American studies. Japanese American studies has long been dominated by scholarship focused on the racialization of the Japanese American community through the lens of the World War II incarceration camps in the United States and, more recently, in Canada. The transpacific characteristic of the Japanese American community, and Japanese American studies has emphasized the Issei generation and the Kibei-Nisei by U.S.-based scholars and increasingly Japan-based scholars. Takezawa and Okihiro edited a volume that expands the field of Japanese American studies by engaging in and centering on transpacific people and their communities. The authors in the book are well-known scholars from both the United States and Japan, providing a transpacific framework that includes not only the content but also the conversations between the transnational contributors.

The book discusses the questions, "Who is Japanese American?," "What is Japanese American studies?," and "Can dialogue on the topic between scholars in Japan and in the U.S. be on equal footing when English language texts dominate the field?" The volume covers topics in history but also art, music, [End Page 472] education, diaspora, and the post-1965 Japanese American community of Shin-Issei. The last section, titled "Dialoging Subject Positions," is especially informative because scholars address their positionalities and current perspectives on the state of the field in shorter-length chapters.

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies expands the intellectual breadth and depth of Japanese American studies because it deliberately brings together the conversations of scholars in North America and Japan to dismantle the hierarchy within the scholarship in the field. Japanese American studies grew out of the need for political action, coming off the heels of the World War II Japanese American incarceration, and the need for ethnic studies in the United States. More broadly speaking, the scholarly focus has been on the legacies of World War II, and on race, inclusion, and identity primarily within a U.S. framework in English. As a result of this need from the 1970s, the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience has eclipsed most other topics of scholarship, leaving the experiences of women, Okinawans, Ainu, burakumin, Nikkei in Latin America, and the mixed-race experience largely understudied. The editors and the authors in the volume have centered the transpacific narrative of the Japanese diaspora and made it the point of departure. Eiichiro Azuma's deftly written chapter highlights why the generational labels of Issei and Nisei by definition have prevented the inclusion of Shin-Issei and other post-World War II immigrations into the fold of the Japanese American studies. This book has made a space to include discussions on the aforementioned groups and also Zainichi Koreans, Shin Issei, war brides, and Japanese Latinos more critically.

Valerie Matsumoto's chapter on Sansei, specifically Sansei women, breathes new life into contemporary Japanese American studies, which has had a spotlight on the Issei and Nisei and their immigration and incarceration experiences. Matsumoto's discussion centers on the Sansei and how they were influenced by the activism of the 1960s and 1970s and highlights the transnational solidarity of Sansei Japanese Americans during the Vietnam War era and the Asian American movement. Many Sansei had connections to Japan...

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