Images of Contemporary Japanese Children by Japanese-American Immigrants

Images of Contemporary Japanese Children by Japanese-American Immigrants In American Picture Books from Noah's Ark to the Beast Within, Barbara Bader postulated in 197 6 that "the culture least represented before the Second World War, by artists or in books, is one of the most in evidence thereafter—the Japanese" (443) . From a Western perspective, Japan is a relatively new member of the world community. Less than one hundred fifty years ago. Admiral Perry sailed to Japan Bay to encourage open borders to outside trade. Although trade ensued, there have been relatively few Japanese immigrants to America in comparison to other ethnic groups. One reason for the difference was restrictive legislation which limited immigration in the early twentieth century. A law passed in 1921 tied immigration to three per cent of each immigrant group living in America according to the 1910 census. The National Origins Act of 1924, effective after 1929, also affected immigration by limiting the total of non-Western immigrants to 153,700 a year. These quotas were not rescinded until 1965 (Barkan) . One cultural result of this immigration pattern was that the image of the Japanese child was far less familiar than that of the English or German child to Westerners in the first half of the twentieth century in America. There were relatively few children's books with Japanese settings or any mention of Japan. This dearth persisted until the conclusion of the war with Japan, which followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and after the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. A notable exception was Lucy Fitch Perkins' The Japanese Twins. It was the second of twenty-five in her popular "Twins" series, ranging from Puritans in the 1600s to contemporary Eskimos. The Japanese Twins came between The Dutch Twins and The Irish Twins. First printed in 1912, it was reprinted as late as 1968. Japanese-born librarian Yasuko Makino evaluated over three hundred children' s books printed in America about Japan and annotated about half that number in her critical bibliography, Japan Through Children's Literature, published in 197 8 by the Center for International Studies at Duke University. Another edition with a change in the subtitle was published by Greenwood seven years later. As a former teacher from Japan, she was well qualified for the task even before becoming an assistant professor of Library Administration at the University of Illinois. While in graduate school, she read children's books about Japan and concluded from her research that "misconceptions, stereotyping, and mistakes" (1978 iv) permeated American children's books. She took The Japanese Twins to task by pointing out that it described stereotypical daily routines in the lives of five-year-old "Taro" and "Take." She also noted 161 that the book depicted life in the late nineteenth century. In Perkins' book, the children sleep on mats, wrap rather than button their clothing, view the family' s Samurai sword, and go to a temple. In addition, t>he children bathe in a tub inside the house rather than the traditional outdoors. As author and illustrator, Perkins drew the children wearing "zori" in the home; this clothing is worn only outside. Makino' s annotation in the 1987 edition concludes with "not recommended" (39) . Even thirty-five years later, the famous American author Pearl Buck promulgated error in her much lauded book. The Big Wave, published shortly after the war. She gave non-Japanese names to the children, namely "Kino" and "Jiya" (18) . Makino evaluates Buck's description of the Japanese countryside as "vague and obscure, " and summarizes the book as "not particularly good" (18) . Chinese elements also intruded into books, such as The Greedy One . Patricia Miles Martin included the "sampan," a Chinese, not Japanese, boat. Moreover, the author mistook the huge cloth flying-carp "wind socks" as made of paper. She mistakenly identified oxen as water buffaloes. Makino also criticized Arlene Mosel' s The Funny Little Woman, which won for artist Blair Lent the coveted Caldecott Award in 1973. In it, Chinese and Japanese images are mixed. The critic also stated that the recipe for Japanese rice dumplings confused rice flour with cooked rice (72) . Although Makino never...