In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Editor’s Introduction:Negotiating Trauma and Affect
  • Gary Totten, Editor-in-Chief (bio)

Reflecting on Japanese internment, Delphine Hirasuna recalls the oft-repeated mantra of the Issei (first-generation immigrants): “‘Shikataganai. It can’t be helped’[;] … ‘We have to gaman’—accept what is with patience and dignity” (7). Hirasuna describes how the experience of internment, particularly its negative impact on the traditional family structure, was in some ways most difficult for the Issei. “The Issei father’s role as breadwinner was usurped by the government—a humiliation that increased group tension and led some Issei men to lash out at their wives and children in frustration” (21, 23). Limited English language ability meant that the Issei found themselves “relinquish[ing] power to their American-born children”; further, “unlike their children, the Issei had a harder time securing permits to leave the camps to seek jobs east of the Rockies.” The threat of a decreased ability to earn an income after release made starting a new life after the war “all but impossible[,] … and many remained dependent on their children for the rest of their lives” (23).

Faced with these bleak prospects and looking for ways to make the time in camp pass, many Issei turned to arts and crafts as “their escape, their survival, their passion, [and] their link to things of beauty”; indeed, the largest body of art produced in the camps came from the Issei (23). Arts and crafts in the camps arose out of physical necessity as the internees created furniture and other home furnishings from scrap materials. However, as Hirasuna emphasizes, this work was also a result of “emotional necessity” (24). Art was viewed by both internees and officials of the War Relocation Authority as “a way to alleviate the boredom and purposelessness brought on by prolonged confinement.” Some also assumed that artistic activity would have “a calming effect on the evacuees and foster a spirit of cooperation” (26). There were many artists in the camps, and “frequent art exhibitions in every camp drew large and appreciative crowds” (29).

Hirasuna’s impetus for examining this body of work was her discovery of a small wooden bird pin in her parents’ storage room. The safety pin clasp led her to conclude that the pin was carved in the concentration camp where her parents were interned and caused her “to wonder what other objects made in the camps lay tossed aside and forgotten, never shown to anyone because they might [End Page 1] generate questions too painful to answer” (6). Hirasuna’s assumption that these art objects are not exhibited because of the pain associated with them underscores the emotional engagements with trauma underlying the stoicism and resignation of gaman—to “accept what is with patience and dignity” (7). Hirasuna’s reflections about her parents’ trauma as embodied in the bird pin suggest the “personal and intentional” characteristics that affect theorists associate with “emotion” in contrast to the “pre-personal and non-intentional” characteristics of affect; stated another way, “if affects are unmediated and escape signification; emotions are mediated and contained by signification.” Sara Ahmed notes that for affect studies scholars such as Brian Massumi, emotion and affect operate by a “different logic” and are even “defined against each other” (Ahmed 207). Ahmed questions such strict demarcations, however, claiming that “Emotions … involve bodily processes of affecting and being affected”; that is, “emotions are a matter of how we come into contact with objects and others.” She challenges distinctions between mind and body, between “consciousness and intentionality, on the one hand, and physiological or bodily reactions on the other” (208).1 The authors in this issue take a similarly expansive view of the relationship between emotion and affect as they examine how trauma and affect are negotiated in relation to temporal and physical boundaries, racial and cultural ideologies, forms of sociality, and desire and power, and within contexts such as slavery, totalitarian systems, and war and revolution.

Interrogating Japanese experience during World War II, Daniel McKay, in his essay “The Right Stuff: The Kamikaze Pilot in Kerri Sakamoto’s One Hundred Million Hearts and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being,” examines the more nuanced representation of...

pdf

Share