Intermarriages and Hapas: the Japanese-American Experience

The Mixed Race Studies blog recently posted an entry linking to an article discussing the hapa (defined to mean to mean people who have an Asian/Asian Pacific Islander parent and a parent of any other race) phenomenon within the Japanese community. The article is entitled "Nikkei Heritage Intermarriages and Hapas: An Overview" from Nikkei Heritage Vol. X, Number 4, (Fall 1998), by George Kitahara Kich, Rebecca Chiyoko King, Larry Hajime Shinagawa, and Shizue Seigel.

The article is interesting in that it offers an overview of Japanese American identity and its changing response to the existence of hapas within the community. The authors' comments could easily be extrapolated to other Asian-American communities. The author's claim of the evolution of a rising pan-Asian identity in American resonates with my experience. There is arguably a growing recognition of the similarities across the Asian American experience, even though it spans several ethnic and cultural groups. However, I would warn against being optimistic about an all-encompassing Asian American identity. There still exist salient social and cultural differences between Asian communities in the United States that act as an obstacle to the formation of a pan-Asian identity.

The article goes into some of the history of anti-miscegenation laws and the American presence in Japan, as well as the legal reforms that occurred later in the United States. I have pasted a few paragraphs below (bold text my insertion).

As the churches, social clubs, and neighborhoods that once defined community have become less sustainable than in the past, an individual’s sense of community identity has become more and more a matter of individual choice and selection. Previously, Japanese Americans had had two choices: the organic JA community or Anglo-assimilation. However, in the past 20 years, with the globalization of the economy and shifting migration and immigration patterns, as well as the rise of civil rights and integration, two additional identity choices have arisen: multi-racial and Pan-Asian.

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It is difficult for many Hapas to overcome the long history of rejection by individual families and by the community. Broken connections and communications in extended families and within the community remain part of the human and emotional struggle for some Japanese Americans. However, many families have found new ways of re-connecting after intermarriages, discovering that change is difficult but not impossible. We have heard many stories about how grandchildren have been one way that extended families have remembered their roles in passing on traditions, and begun processes of reconnecting.

Since 1980, an increasing number of interethnic marriages to other Asians have occurred. Incorporating other Asian ethnicities within Japanese American families and the JA community has its challenges and potential for stirring up old conflicts and rivalries. However, as the stigma against interracial and interethnic marriages and people has begun to lessen, it appears that the Japanese American sense of itself, either as individuals or as a community, is being gradually replaced by more-inclusive models of identity and identity formation. That the JA community can embrace a more multiracial and multicultural perspective of itself can mean that it could never “die out,” as critics of intermarriage have warned. However, a consciousness about the dangers of assimilation (within areas as complex as class, white culture, the global marketing of brand-names, etc.) requires all cultural groups to remain inclusive, yet continually measuring, cherishing and passing on traditions, ceremonies, languages and histories.