• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

1. Introduction The history of people of Japanese descent in America is not exactly roses all the way. This minority, one of the America‟s most significant, had to endure many hardships ever since the first of its members entered the United States‟ soil almost two centuries ago. They had long been, as probably any other minority, subject to a wide range of display of racism. Nevertheless, in their case the situation went even further, and one could claim that it was far beyond the frontiers of rationality and humanity, when more than 100,000 members of Japanese community were incarcerated in internment camps and were kept there for three long years of 1942-1945, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Although comparatively many scholars pursued particular points of the Japanese experience connected primarily with the World War II, the issue of prejudice displayed toward the Japanese and of the internment has, until recent decades, never been mentioned much in fiction. Some of the approaches to the recreation or conservation of this experience in literature are presented in this thesis. The main objective of this work is to prove that the charges brought against one of the key characters, Kabuo Miyamoto, and the following trial which he was put to, were based on racial bias towards people of Japanese origin in general, which they were experiencing ever since their ancestors arrived in America. The story of the novel focuses on a community on a small fictional island in the Pacific Northwest, and its members‟ relationships. As the plot progresses, it becomes clear that the old events which occurred prior to and during the World War II, and sentiments of contempt, distrust and prejudice towards the Japanese minority that accopanied these events, are still alive and project themselves into the circumstances present. Occurences of a prejudiced approach to the accused man of a Japanese descent, and to the Japanese community on the San Piedro 1 island in general, presented in the novel, are examined in this thesis and serve as underlying data for proving the thesis in question. The examination of the novel itself is preceded by an overview of the Japanese immigrant experience in America, supplemented by an account of acts of the US government that made it even more difficult for the immigrants to become integrated. In order to give a plausible account of the problem in this work, I studied many works related to the issue of prejudice and Japanese internment, ranging from sociological and historical sources to stories of the internees. Further, other scholarly materials are referred to in order to support the argument that the trial is of biased nature. In particular, I turn to Ronald Takaki‟s Strangers from a different shore and Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups to provide me with the background to the history of the Japanese minority in the USA. These two sources were also used to give reference to the description of social and institutional injustices that Japanese minority was forced to stand, as it is described in the first part of this thesis. The second part of the work is devoted to the reflection of the internment and experience of prejudice in works of Japanese American writers, because these issues were not addressed by non-Japanese writers. It also includes a summary of some major symbols in Snow Falling in Cedars. King-Kok Cheung‟s An Interethnic Companion to Asian Literature was used as an underlying source. In the third part, the analysis of displays of prejudice in Snow Falling on Cedars is presented. The cases of biased behaviour of the characters are accentuated and related to the historical context which was examined in the first part. The aim of the analysis is to present individual representation images of experienced discrimination and racism towards the novel‟s characters of Japanese origin, in order to prove that the trial which 2 constitutes the core line of the plot is preconcieved and the accusation of Kabuo Miyamoto is false. 3 2. Insight into the Japanese Iimmigration Immigration has always been a vital part of American history. From the early times incomers first from Europe and later from other continents – Africa and Asia – have been seizing the opportunities the “new country” offered them. The reasons of all immigrants for abandoning their home country and setting off for a life in a new environment were most likely similar, yet the experiences each group of newcomers underwent were different. The first Asian nations to come to America were the Filipinos and the Indians, whose presence in America can be traced back to as early as 1790 (Campi). Until the mid 1800s Asian immigrants were arriving to the US in low numbers. Around 1830 there were some Chinese laborers to be seen working as contract laborers mainly at Hawaiian cane plantations, however, it was only after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 that a massive influx of Chinese immigrants began. They were employed as contract workers in mining industry; many of them were also hired by The Central Pacific Railroad to work on transcontinental railroad (Campi). The main reasons which pulled most of incomers to America out of their countries were hardships they encountered in their homeland, and visions of a new, better life in free country. In Japan, specifically, it was the habit that the first son in a family inherited all estates and family business; other, younger, sons were therefore driven overseas with a prospect that they could establish their own businesses and acquire wealth more easily than it was possible in Japan (Takaki 179). Around the same time as the inflow of the Chinese was at its peak, in the half of the 19th century, the first references of Japanese immigrants on the American soil were recorded. Rather logically, the first Japanese settlers were concentrated in Hawaii but as the influx of immigrants gradually grew to eventually culminate in the last decade of the 4 19th century, many of the new incomers were forced to go even further and settled on the western coast of the USA (Thernstrom et al. 561). By deciding to leave Japan and emigrate to the USA, many Japanese hoped they would free themselves from an economical distress which stirred Japan at that time. American employers welcomed Japanese immigrants because they meant a cheap labour for them. Japanese laborers, who were mostly young men from farming families, were strictly chosen by the Japanese government and they were considered as “representatives of their homeland”, which meant they had to be literate, healthy and hard-working (Takaki 179). In spite of this, they experienced the same hostility like Chinese laborers had experienced before them, first only because of their different looks reminding the “native” majority of the Chinese who, by that time, indeed had not gained entirely good reputation; later it was also the quick economical progress of the Japanese that presented a thorn in a flesh of those who opposed Japanese immigration. Because they had no support from unions or American government, the Japanese who settled in the USA had to work very hard and began forming their own associations that would support them both socially and economically. Such a conception of cohesiveness or “ethnic solidarity” (Takaki 179) which they maintained, stems out from the “principle of group cooperation” (179), a principle strongly embedded in the very heart of Japanese culture: “Racial exclusionism defined the Japanese as „strangers‟ and pushed the Issei into a defensive Japanese ethnicity and group self-reliance” (180). Ironically though, this process led to a spreading perception of the Japanese immigrants as clannish, and the majority of Americans saw the Japanese as not willing to assimilate into the host society. From today„s perspective, this can be seen as a great misunderstanding. The Japanese culture, with all its traditions, habits and customs is far different to culture of other immigrants, especially those vast numbers of them coming from Europe. Therefore, 5 Japanese immigrants found it hard to comply with the norms and traditions of the majority culture, and to some extent kept their native culture alive among themselves, an issue that is fairly understandable and characteristic for all non-European minorities in America. In other words, it was the difference between the majority and minority culture that led to clashes and the rather negative perception of the first Japanese immigrants. Most of the Japanese immigrants had arrived in the USA with an intention to settle down, and were prepared to leave their native land far behind them and accept America as their new homeland. As stated above, the first generation of the Japanese immigrants retained most of their native culture: because majority of the residents of Japanese descent were literally forced to live in segregated communities, be it for racial or economical reasons, or both, they logically felt no urge to learn English and continued to speak Japanese among themselves. Being so far from their native land, they kept with themselves things that reminded them of Japan: kimonos, traditional Japanese swords, parchment rolls. After the outbreak of the war, these very things served the advocates of anti-Japanese sentiment as a proof of a profound attachment to the Japanese emperor and disloyalty towards the USA. The number of Japanese immigrants coming to setlle down on the West Coast of the United States was rising rapidly at the end of the nineteenth century. The nativists – especially in California where most of the immigrants was heading – who were never in favor of influx of non-European laborers and settlers, started expressing their fears that “the country was being overrun by an Asian horde” (Thernstrom et al.

Load more

  34

Copy Link