The Meaning of Being Japanese : Powerful story told by Los Angeles museum exhibition

On Wednesday the Japanese American National Museum in Downtown Los Angeles receives its most distinguished visitors ever. Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan will view “Issei Pioneers,” the museum’s admirable inaugural exhibit on the first generation of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii and the mainland United States (open to the public through Tuesday).

When the king of Hawaii wrote the emperor of Japan in 1882 inviting immigration, both traditional monarchs were under the control of tradition-breaking economic interests. Many of the Issei who accepted the invitation had been dislocated by wrenching economic changes in their homeland. But if troubles in Japan were the push, there was also, at least for some emigrants, the pull of the legendary American freedoms. One young Issei woman wrote: “If I married well in Japan, there would be a mother-in-law, and for the kind of willful girl I am, that would be pretty bad. So my father thought I should go where there would be no in-laws.”

Empress Michiko, who was rendered speechless for a time by the stress of life in the family into which she married, may read these lines with interest and perhaps view with equal interest the touching home movies showing life in the kind of family the spirited young emigrant may have begun.

The exhibit also tells a far grimmer story, of course. Working conditions on the plantations of 19th-Century Hawaii were as bad as those on the slave plantations of the Old South. An overseer’s bullwhip lies coiled under plexiglass as a brutal reminder that white plantation owners regarded their Japanese-born workers as barely human.

And the American nation as a whole, alas, also refused to accept the Issei as future citizens. Few American stories betray the American ideal more shamefully than the blatantly racist denial of citizenship to immigrants from Asia.

And then came the World War II internment, financial ruin for many and a wound in the heart for all. That wound has begun to heal. Inwardly and outwardly, the Japanese American recovery has paralleled the Japanese recovery. But that is just the beginning.

Slowly but surely, the children and grandchildren of the Issei have made their legal status reflect their own correct perception of their American identity. A century ago, the Issei, in American eyes, were not Japanese Americans but Japanese in America. The Nisei (second generation) and Sansei (third generation) are indeed Japanese Americans , and the meaning of American is different as a result.

And what about the meaning of Japanese ? The answer to that question matters for the whole world. On Wednesday, when the imperial couple visit the museum in Little Tokyo, we hope all Japan will be looking on in spirit--and thinking.