Issei
These emigrants—the first of whom arrived on board the steamship City of Tokio in February 1885—were common laborers escaping hard times in Japan to work in Hawai'i.
Their immigration was subsidized by the Hawaiian government, as cheap labor was needed for important commodity crops, especially its sugar plantations.
Within Japanese-Canadian communities across Canada, like their American counterparts, three distinct subgroups developed, each with different socio-cultural referents, generational identity, and wartime experiences.
The Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian communities have themselves distinguished their members with terms like issei, nisei, and sansei, which describe the first, second and third generation of immigrants.
The issei, nisei, and sansei generations reflect distinctly different attitudes to authority, gender, involvement with non-Japanese, religious belief and practice, and other matters.
[12] The age when individuals faced the wartime evacuation and internment during World War II has been found to be the most significant factor that explains such variations in attitudes and behaviour patterns.
Unlike other Nikkei communities in the world, these Britons do not identify themselves in such generational terms as issei, nisei, or sansei.
They endured great economic and social losses during the early years of World War II, and they were unable to rebuild their lost businesses and savings.
[8] Issei women's lives were somewhat similar, despite differences in context, because they were structured within interlocking webs of patriarchal relationships, and that consistent subordination was experienced both as oppressive and as a source of happiness.
[18] The Issei women lived lives of transition which were affected by three common factors: the dominant ideology of late Meiji Japan, which advanced the economic objectives of the Japanese state; the patriarchal traditions of the agricultural village, which arose partly as a form of adjustment to national objectives and the adjustment to changes imposed by modernization; and the constraints which arose within a Canadian or American society dominated by racist ideology.
[20] In Hawai‘i, Issei women worked as washerwomen, midwives, and barbers, providing essential services to the growing immigrant population.
[21] Issei women were instrumental in fostering social cohesion and preserving Japanese culture through the establishment of community organizations.
These men often avoided household or childcare duties, leaving Issei women to shoulder most of the physical and emotional labor.
Rituals are enactments of shared meanings, norms, and values; and this Japanese rite of passage highlights a collective response among the Nisei to the conventional dilemmas of growing older.
[24] Japanese-American photographer Mary Koga documented elderly first generation immigrants in her Portrait of the Issei in Illinois, taken between 1986 and 1989.
Japan was a closed country for more than two centuries, 1636 to 1853, since military rulers from the Tokugawa family wanted to keep foreigners away from Japanese society.
Change came around the early 19th century when the visit of an American fleet commanded by Commodore Perry caused the new Japanese government to replace the Tokugawa system of economics and politics during the Meiji era to open its door to trade and contact with the outside world.
After 1866, the new Japanese government decided to send students and laborers to the U.S. to bring back the knowledge and experience necessary for the nation to grow strong.
[32] The only exceptions were that some young Issei committed crimes relating to gambling and prostitution[citation needed], which stemmed from different cultural morals in Japan.
When the Canadian and American governments interned West Coast Japanese in 1942, neither distinguished between those who were citizens (Nisei) and their non-citizen parents (Issei).
[36] When the apology and redress for injustices were enacted by the American Congress and the Canadian Parliament in 1988, most of the Issei were dead, or too old for it to make any significant difference in lives that had been disrupted.
The number of issei who have earned some degree of public recognition has continued to increase over time; but the quiet lives of those whose names are known only to family and friends are no less important in understanding the broader narrative of the nikkei.
Although the names highlighted here are over-represented by issei from North America, the Latin American member countries of the Pan American Nikkei Association (PANA) include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, in addition to the English-speaking United States and Canada.
