Sunday, August 1st, 2010, 11:00 AM. Mexican-Japanese Association, Young Nikkei Organization.
I was very worried that day. It was the end of my first week, and I only had done 6 interviews. I was way behind schedule. The only thing I had in mind was that I needed to collect the more questionnaires I could. That day I have decided to stay for the time needed. I stayed for 4 hours, making interview after interview with no rest. I recorded every interview. Four yonseis (including the head of the organization), two sanseis, seven niseihan, one sanseihan.
Here, already I have to make explanations. What is a Niseihan? What is a Sanseihan? Well, the basic categories with regards to Nikkei people or Japanese descendants are Issei (first generation), Nisei (second generation), Sansei (third generation), Yonsei (forth generation), Gosei (fifth generation), and so on. However, there is people that are between generations. What do I mean by that? Well, in the case of the basic generational categories, Nisei are second generation because one or both of the parents are Japanese born in Japan; Sansei are third generation because at least one of the grandparents are Japanese born in Japan; Yonsei are forth generation because at least one of the great-grandparents are Japanese born in Japan. This is the case if we have intermarriage with members of the host community.
When we have no intermarriage –that is, when people of the community is rather endogamous– things get a lot more complex. Suppose one of your parents is Japanese (Issei) and the other one is a Japanese's child (Nisei) or grandchild (Sansei). Then, you would be, on the one hand, Nisei, and on the other, Sansei or Yonsei. So, what generation do you belong to? Some answer Nisei, others answer Sansei, others just don't know what to answer, and finally, some others told me that some call themselves Niseihan. In this paper, I will use this category 'Niseihan' to refer to those children of Issei and any other generation, and I will regard to this group particularly in certain contexts. Even though I have 1 Sanseihan, I will include this one with the Sanseis, because of the following reason: one of the central divisions in this thesis is the one regarding prewar and postwar immigration, where membership in one or the other group depends on the immigration period of the first generation of the family. In the case of the Niseihan of my corpus, the fact of having an Issei parent on the one hand and a Nisei or Sansei parent on the other makes it impossible to determine membership to the immigration period groups. In contrast, with the Sanseihan, having parents of different generations makes no difference in this sense.
The members of the Young Nikkei Organization (OJN) are between 13 and 25 years old. Two aspects become clear within this population: (1) there is a high endogamous tendency within the parents generation, and (2) they have a well-defined identity. With respect to their identity, I could observe that they are certain of being Nikkei. Being Nikkei, in their case, is neither Mexican nor Japanese, and it constitutes a different identity. Furthermore, they are proud of this membership, therefore when they are asked for their feelings with regards to their identity, they answer that this is and advantage, because 'you have the best of both worlds'.
With regards to intermarriage, the data shows that out of 14 interviewed OJN members, 10 people were fully Japanese from the ethnic point of view. This means that the intermarriage rate within the parents generation is rather low. Among them, two of the cases were children of Issei and Nisei, two of them were siblings and their parents were Issei and Niseihan, three of them were children of Issei and Sansei, one of them was a child of Nisei and Sansei, another one had both Sansei parents, and one more was a child of Sansei and Niseihan. At this point, I wonder if this fact –the fact that their parents (voluntarily or circumstantially) had endogamous marriages– have an influence in their own attitudes regarding intermarriage.
In this section, I will describe the numbers with respect to intermarriage. This description involves two aspects: the first one is whether or not the married population is endogamous, and the second one is related to the attitudes towards intermarriage. These attitudes include, first, for the unmarried population, if they have a particular intention of marrying a Japanese person, and, second, if they have a particular desire for their children to marry a Japanese person.
What we want to share, first of all, are the global findings. In other words, is it usual for the community in general to marry within their own ethnicity or not? Is it usual to have a preference with this respect? Is this preference projected onto their children? Is there a marriage attitude regarding ethnicity? If it exists, how strong is this attitude?
Children Intermarriage
With respect to children marriage, most of the population (61%, 61 persons) answered that they didn't have a particular desire for their children to have a Japanese spouse. The next major concentration (31%, 31 persons) lies in the ones that prefer their children to have a Japanese spouse. Among the rest, 5 people did not answer, 2 preferred their children not to have a Japanese spouse, and as for 1 person, their children were already married with Japanese.
Own intermarriage: unmarried population, married population
With respect to own intermarriage, the description will be held in two parts: first, the unmarried population, second, the married population. As for the unmarried population, I will describe the attitudes regarding marriage, and I will try to present some tendencies with respect to the attitudes towards children marriage. Regarding the married population, I will describe the actual ethnicity of the spouse, and also present some tendencies with respect to the attitudes towards children marriage.
First, of the 47 unmarried people, 1 person (2.12%) did not answer, 21 persons (44.68%) did not have a particular desire to have a Japanese spouse, 17 persons (36.17%) preferred to have a Japanese spouse, and 8 persons (17.02%) preferred not to have a Japanese spouse.
There is an interesting point with respect to this last group: all of the 8 persons are female. I am aware that my data has a very limited quantity to point out any kind of tendency. Nonetheless, just between ourselves –and I mean that I am not going to include this appreciation in my thesis–, it is curious that among the unmarried females, 8 of 19 women have negative attitudes towards having a Japanese spouse, compared to 6 that have a particular preference for a Japanese spouse, and 5 more that do not have a particular preference. In contrast, among the unmarried males, 16 of 27 do not have a particular preference, but 11 have a particular preference for a Japanese spouse. Only for playful purposes, this means that the 42.1% of the unmarried females –far from having a particular interest in a Japanese spouse– prefer to have a non Japanese spouse, in contrast with the 0% on the males. Another way to describe it would be that while the unmarried females is disperse between negative (42.1%), positive (31.57%) and neutral (26.31%) attitudes, males present a 59.25% with neutral attitudes and 40.74% positive attitudes.
Second, of the 52 married people, 20 (38.46%) are married with ethnically purely Japanese people –among them, 4 are married with Nisei or Sansei–, 4 are married with Half Japanese, but the great majority (28 persons, 53.84%) is married with non Japanese –among them, 26 are married with Mexicans, and 2 with other nationalities.
Within generations, between generations
Because of my limited data, it is difficult to observe tendencies within generations, and between generations. Also, there are two main aspects directly related to generational attitudes that might be of great influence: first, the age, and second, the immigration date beyond prewar and postwar periods. I will discuss these aspects, in another section.
