Furthermore, the Anti-Japanese demanded the United States government to restrict the immigration, which discouraged the first-generations immigrants.
Taylor Sakamoto in
The Triumph and Tragedies of Japanese Women in America: A View Across Four Generations
says that, in 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt negotiated an agreement with Japan to prohibit any further male
laborers from emigrating to Hawaii or the United States; the United States only accepted the members of laborers family who were already in the USA. This was
reducing the number of males and picture brides, because that was the only way for Japanese women to legally emigrate to the USA Sakamoto, 2007: 98.
Because of their status as an immigrant, the Issei had to experience prejudice, discrimination and segregation. The majority of the Japanese settled in California
had to face prejudice because the state had just passed through a period of a strong feeling against Chinese. The Bureau of Sociological Research Colorado River
War Relocation Center in
The Japanese Family in America
states that The Japanese were accused of lowering the “American Standard of Living” and of
unfair competition of white laborers. In 1920, Japanese could not apply for citizenship due to their racial characteristics and incapability to assimilate to
American culture, therefore, they were not qualified as good citizen. In 1924, the US government also prohibited interracial marriage between Japanese and
Caucasians and forbidded the Japanese to own land which made their lives in the US even worse 1943: 152-153.
2. The Japanese Immigrant Family in the USA
The Issei lived separated from the American mainstream, they mostly interacted around their family and community. The most surviving Issei in 1940s
had actually acquired certain American orientations such as individualism and self-reliance. Most of them already got enough knowledge about America in order
to be able to survive, but they left the major task to acculturate to American culture and more focused on their American-born children Kitano, 1996: 243.
The children of The Issei, called The Nissei, were generally born between 1910 and 1940 and by the 1970s were in their middle years. Although they got much
influence from their parents, they became more acculturated to America than The Issei did. Sakamoto suggests that the eagerness of Nisei to be American causes
them to leave behind their cultural heritage and begin to follow Western way of life with hopes of assimilating into the society they live in. Sakamoto, 2007:100.
Even though, the Japanese had emigrated to the USA, they still maintained their culture in term of family relation, especially mother-children relationship.
Ryoko Kato in
Japanese Women: Subordination or Domination?
provides a comparison between Japanese mother and American mother in term of family
relation. In contrast to Japanese mother who emphasizes empathy and guilt feeling, American mother tends to appeal parental authority. A high level of
psychological dependency seems to be a privilege for mother. Because
amae
or psychological dependency of children also indicates a high level of being accepted
and cared for. The Japanese mother uses the guilt feeling and threat of abandonment as a social control over her children.
A traditional Japanese mother
expects the children will come to think that their selfish deeds suffer the mother. Kato also summarizes that Japanese children will soon regret their wrong doing
after realizing that their parents have been suffering because of them and then end up following what their parents say. However, American people tend to think that
amae
or physical dependency of children to their parents indicates immaturity and negative quality. They assume that individualism is ideal since mature people
should be independent as well Kato, 1989: 52-53. In addition, The Japanese is a patriarchal society. Hsiao-Chuan Hsia and
John H. Scanzoni in
Rethinking The Roles of Japanese Women
says that, the Japanese were influenced by Confucianism and Buddhism that changed
matrilineality system into patrilineality system. Women lost their legal privilleges, for instance, they could not own property and divorce their husbands.
Confucianism and Buddhism not only changed the system, but also ascribed an inferior social and religious status for women Hsia, 1996: 310-311. Chris
Kincaid in
A Look At Gender Expectations In Japanese Society
states that in Japanese society, gender identities are defined by culture more than physical
difference between men and women. Women are labelled into child-bearing because men are physically cannot. However, child-rearing roles are a product of
a culture. Furthermore, Kincaid also adds a few key ideas about gender that persist within Japanese society, namely:
a. Men should work outside the home.
b. Genders should be brought up differently.
c. Women are more suited to household work and child-rearing than men.
