Newer Generations

Five generations, back left to right: Liana Hubbell [Sansei,Hapa] and mom Debbie Moriyama [Nisei, daughter of R. Marano]. Centre left to right: Reverend Yutetsu Kawamura [Issei] and daughter Rose Marano [Issei]. Front: baby Justin James [Yonsei, Hapa, son of L. Hubbell], February 2000.

Courtesy of Mac and Reyko Nishiyama.

As each new generation is born, the distance away from Japanese traditions and language increases. Those in more recent generations are fully immersed in and influenced by Canadian culture.

The Sansei were perhaps the first generation to marry outside the Japanese Canadian community, but the trend continues with Yonsei and Gosei. Japanese Canadians are the most integrated and assimilated group of all ethnic communities in Canada.

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Kate Takeda, 2011. Kate is studying science at university. She is actively involved with the Collegiate Championship cheerleading team, participated as a member of the Canadian Nationals Gymnastics Trampoline and Tumbling Competition, and is a recipient of the Nikkei Cultural Society scholarship. Kate is of full Japanese ancestry – considered rare in the fourth generation.

Courtesy of Wendy Takeda.

Yonsei and Gosei

The fourth generation of people of Japanese Canadian descent, the Yonsei, is fully integrated in the broader society. Their connections to Japanese culture are limited and mainly involve family gatherings and some traditional celebrations involving their Sansei parents and Nisei grandparents.

Though this generation gets further away from their cultural roots, their ethnicity is written upon their faces and they are still subject to subtle forms of racism and exclusion.

A fifth generation of Japanese Canadians, known as Gosei is now being born.

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Kevin Sassa (Sansei) and his Hapa children: Devyn (left) and Maxim, Lethbridge, Alberta, 2011.

Courtesy of Pat and Roy Sassa.

Hapa

Hapa is a contemporary term for persons of mixed non-Japanese and Japanese ancestry. The term originated in Hawaii to describe racially mixed people. Most Yonsei andGosei children are Hapa.

In the 1960s, Japanese families accepted racial mixing. By the 1970s, intermarriage was more common among Japanese Canadians living in southern Alberta.

Mixed-race children with identifiable Japanese characteristics sometimes still face discrimination as a result of their Japanese heritage.

The documentary "One Big Hapa Family" describes how intermarriage is creating a fast growing Hapa community.

One Big Hapa Family Transcript

[music notes]

At a 2006 Japanese-Canadian family reunion, filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns realizes that no one after his grandparents' generation married another person of Japanese descent...

This is the story of his four-year journey to find out why...

Maybe we could say

it was because... because of the war.

That we had to break...

we had to break our ties with Japan,

and so we really went overboard doing it.

[man]: We were totally different, really,

'cause you are different as much... to me

as I am different to you.

And that's something that I felt from many years ago,

that this was the way, like,

we were going to marry a Caucasian.

They call me Sushi.

Once they called me Sushi too.

[man]: There might be a day that comes, then,

when people say “Yeah, I'm... what do you mean?

I'm Canadian.

I don't know what else I am.”

[man]: So yeah, there's quite the mixture,

so there's white, there's black, there's native,

and then, of course, Japanese.

Featuring animation from some of Canada's brightest independent animators

[man]: Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,

little frosty Eskimo,

little Turk or Japanese,

oh, don't you wish that you were me?

Oh, don't you wish that you were me?

And that was something that we took at school

in the early grades.

And it was supposed to be written by an English poet.

Almost 100% of all Japanese-Canadians are marrying interracially in Canada... is this the end of multiculturalism as we know it?

[woman]: I often hear people make the comment,

“Well, our community is getting smaller, it's dying,

and the problem is intermarriage.

We're just disappearing,”

and I turn around and say

“No, because intermarriage actually makes us

one of the fastest-growing communities in this country,

because we're doubling the number of people

who can potentially add children to our community.”

One Big Hapa Family

“And you thought your family was mixed up!”