Japanese American Food: Generation, Class, and History

Chief among the factors complicating the story of Japanese American food and identity is generation. The issei, or first-generation Japanese Americans, were born in Japan and immigrated to America with or without their families in the mid-nineteenth century. The first to come were those who came as dekasegi, temporary migrant workers whose goal was to return to their families in Japan. These workers included twenty-four samurai who came to America as farmers in 1867. Most of the migrants, however, were of peasant origin and began to arrive in Hawaii, in 1880. Their numbers increased after 1882, when Japanese immigrants began to replace Chinese laborers, whose numbers were reduced by the Exclusion Act of 1882. In Hawaii the Japanese worked under contract on plantations; on the mainland they worked on the railways and in mines. These workers did not see the overseas sojourn as a new beginning for themselves but as support for those left behind.