Speaking beyond the Discipline: Japanese Diaspora Archaeology in Dialogue
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Speaking beyond the Discipline: Japanese Diaspora Archaeology in Dialogue Mariko Iijima 1 & Wesley Ueunten 2 & Lane Hirabayashi 3 Accepted: 8 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract While this collection of articles provides a pathbreaking assemblage of studies of Japanese diaspora, for the progression of the field, archaeology must engage critically with other disciplines. Too often historical archaeology is conceived of as an afterthought or curiosity in conjunction with other disciplines’ approaches to history. Materials and objects as illustrative but not informative to the level of the archive of oral historical record. In this concluding forum, we discuss the contribution of archaeology to Japanese Diaspora studies, inviting a diverse group of scholars to comment on this special issue. What relevance do these studies have, and how do they articulate with other disciplinary approaches? In doing so we hope to move the conversation beyond the discipline, putting archaeology in dialogue with history, cultural anthropology, and ethnic studies. Keywords Japanese diaspora . Okinawan migrants . Ethnic Studies . Racial formation
* Mariko Iijima m–[email protected] Wesley Ueunten [email protected]
1
Department of English Studies, Sophia University, 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyodaku, Tokyo 102-8554, Japan
2
Department of Asian American Studies, San Francisco State University, 1344 Scott St., El Cerrito, CA 94530, USA
3
Asian American Studies, UCLA, 3332 Rolfe Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7225, USA
International Journal of Historical Archaeology
Comments on the Special Issue, “Charting the Emerging Field of Japanese Diaspora Archeology” Mariko Iijima While I am reading the articles in this Special Issue in September 2019, news of the “discovery” of a Japanese immigrant settlement in the forest of British Colombia draws the attention of Japanese media and is reported nationwide. According to Newsweek Japan, Robert Muckle, Professor of Archeology at Capilano University and one of the contributors to the issue, conjectures that 40 to 50 Japanese immigrants and their family members resided in this isolated area from the 1920s to 1930s. They aimed to escape from intensifying anti-Japanese sentiments in the city of Vancouver. He and his students excavated more than 1,000 rice bowls and alcohol bottles that signified the residents’ country of origin (Matsumaru 2019). Indeed, besides this Special Issue collection, this is my first encounter with actual case studies of what is called the archeological history of Japanese Americans. Having been a researcher of Japanese immigration history, I have searched for written materials that documented the voices, lives, and experiences of immigrants. In other words, excavation to me is a process of finding written or visual materials printed on papers that have slept in the basement of someone’s house, or in boxes stacked high in a library’s storage room. However, excavation in an archeological approach requires a physical act of unearthin
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