Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the construction of identity in modern Japan. It focuses on Dorinne Kondo's argument in her work, "Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace", that identity is a "negotiable" quantity that is continually shifting in response to a range of different forces and contexts. The paper and Kondo discuss this according to the complexities of trans-national Asian identity in a contemporary Canadian context.

From the Paper:

"It may be argued, from a personal perspective, that this sense of identity as a shifting and ambiguous process of creation can be seen in the trans-national Asian identity in Canada today. For Asian immigrants, and particularly children of first-generation immigrants, there is a overriding preoccupation with preserving one's heritage identity set against the common accusation that one is a banana (yellow on the outside/white on the inside) or is "white-washed" by mainstream Canadian culture. For many of these children of immigrants, like the employees in the Sato factory or the Okinawans, their own identity is in continual flux as they move between mainstream Canadian society and the more narrow world of the family. Language is a primary signifying factor in this shifting identity in that while many of us speak our native tongues at home with parents and family, the other parts of our lives involved in working or studying or even enjoying free time in Canada necessitates the use of English. While we creatively construct our identities in this process, it must be acknowledged that - as with the Okinawans - there is considerable anxiety as to its implications for our understanding of ourselves."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Christy, Alan. "The Making of Imperial Subjects in Okinawa." In Course Reader: Japan in Global Context. Ed. Shiho Satsuko. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2006, 608-639.
• Kondo, Dorinne. Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

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