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Issei


Issei (一世?, "first generation") is a Japanese language term used in countries in North America and South America to specify the Japanese people who were first to immigrate. Issei are born in Japan, their children born in the new country are referred to as Nisei (second generation), and their grandchildren are Sansei (third generation). All of them come from the numbers "one, two, three" in the Japanese language, as Japanese numerals are "ichi, ni, san".

The character and uniqueness of the Issei is recognized in its social history.

Although the earliest organized group of Japanese emigrants settled in Mexico in 1897, the four largest populations of Japanese and descendants of Japanese immigrants live in Brazil, the United States, Canada and Peru.

Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan, numbering an estimate of more than 1.5 million (including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity), more than that of the 1.2 million in the United States. The Issei Japanese Brazilians are an important part of that ethnic minority in that South American nation.

The first members of the Issei did not emigrate directly to the mainland United States, but to Hawaii (when it was American-controlled but not yet one of the United States). These emigrants—the first of whom arrived on board the steamship City of Tokio in February 1885—were common laborers escaping hard times in Japan, and their emigration was subsidized by the Hawaiian government, which needed cheap labor for its sugar plantations. A large number of Japanese eventually settled in Hawaii.


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