Japanese-American
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,411,188 (2015 United States surveys) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Hawaii, the West Coast, and urban areas elsewhere. | |
| Languages | |
| American English and Japanese | |
| Religion | |
| 32% Unaffiliated, 33% Protestantism, 25% Buddhism, 4% Catholicism, 4% Shinto (2012) |
Japanese Americans (日系アメリカ人 Nikkei Amerikajin?) are Americans who are fully or partially of Japanese descent, especially those who identify with that ancestry, along with their cultural characteristics. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century, but since the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asian American group at around 1.3 million, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity. According to the 2010 census, the largest Japanese American communities were found in California with 272,528, Hawaii with 185,502, New York with 37,780, Washington with 35,008, Illinois with 17,542, and Ohio with 16,995. Southern California has the largest Japanese American population in North America, and the city of Torrance holds the most dense Japanese American population in the 48 contiguous states.
People from Japan began migrating to the US in significant numbers following the political, cultural, and social changes stemming from the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Large numbers went to Hawaii and to the West Coast. In 1907, the "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the governments of Japan and the U.S. ended immigration of Japanese unskilled workers, but permitted the immigration of businessmen, students and spouses of Japanese immigrants already in the US. The Immigration Act of 1924 banned the immigration of nearly all Japanese.
The ban on immigration produced unusually well-defined generational groups within the Japanese American community. Original immigrants belonged to an immigrant generation, the Issei, and their US-born children to the Nisei Japanese American-generation. The Issei comprised exclusively those who had immigrated before 1924. Because no new immigrants were permitted, all Japanese Americans born after 1924 were—by definition—born in the US. This generation, the Nisei, became a distinct cohort from the Issei generation in terms of age, citizenship, and English-language ability, in addition to the usual generational differences. Institutional and interpersonal racism led many of the Nisei to marry other Nisei, resulting in a third distinct generation of Japanese Americans, the Sansei. Significant Japanese immigration did not occur again until the Immigration Act of 1965 ended 40 years of bans against immigration from Japan and other countries.
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