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Concept drawings for Disneyland Paris attraction, PHANTOM MANOR by Fernando Tenedora, Julie Svendsen and Christian Hope.

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ANTIFA PHONE

I volunteer at Japanese Language School helping to teach Japanese to elementary school children. I do it because knowing and learning the Japanese language has been an important part of my identity and I want to help children take advantage of the opportunity they have at this language school. I feel a connection with Japanese-American families and children. It’s so interesting when they tell me about going to Japan in the summer or visiting their grandparents in Japan because that was a lot like my upbringing. It makes me wonder what life for them is like in Japan because they aren’t at the level of being able to have a conversation in Japanese yet.  

I think if we rely on isolated diaspora communities and childhood language education in the US as a way to cultivate Japanese identity, the drop-off rate can be very rapid after adolescence. Out of everyone I know who went through a rigorous Japanese language program from a young age in the US, only a few of us still actively speak the language both professionally and at home because most people just stopped speaking it in middle school and high school (much to their parents’ dismay). I meet them again when we’re in our late 20s and they don’t feel Japanese or Japanese American to me, just American. There is no sense of shared identity and camaraderie.

Those of us who still speak the language speak it only because we live with it, every day. And this has only happened because we’ve either made it a priority to work in Japan and/ or study the language extensively as adults. In addition, I’ve met a number of people who ID as Japanese Americans who don’t speak a lick of Japanese but (to me) are culturally more Japanese than many Japanese people back in Japan. For them, it’s stuff like Kendo, martial arts, kitsuke, cooking or activities through their local temple or church.

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