ABSTRACT
For Japanese Americans, these are perceived in terms of generational distance from Japan. Lyman describes the situating of generational groups from the immigrant group and he raises the notion that each group holds identifiable personality characteristics. Each generation removed from Japan is assumed to have its own characterological qualities, qualities that are derived at the outset from its spatio-temporal position, and are thus not subjective to voluntaristic adoption or rejection. The immigrants who were bom and reared in Meiji Era Japan referred to themselves as Issei or, literally, first generation to live in America. The offspring of geo-generationally mixed parentage- for example, Issei-Nisei, Nisei-Sansei, Nisei-Yonsei, and so on- and of racially mixed parentage are not easily classifiable. In some cases when Issei elders lived with their children, older Sansei learned to communicate in “broken” Japanese, but English was the main language spoken in most of the households.
