Japanese trivia

[sff_corgi_lj]

Issei denotes the first generation - the immigrants.
Nisei are their children.
Sansei are the children of the Nisei.
Yonsei is the fourth generation.
Gosei and Rokusei follow.

Comments

[h311ybean]

I think it's cool how the beginnings of the words sound like the numbers in Japanese. (Ich, ni, san... and so on, except for the fourth generation.)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

*opens mouth*

*firmly applies paw to lower mandible, closing mouth*

The alternate pronunciation for the number four is actually pretty common, due to the "standard" pronunciation being a homonym for "death". Speaking of which, what with the passage of time, the San Francisco Chronicle's obituary pages now generally have at least one listing per week for mainland Nisei who were dispossessed into internment camps during WWII; many of the men were also combat veterans from the European campaign after D-Day.

(The Japanese-Americans in Hawaii weren't interned because they were just too large a proportion of the population there. Ten thousand of them volunteered for combat duty in Europe anyway. But I digress.)

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

No,no - personally, I never got to learn my numbers in Japanese, so I've got the vapour trail thing going on here. That's one reason I posted that, because I can never quite remember what the different generations are called and this is a handy place to dump stuff like that. ^_^

I hope we don't forget what the nisei and their families went through, especially in the light of the current willingness to revise anything 'we' don't like (see: White House transcripts).

Didn't George Takei's family get stuck in a camp too?

[delirium23.livejournal.com]

Yes, they did. :(

And you are right to be concerned about internment camps in our foreseeable future. They're there and waiting. Some of them were used during the Katrina aftermath to detain...er, rescue refugees.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

I'm worried for the Arabs and Muslims... and Sikhs, since some subhumans in Boston killed a Sikh gentleman for the sin of wearing a turban.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Didn't George Takei's family get stuck in a camp too?

Yep. Including him, between ages four and eight.

Apologies if I sounded snippy; posting in the wee petite hours can foster that impression.

Shortly after I moved to California, I found out that the local mall, which had once been a racetrack, had also served an intermediate existence as the initial holding point for local Japanese-Americans before they were sent out in trains to the camps in the middle of nowhere. I'd seen absolutely no indication of this history in several years of going to that mall, although apparently there's a small plaque near one of the entrances. However, that particular area's population, and thus the mall's clientele, now have a significant Asian majority. I find this delightfully ironic somehow.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

[reads George article] He's such a mensch.

Apologies if I sounded snippy; posting in the wee petite hours can foster that impression.

[waves dismissively] :) I'm still curious about that number thing you mentioned, though.

And -- which mall?

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Tanforan Mall. As a tangent, the Stonestown Mall just within the SF city limits has the biggest manga selection I have ever seen anywhere except for the Japanese section at Powell's Books in Portland, though I can't recall if I've ever actually tracked down a Kinokuniya.

Re the number thing, did you mean the taboo on the number four? (Yes, that's the correct link, despite the initial apparent irrelevance of the paper's title. Arf!)

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

Arigato gozaimas' [bow].

(Arf indeed!)

[h311ybean]

The alternate pronunciation for the number four is actually pretty common, due to the "standard" pronunciation being a homonym for "death".
Well, I wasn't going to say anything if you weren't :-p (And I can understand that you certainly don't want to mention "death" and "generation" in the same breath!)

This is also the reason why the number four is avoided in ikebana, among - I suppose - other things. But I just heard that from someone.

[delirium23.livejournal.com]

Thanks...I always thought Issei were immigrants and Nisei were those born here (to anyone), and had never heard of the others.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

It's a bit of data that's been floating around the back of my head since college. :) I don't have much Japanese (no numbers, except for 'ichi'), so I always have to look it up to get it right.