The Passage of Japanese Local Literature in Hawaii ; Reconstruction with a Postcolonial View

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Japanese local literature in Hawaii in the transformation from the nineteenth-century immigration era to the twenty-first-century global/transnational era is examined as one unique genre whose birth and growth corresponds to those of local literature in Hawaii in a large scale. First, local literature movement from the end of the 1970's to the beginning of the 1980's emerged with the establishment of Talk Story conferences and Bamboo Ridge Press and its journal founded by local Chinese and Japanese sansei. In my interview with the founders, Darrell Lum and Marie Hara, they said that they aim at identifying Hawaii's local literature from both Hawaiian (Polynesian) literature and Asian American literature in mainland and improving the local consciousness among the locals in Hawaii whose racial, ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds were first conflicting in the plantation era yet have been gradually assimilating into a shared local identity. The birth of local literature is traced back to the issei's immigration passage and plantation life in a colonial era where they create their local narrative in the unique oral literature of hole hole songs and the Japanese tanka, haiku, and senryu in the newly transplanted tropical landscape. The nisei's literature in English which results from their English-and Americanization-oriented school education in Hawaii as an American Territory embodies the narrative that revolts against colonialism. The sansei' literature reconstructs both issei's and nisei's narratives as the foundation of local literature and explores the colonial life and its heritage as their local identity and local narrative in postcolonial era where they are confronted with World War II, Hawaii's large navy base, tsunami, a wave of tourism and commercialism by both American and Japanese capitals, urbanization, and hapa in multiracial and multicultural environments. Japanese local literature in Hawaii will lead the local literature in the 21^<st> century.