Oral Story and the "Historicized" Individual : As Seen Through the Life of a Japanese American

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  • オーラルストーリーと個人の「歴史化」 : ある日系アメリカ人一世の「ライフ」への視点
  • オーラルストーリー ト コジン ノ レキシカ アル ニッケイ アメリカジン イッセイ ノ ライフ エ ノ シテン

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Abstract

This paper presents research on the life of Takuji Yamashita [1874-1959], a first generation Japanese American who fought in court against racial discrimination towards Japanese Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, examining the public story created through a series of events that portrayed him as a man of shinnen (perseverance) and made him a historical person. In reconstructing his life story, I focus on two kinds of narratives; those by consociates and those by contemporaries (A. Schutz). The former are people who had personal experience with Yamashita and the latter are people who lived in his time. This suggests a life story methodology whereby the life of a person who has already passed away and for whom there are no documents, is depicted through the multi-layered oral accounts of others. When thinking of "history" through oral stories, orality makes clear that the past is being historicized in the present. Historicizing someone as a historical person, is not only placing them in the context of a chronological table or an encyclopedia of history, but can be considered as a process of transmission in which contemporaries become predecessors. Furthermore, this suggests that the past is collectively historicized when collective memories are presented in an act of telling and hearing personal stories.

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