Inside the Fence : Writing Spaces in the Japanese-American Internment Camps

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  • 柵の中で : 日系人強制収容所の中の書記空間
  • 柵の中で : 日系人強制収容所の中の書記空間(ライティング・スペース)
  • サク ノ ナカ デ : ニッケイジン キョウセイ シュウヨウジョ ノ ナカ ノ ショキ クウカン(ライティング ・ スペース)
  • Editorial

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Abstract

This essay focuses on the writing, especially tanka and other works of poetry, of the detainees of the Japanese-American internment camps. After the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, 120,000 Japanese people were incarcerated in ten Relocation Centers or internment camps built in the United States. In these camps, Japanese-American detainees published literary magazines which included their own poetical works including tanka, haiku and senryu written in Japanese. Their literary activities inside the fences surrounding the camps formed a highly diverse culture and can be located in the category of “Nihongo Bungaku” or Literature written in Japanese. However, the characteristics of the literary works written inside the Relocation Centers (“camp literature”) are quite distinct in many ways. In this essay, I consider the difference between “camp literature” and other “Nihongo Bungaku” from perspective of the complex situation of Japanese-Americans during the wartime and the positionality of each writer as well as the role of Japanese language itself in their writing. For this purpose, I select several works of poetry (especially tanka) mainly from the magazine Heart Mountain Bungei but also partly from the magazine Tessaku to illustrate what the characteristics of the “camp literature” are.

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