It’s hard to remember when my inability to understand and speak Japanese really affected me. However, I do remember the dreadful promise I made to myself after my grandmother passed away and I saw my mother crying: “I have to learn Japanese, or else I will be a disappointment to my family.” I was 10 years old when I told myself this.
Language is an integral part of life. It’s both essential to communication and one of the first things we learn. However, for Americans whose families have immigrated to the U.S., language is never a singular thing in our lives. These individuals have been brought up with heritage languages, also known as the mother tongue that coincides with their dominant language. It’s like two different voices, one from our family and one from the world we live in.
While this can create doubts, insecurities and conflicts within an individual, language is not a defining factor in one’s identity. Our own unique and beautiful selves define who we are as well as our own cultures. The way we lovingly consume our parent’s food, participate in cultural community events or dance to our parent’s music are what make up one’s cultural identity. Though language is necessary for communication, it should never be used to divide communities and exclude individuals. There are no barriers to participating in culture. Being a part of its vibrancy helps those like myself move forward with a high head and pride in our ethnic identities. Having this understanding is essential for all children of immigrants who carry the unnecessary burden of not knowing their mother tongue.
The difficulty of growing up with this language duality has been explored in academic research as well. According to Maria Carreria, the co-founder of the National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA, this existing struggle is what makes heritage language learners different from second language learners. Growing up in a certain language environment will subject one to doubt their fluency, especially if they are being criticized for their abilities or compared to family members.
To this day, I still experience bubbles of insecurity in regard to my Japanese identity. Despite this, I always remind myself of the ways I have participated and contributed to my community and have helped it flourish in a multitude of ways all throughout my life. Those summers of laboring at the food festival to sell teriyaki for my small Japanese school, making mochi during New Year’s Eve with my aunties for osechi and sweating in a yukata at Natsumatsuri were all activities I hold close to my heart and my Japanese self. These small moments I grew up with and continue to experience are what being Japanese means to me, not my ability to speak the language. I myself also know that I am not ashamed of my culture and that I am proud to be a Japanese American. That’s all I really need to own my culture. In order to reach this point, there were a few important realizations I needed to have about my identity and upbringing.
Getting there, however, is easier said than done. While Japanese was always spoken in my home, only English was primarily taught to me. Both of my siblings are more proficient in Japanese than me, leaving me with the weakest Japanese language skills next to my White father. From a young age, I’ve experienced a lot of shame and guilt for not knowing Japanese. My inability to speak Japanese caused me to doubt if I was worthy enough to even call myself Japanese. Juggling my identity as a mixed person and as someone who couldn’t speak their heritage language felt like a constant battle to prove my worth to family and friends as a Japanese person.
To be more specific, there were certain aspects of my upbringing that I had to understand in order to remove myself from the unnecessary guilt I felt. My inability to speak Japanese was out of my control. Many immigrant families don’t teach their heritage language to their children in order to help their children assimilate better to American culture. Camelia Heins, a second-year at UC Irvine and Opinion Staff Writer for New University, shares this experience. Heins was never taught Tagalog or her mother’s dialect of Bisaya due to her parent’s fear that their child would experience the same racism and discrimination that they did. “Filipino immigrant parents won’t teach their children their native language because of fear that they’ll get an accent, they’ll be made fun or they’ll experience racism and discrimination like they did,” Heins said to New University.
Heins is a perfect example of driving herself to participate in her ethnic community rather. Heins is now an active member of the Kababayan, UCI’s largest Pilipinx-American student organization, and continues her education in learning Tagalog. She doesn’t let her language impact her pride, love for her culture or her identity as a Filipino-American.
Sometimes, our physical appearance places expectations upon us to know our heritage language. However, the way we are perceived is also out of our control. While it can be difficult to remove oneself from these expectations, it’s absolutely possible. Kyoko Watari, a third-year student at UC Irvine, is a golden model of this. Watari is half-Japanese and half-Filipino but can only speak Tagalog. This was a struggle for her whenever she visited Japan or communicated with her Japanese relatives. This was especially difficult for Watari because she not only has a traditional Japanese name, but she also looks more Japanese than Filipino.
“Growing up I would say there was a pretty big amount of shame for not knowing it because people around me would be like, ‘Oh, you’re Japanese but you don’t speak Japanese,’” Watari said to New University.
The expectation people had for Watari to be able to speak Japanese made it difficult for her to feel like she belonged to the Japanese community. Despite this challenge, Watari was able to find ways to claim the identity so many people invalidated her for when she joined Tomo No Kai, the largest Japanese cultural-social club at UCI. Watari is now the representative for Jodaiko, the taiko drumming club associated with Tomo No Kai.“It made me not feel so ashamed that I don’t speak the language and that language is not the sole thing that makes you a part of a culture,” Watari said.
For myself, there are times when I still swallow my tongue around Japanese people and hide my identity to avoid confronting the reality that I can’t speak the language. However, like Heins and Watari, I’ve learned to refuse that insecurity and hold my head high as a Japanese-American. Anybody who struggles with feeling validated in their culture can achieve this point of clarity and confidence with their identity like I have. Doing so required an understanding that my ethnic identity is defined solely by me and not by the language I speak. The language barrier did not stop my mother and aunties from showing me Japanese cultural activities and lessons that have helped my identity bloom.
Doing all this throughout my life combined with showcasing the vibrancy of my culture, is what being Japanese means to me. Knowing the Japanese language was never a requirement for having that experience. This is what Watari, Heins and every non-heritage language speaker have done as well. With this in mind, Watari and I are just as Japanese as those who are fluent in the language. Heins is just as Filipino as the people who know Tagalog. We are all enough for our cultures because we as participants of our culture not only define it but nurture and care for it as well. That is far more important than any necessity to speak the language of the culture. Language barriers and people’s expectations should never come in the way of that.
Skylar Paxton is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at paxtons@uci.edu.