論文 “Before the War”: The Issei Legacy in Japanese American Literature（Galye K. Sato） ・Hawai‘i No Ka Oi見る世代交代 ―「コナコーヒーの味」の場合―（中川芙左） ・日系アメリカ文学にみる二世のアイデンティティ（北村美由姫） ・ワカコ・ヤマウチの描いた二世女性―Song My Mother Taught Me収録の短編小説を中心に―（桧原美恵）
特集 文献解題 ・Milton Murayama Five Years on a Rock（山本秀行） ・Cynthia Kadohata In the Heart of the Valley of Love（稲木妙子） ・David Mura After We Lost Our Way（村山瑞穂） ・Yoshiko Uchida Picture Bride（渡辺佳余子） ・Bharati Mukherjee Tiger’s Daughter（深谷素子）
論文 ・Carlos Bulosan’s Search for America and Himself: America Is in the Heart（杉澤伶維子） ・The Philosopher in Search of a Voice: Toshio Mori’s Japanese-influenced Narrator（David R. Mayer） ・Meanings of Translation in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book（石原敏子） ・Yoshiko Uchidaの作品における日系アメリカ人の家族像（山本秀行） ・たたかう女たち―Velina H. HoustonのTeaが描く戦争花嫁の軌跡―（河原崎やす子）
研究ノート Fae Myenne NgのBoneを読む（植木照代）
クロスロード 《アジア系アメリカ文学―私を捉えた一冊》
書評 ・A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America（原田敬一） ・A Bridge Between Us and Go（石原敏子）
シンポジューム特集 《アジア系作家と現代アメリカ》 アジア系アメリカ文学通覧 （植木照代） 司会 はじめに（植木照代） 発表 1．「オリエンタル」から「アジア系アメリカ人」へ （竹沢泰子） 2．M.H. KingstonとFrank Chinに見るアジア系アメリカ人像（植木照代） 3．“Milk and Momotaro”―Rethinking Japanese/American Binary（Gayle K. Sato） 4．境界線上の表現―ベトナム系女性表現者 Trinh T. Minh-haを中心に（小林富久子）
論文 ・A Reading Of Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine with a focus on the image of transplantation（石原敏子） ・Telling the Lives：Maternal Narratives in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife （小沢円） ・The Meiji, the Issei Idea of the American Dream（Philip Grant 野崎京子） ・Jessica HagedornのDogeatersを読む―「食べる」ことと「飢える」ことの意味（河原崎やす子）
Messages from Overseas for the Inaugural Issue of AALA Journal
To: Asian American Literature Association of Japan. At the beginning of the 20th century, an anonymous Chinese immigrant detained on Angel Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay carved out these lines on the barrack wall: “As a traveler in wind and dust… I crossed to the end of the ocean.” Eighty years later, these early lines of Asian American literature have crossed the Pacific again to become materials for scholars of Asian American literature in Asia. It is fitting that our literature in America, be it poetry, short story, or novel, is now making other journeys–through time, space, and generation–to influence new readers. Japanese writers and scholars have, at least from the 19th century onwards, been at the forefront of reading and translating contemporary materials from foreign countries both from Asia and the West. However, a Japanese journal devoted specifically to Asian American literature is indeed a unique event and endeavor. I am sure the exchange of views between Japanese and Asian American scholars, writers, and students will enrich the field as a whole. What is most gratifying is that the early work of often anonymous (wuming) women and men Asian American writers is not lost to the world. Their words will now travel, electronically, from memory to modem in your journal.
Russell Leong Editor, Amerasia Joturnal, UCLA Asian American Studies Center Author, The Country of Dreams and Dust: Poems
My trip to Japan, in May 1994, with lecture stops in Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe and a photo-research tour of Nagasaki in pursuit of Madame Butterfly, was extremely fruitful, both personally and professionally. As a Chinese American, born in Beijing, whose earliest chilhood memories are of Japanese bombing raids of Chungking, it was balm for old wounds to discover old friends and new in Japan receiving me with so much generosity and painstaking care. As a teacher and scholar of Asian American Literature, I was greatly pleased to find interest in this relatively new subject flourishing so far from home, and yet, in a sense, Japan is one of its many ancestral homes and a proper place for its nurturing. The launching of this new journal on the fifth anniversary of the AALA is evidence of the health of this interest, as well as testimony to the enthusiasm and energy of its editors and the AALA members. On this momentous occasion, I greet the first issue of the AALA Journal in Japan with great delight and warm interest, as I would the birth of a child. I wish both the journal and its editorial mother [or parents?] a long and fruitful life. Not only will you, within your covers, bring together and foster understanding and appreciation of Asians of many different ancestral backgrounds, but you are destined, as Longfellow once wrote, to leave “foot-prints in the sands of time.”
Amy Ling Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison Author, Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry
I am honored to have been asked to contribute a few words for the inaugural edition of your academic journal. This is indeed an auspicious occasion for Asian American literary studies, still a relatively new area of study ever in the United States. It means the discipline of Asian American studies itself has reached a new level of international recognition. It also means possibilities for international exchange and understanding between Asians and Asian Americans.
In the 1960’s, ethnic American students and students of color in the American colleges and universities demanded academic studies more relevant to their own needs because they realized that most of what constituted American education meant white Eurocentric education. Ethnic studies allowed them to understand that they can be authentic Americans without denying their cultural heritages. For Asian Americans, it was not enough to learn about their Asian ancestors which was provided by the Asian studies programs. They wanted to know about the contributions of Asians in America and to study the ways that Asian cultures interact with the dominant American culture.
Due to this new consciousness, Asian American writers today write out of an awareness of the multiplicity of voices among us with a history of one hundred fifty years of immigration behind us. We have discovered that Asian American writers have not been absent through those years, but only invisible for early writers such as Sadakichi Hartmann did not fit into the canonical orthodoxies of European American literary standards. We are still in the process of defining what constitutes an Asian American writer. Is our lingua franca American English, or should the early immigrants Writing about their experiences in their native tongues also be included among our historical experiences? We are keenly aware that there is much more worp to be done in developing the field, and we welcome the interest that the Japanese scholars have shown in the past years in researching writings by Americans of Asian ancestry.
On a personal level, I have benefited greatly by the attention my writings have received from Japanese critics during the past few years. Their interpretations have given my works a new dimension very different from readers on this side of the Pacific Ocean. I have found that they provided me with deeper insight about my own identity as a Japanese American.
As we expand the perspectives in the arts and the humanities, we make academia more responsive to a rapidly changing world. Asian Americanists in Asia and the United States can open new intellectual frontiers as well as contribute towards making our societies more sensitive to cultural differences.
I thank the Asian American Literature Association of Japan for your groundbreaking efforts and wish you every success with this academic journal.
Mitsuye Yamada Poet, Camp Notes and Other Poems, Desert Run: Poems and Stories. Founder, Multicultural Women Writers of Orange County, Member, Board of Directors, International USA Amnesty
