2013 Volume 89 Pages 1-16
Japanese immigrants in Hawaii started writing creative works around the time of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars (1894-1905), when the Japanese written language underwent significant transformations. Japanese language newspapers in Hawaii at the time carried many works written by non-professional writers, and many of them depicted Japan's natural scenery from memory, employing classical rhetoric and an aesthetic sensibility. Although those works have not been a subject of literary study, it is important to understand the role they played in the immigrant community, consisting as it did of people with different backgrounds and regional dialects, living in Hawaii where sensitivities, values, and norms from the mother country were not valid. In fact, these works became an important arena for the Japanese immigrants to construct and re-invent their identity as "Japanese" by recalling, analogizing and reconstructing their representations of Japanese Nature.
