Thomas Lane The Development of a Happa
I was born to a Japanese mother and a white father. Although my parents had taken me to Japan many times, I never felt any connection with my Japanese heritage until I went to college. After studying the Japanese language and culture during my first year at Dartmouth, I spent a summer in Japan. On that trip I fell in love with the Japanese people. Now it seems that my life can be broken into two parts, before and after college. Before college I knew I was ethnically Asian, but I refused to accept the Asian culture. Since coming to Dartmouth, however, I have learned to appreciate all aspects of being Japanese.
Dual Identity
I am a happa, a Hawaiian word for someone who is half Asian. I can be white, I can be Asian, or I can be somewhere in between, depending on what suits me at the time. I was raised initially as a multiethnic child. I learned Japanese from my mother and English from the world around me, and had trouble differentiating between the two languages. When I entered preschool speaking my own unique blend of English and Japanese, the teacher assumed I was mentally handicapped because she thought I was speaking gibberish. Her acceptance was critical to me at that young age, and I informed my mother that I wanted to speak only English after that point. Since that time I have considered myself a white kid with an Asian mother, abandoning my Japanese heritage for fifteen years. Ironically, my ethnic identity was shaped by a preschool teacher whose name and face I don’t even recall.
I am and always have been living in two separate worlds. I was the white boy eating fermented soybeans, the Asian boy who could speak English, and the jock who played card games. As a child, I was much closer to my white father and his side of the family because of proximity and language. Most of my father’s relatives live in California, so I saw my white aunts, uncles, and grandparents at every holiday and for the occasional family dinner. I saw my Japanese relatives only during the handful of times we visited Japan, but it never struck me as odd that I rarely saw them. Perhaps I would have had more respect for Japanese traditions if we had sometimes celebrated holidays in the Japanese style.
Except for Christmas, large family dinners were a dreaded event. I was the youngest cousin by eight years and never felt able to compete intellectually with my older cousins. Conversation around the dinner table was fast-paced and intellectually challenging, with quantum mechanics and the intricacies of the English language as regular topics of discussion. Most of my cousins are also half Asian, but their command of math and science made more of an impact on me than race ever did.
My best friend from the age of two was Benny Tanner, one of many happa friends I had during my childhood. His mother was Chinese, but everyone assumed we were brothers, even twins. Our parents used to dress us in the same clothing, and we became known as Benny-Thomas because people couldn’t tell us apart. Benny’s house was like heaven, with a large-screen TV, video games, and a fridge that never ran out of soda. At home I was allowed only thirty minutes of TV a week and could drink only milk or juice. Not surprisingly, I went to Benny’s house as much as possible.
Benny’s family was the closest thing I had to an Asian family. In fact, he was like a brother to me, and his parents were like my second parents. During the summers I practically lived at his house, feasting on dumplings and fried rice. Benny’s Chinese grandmother had recently moved to America and spoke only Chinese. I learned essential phrases in Chinese, such as “wash your hands” and “who farted?” At my house, the only Asian influence was that we didn’t wear shoes in the house. I did not experience the typical Asian style of parenting Benny had. He took piano lessons and went to Kumon (an afterschool math and reading program), and his parents constantly hounded him about his grades and told him to study more. My parents encouraged me to do well, but they rarely said anything about my grades while I was young.
I went to a Chinese public school for the first eight years of my education. The students were both Asian and white, yet the school was referred to as “that Asian school in San Marino.” The school population was racially divided, the whites playing football and the Asians playing cards, though I did both. The few Asians who did become athletes were considered “whitewashed,” and the whites who played cards were the social outcasts, as they often were fat, wore thick glasses, and ran the math club. There was racial tension at the school, but the various groups were generally formed around common interests, not the color of someone’s skin or the language he spoke.
I had started doing gymnastics at around age five, and Benny did too about a year later. We joined the team in middle school and had ten or more hours of practice a week. The guys on the gymnastics team were the closest thing we had to brothers. We grew up together, went through the pain of workouts together, and played together on the weekends. They were also the biggest assholes I have ever known. They made fun of everyone on the team, and no topic was considered taboo. If you were pudgy, you were relentlessly teased for being fat. Using words like “fag,” “chink,” and “beaner” was considered normal. Some kids could not take the constant teasing and soon quit. These guys and our coaches turned me into an insensitive asshole, but they also forced me to stand up for what I am. I was picked on for being too short, too scared, too Asian, not Asian enough, and I had to stand up for every decision I made and fight for what I believed in. By the time I reached high school, I could handle any insult thrown at me.
In middle school I identified as white. I cracked jokes about the Chinese kids who spoke only Chinese and balked at the idea of learning Japanese. I wanted to learn something useful, like Spanish, not some language that would help me speak to my faraway grandmother. Although I never hid the fact that I was Asian, I never embraced what that meant. When asked what my ethnicity was, I would quickly respond, “I’m half Asian, half white.” I spent my naïve childhood passing readily between the two worlds. I always knew that I did not fit into one group and was proud to be different.
Clashing Cultures
My parents had very different ideas about my education, and I saw little merit in my mother’s views. My dad believed I would do well no matter where I was, and I subscribed to his belief that if you work hard, you will do well. My mother wanted me to get the best grades possible so I could get into the best high school possible, so I could then get into the best college possible. As long as I was doing better than a C average, my father was happy, but my mother firmly believed an A minus was a clear sign that I could have studied harder. My father led me to believe that doing well in sports and other areas was more important than academic perfection, and I felt that my mother’s insistence that I seek perfection in school would cause me to do worse in sports and make me less successful overall. I felt she was wrong and viewed her suggestions as useless nagging.
This is where I thought my American upbringing clashed most fiercely with my mother’s Asian childhood. Because my grades were very high, I felt I should have free rein over my education, and my mother’s constant urging to study confused and angered me. I was taking the hardest classes and almost always had one of the highest grades in the class. To my mind, as long as I produced the results, it made absolutely no difference how I got there. To me, high school was a means to an end: you got good grades in high school so you could get into college. My ignorance about Japanese views on education and my mother’s attempts to force me to study led to a continual battle of wills. Our conflicting views, especially about education, caused my mother and me to drift apart.
Looking back, I understand better where my mother was coming from, but at the time she seemed overbearing. I viewed social obligations and sports as my most important commitments and felt my mother was holding me back from the important things in life for something I had already conquered, my schoolwork. Ultimately, bending to my mother’s rules probably had no impact on my social status, and her concerns about my studies made little difference to my academic success. I’ll probably never fully understand what my mother wanted from me, but as I learn more about Japanese education, my mother’s arguments and desires now carry more weight.
My parents’ views on education clashed anew when it came time for me to pick a high school. My father wanted me to continue in the public school, even though it was quite some distance from home. My mother wanted me to go to a local private school, one of the best in the area. My father did not believe that the school’s reputation justified the cost and doubted that it would provide a better education. My mother wanted her son to be on the best possible educational track and therefore favored private schools. The decision was ultimately left to me, and prompting from my friends led me to pick Webb, a small boarding school in southern California.
The Webb School’s motto was principes, non homines—“leaders, not mere men.” From the time I started high school, I fully believed that I was ready to become a man. The transition to high school was a huge change for me, both physically and mentally. In middle school I was small; at five feet two and eighty pounds, I was one of the shortest guys in the school. I had no idea what I wanted in life. At Webb I felt I was getting ready to become an adult and to be trained to change the world. Another important change was hitting puberty. In the summer before high school I grew several inches, gained forty pounds, put on muscle, and gained the deep voice of manhood. By the time I reached Webb, I was ready for anything.
The Webb School had about 350 students, 70 percent of whom lived at the school. It was a private school that prided itself on having a diverse student body; the students represented about a dozen countries and all ethnic minorities. Being half white and half Asian, I felt I was part of the ethnic majority. There were not any big cliques at the school, and unlike at larger public schools, being at Webb essentially forced racial integration because you knew everyone. The classes averaged fifteen students, so you were able to know all your classmates intimately, and everyone was in an advisory group composed of seven students and a faculty adviser. The advisory groups started the school year with a three-day camping trip, held weekly meetings, and did various things together such as group dinners or short trips. My freshman group was split evenly between day students and boarders and was ethnically diverse, and the boys had a wide range of skills; some had good grades, some liked sports, and some were artistic. At Webb I was exposed to true diversity, not just ethnic diversity but also diverse talents and socioeconomic backgrounds. Webb encouraged and even forced interaction with all types of students and made it hard to socialize with only a small circle of friends. Although some of the kids were definitely less popular, they interacted with the whole student community.
This is not to say racism did not exist at Webb. Although our differences were celebrated, I am sure those in the minority felt differently from those in the majority. Race was not critical, however, and a diverse group of students held leadership positions. The biggest distinction at Webb was between boarders and day students. Boarders tended to be closer because they lived together, and they resented the laxer rules and standards that day students were held to. Being a day student was the only way in which I felt I was part of a group because of circumstance rather than choice. Webb created an environment where race was essentially absent as a factor for success, and while I feel that attending Webb made me a more understanding person as a result of my interactions with many types of people, it did not enable me to experience the world for what it really was. The sheltered world of Webb protected me from seeing the much more pronounced racism in the world around me.
Personal Preferences
My very first crush started sometime in middle school. She was a cute little blond girl named Kami. We had gone to school together since the first grade and were close friends. By the eighth grade, I dreamed of dating her but was too scared even to admit that I liked her. I met my high school sweetheart, Jen, at the beginning of my sophomore year. After being close friends for some time, we started dating more seriously. Jen was half Mexican, half white, and her parents were divorced. We dated for about three years and broke up before we left for college.
Although I did not notice it at first, my preference in girls shifted when I got to Dartmouth. I met Allison the day after moving into my dorm, and we quickly became good friends. She was Chinese, one of the first Asian girls I had found attractive. I had never noticed Asian girls before coming to Dartmouth—perhaps because the selection of Asian girls was relatively slim at my small high school. Throughout my freshman year of college, I had relationships with both white girls and Asian girls, which was a radical change from my dating preferences in high school.
The next shift began while I was in Japan, and this time I noticed. From the second I stepped into Narita Airport, I looked at the girls all around me. There was something about these ultra-skinny girls that had never struck me on my previous trips to Japan, and I felt that a completely new and unexplored world had opened to me. The ten weeks I spent studying at Kanda were amazing. Aside from my general delight at being able to live in Japan and learn the language, the three-to-one girl-guy ratio at the school was a definite plus. Because most kids at the school thought I was fully white, I received the generous attention the Japanese bestow on all foreigners.
Although my relationships in Japan were platonic, I had definitely developed an affinity for Asian girls. I spent hours watching YouTube videos of popular Asian singers and kept in contact with many of my new female Japanese friends. My taste in girls followed this Asian trend all year, but then the obsession faded, although I still find Asians appealing today. My mother is strongly against my marrying an Asian girl and has warned me that Asian in-laws tend to be more intrusive in their daughters’ lives. But of course I have no idea what the future holds in terms of my relationships.
My preference in girls mirrors my cultural preferences. I was raised with Japanese foods and traditions but never really absorbed them, except to say itadakimasu before every meal with my parents. Once I finally started noticing all the Japanese things around me, I wanted to learn more about being Japanese. I registered for Japanese classes with the goal of going to Tokyo for further study. While studying in Japan, I continually joked with my friends that I wanted to become Japanese. Although I knew I never would be mistaken for being ethnic Japanese, I could become culturally Japanese. I especially wanted to separate myself from the hennagaijin, the weird foreigners who loved anime and wished they could become Japanese. I became obsessed with trying to learn about all aspects of being Japanese and with exploring the obscure parts of Tokyo. I tried to visit a different restaurant or store every day, but although I was immersed in all things Japanese, I remained just as American as ever.
After studying Japanese primary school education in a class at Dartmouth, I realized I could never become truly Japanese. My American elementary education had imprinted me with a different set of cultural values, the American ideals of individualism and capitalist success. No matter how much time I spend in Japan, part of me will always be uniquely American. Although I still want to adopt more Japanese mannerisms and speak the language well, I realize now that I do not want to be Japanese. I have been raised with American values and would have trouble with Japanese values that place the group above the individual. Moreover, although I want to understand more fully what it means to be Japanese and understand that way of thinking, I do not want to live my life according to Japanese values. When I return to Japan, my goal will no longer be to emulate the Japanese but to be invisible.
Although I was born half Japanese and half white, I have never been an equal mix of the two. As I learn more about my Japanese heritage, I feel more comfortable referring to myself as Japanese. I no longer feel like a white boy pretending to be Japanese without knowing what it means. In time I hope to close the gap between my Japanese and American sides, to feel equally comfortable with both cultures, and to be able to switch between them naturally. Although I started to learn and understand Japanese traditions during my three-month stay and was taught the importance of using the proper forms of honorifics, I still do not understand why it is so essential to use them. I may never fully understand such traditions, but I hope to be able to practice them as comfortably as I do any American tradition. I am now closer to closing the gap between my white and Japanese sides, and I look back fondly on my transformation into an American who has learned to love Japan.
I still do not fit into any single group. I am sometimes the one white boy in the Asian American Society, and at other times I am “that Asian kid” hanging out in the frat house basement. I have grown comfortable with who I am and proudly embrace the fact that I am different. Going to college changed my perspective and helped me understand what it means to be half Japanese. Although I have no definitive plans for the future, I do hope to spend at least a couple of years living in Japan, doing volunteer work or teaching English. I most likely will return to America to go to graduate school, but the future is still wide open. I look forward to seeing where my life will take me after Dartmouth.
Thomas graduated from Dartmouth after double-majoring in engineering and Asian and Middle Eastern studies. He is currently doing a rotational engineering management development program and will work in several different locations around the country before taking a full-time job.