Nikkei Now and Forever

by Weston Koyama

As 2026 draws to a close and 2027 approaches, the unifying microaggression that brings Asian Americans of all backgrounds together—that familiar question, “Where are you from?”—feels almost cliché. And the follow-up question, “Where are you REALLY from?”—driving home the point that our interlocutor perceives us as perpetual foreigners in our own country—feels so overly used in articles about identity that my reader might feel tempted to stop reading now, perhaps confident that they know the gist of what I’m about to say. An interlocutor recently asked me both questions, but that interlocutor was not a European American in the United States. He was a Japanese citizen in Japan. And my reaction was one of pure, gushing, and unadulterated joy.

You see, my Japanese interlocutor knew I held a U.S. passport. But he perceived my language ability as so fluent that he surmised I must have grown up in a Japanese-speaking household and thus must know the name of my ancestral prefecture in Japan. In that moment, I felt a wave of warm acceptance, belonging, and kizuna that I so rarely feel in the United States. Finally, I was Japanese enough. Japanese enough to pass as Japanese. Japanese enough to authentically speak Japanese. Japanese enough to own my own cultural heritage. In truth, I am a fourth-generation Japanese American. My paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Japan to Oregon 111 years ago, over two and a half decades before World War II even began. My maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Japan to Utah via Hawaii over 126 years ago.

I still feel great joy and pride in thinking back on the moment a Japanese person accepted me as being authentically Japanese in Japan. Learning the Japanese language as a fourth-generation yonsei was a herculean task that at many times broke my spirit. I remember weeping inconsolably after a Japanese language class when a Japanese teacher admonished me for not knowing a cultural custom she assumed I must know. I remember the intense anger I felt when white men approached me to ask if I had a younger sister to date. (My youngest sister had died by suicide the year I started learning Japanese.) I remember the agony of so many cultural mistakes I made in my first three or four visits to Japan and the extreme grace and patience my chosen families in Japan extended to me. My joy in being Japanese was earned, and I have a right to feel proud.

But fast forward to 2026. My wife is also Nikkei. But she is not Nikkei-Amerika-jin. Because she was born and raised in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and a Japanese father, you might describe her as Nikkei Filipin-jin. Yet even that wouldn’t be entirely accurate because she actually carries a red passport emblematic of her Japanese citizenship. I took a day off from work to drive us to Seattle from Portland so she could see some of the tourist sites in that city, including the “original” Starbucks shop. Our barista was Japanese, a fact that I didn’t even notice until my wife tried speaking to her in broken Japanese. “I’m Japanese too!” my wife exclaimed in a bubbly voice in broken, childish Japanese. I felt deeply embarrassed. I wanted to explain to our barista that my wife was not mentally impaired, that she did have a red passport, but that she was born and raised in the Philippines, so please don’t judge her. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to explain all that. The barista humored her with some simple Japanese responses, and the interaction was over.

Later in the car, I admonished my wife not to use Japanese with strangers or else she would be negatively judged. My wife challenged me: Who was I to question her identity? I shushed her with, “You’re more Filipino than Japanese!” Even as the words left my mouth, I regretted them, and I knew I was wrong. My wife is, obviously, half Filipino and half Japanese. But blood quantum doesn’t define a person’s identity. I was wrong because in that moment I personally endorsed the racist idea that society can evaluate the authenticity of our identities based on fidelity to a cultural performance. For me, that cultural performance means perfect Japanese grammar, speech free of accents, and perfect adherence to cultural norms. I succeeded in that performance, and I believe I have a right to feel proud. And now, having reached that pinnacle, I felt, in that moment with my wife, that I had earned another right: the right to decide who is Japanese enough.

The supposed right to define who is enough to be accepted into a group or who should be excluded from that group must be the basis of all oppression. In saying that, I do not mean to invalidate the need to have heuristics and categories for sorting people and for describing cultural difference. Yet my anger at my wife was misdirected. I should be angry at our Japanese barista for not having the imagination to include my wife in the broader framework of what it means to be Japanese. At the start of this essay, I described a Japanese interlocutor who mistook me for someone who grew up speaking Japanese in the home and my joy in that moment. I still feel joy when thinking about that moment. I feel that joy because I realized then that I am enough. Here’s the thing, though: I was always enough. I didn’t have to learn Japanese to be enough. I can still feel pride in my accomplishments while extending grace to the Nikkei around me, including my wife, by assuring them that they are enough. They were always enough. They will always be enough.