The Generation Gaps Between Issei and Nissei as Seen in Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories

Oleh :
Dony Setiyawan - C0304018 - Fak. Sastra dan Seni Rupa

This research is mainly aimed to explain the generation gaps between Issei and Nissei and how the generation gapsbetween them affect the construction of identity of Nissei as seen in short story compilation entitled “Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories”. The source of the data is the short story compilation of Hisaye Yamamoto entitled “Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories”. The main data of the research is the entire words, the dialogues, the phrases and sentences, the characters, the characterization,and the setting included in the short story compilation. The supporting data aretaken from other sources such as the articles related to generation gaps, the history of Japanese American, the human psychology, and many others that are related to the research and beneficial to answer the research questions. The research applied interdisciplinary study. There are some approaches used to answer the research question: the sociocultural approach, the historical approach and thepsychosocial approach. The biography of Hisaye Yamamoto is also included to get a more understanding in her works. After conducting the analysis, it is discovered that there are generation gaps between Issei and Nissei as seen in Hisaye Yamamoto’s “Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories”. The gapsbetween them are the gaps in language andgaps in socio cultural. The language gapsare the gapsof ability between Issei and Nissei in using Japanese or English while the cultural gaps mainly about their differences in valuing the Japanese and English culture. Those gaps have created an invisible wall between them that halts their mutual understanding. Another result from the analysis is that there is an exceptional impact of the generation gaps toward Nissei identity formation. The sort of role model given by Issei had driven Nissei to shift their view of role model to their surrounding which mostly Americans. This shift of role model had led to Nisei’s undeniable characteristics that were more assimilated to American culturethan their Issei parents.