Japanese American History and the Movie Snow Falling on Cedars :: Film Snow Falling Cedars Essays

Nipponese American History and the Movie bamboozle Falling on CedarsThe author of Snow Falling on Cedars did a good job with his research into the premiere to middle half of the 20th century experiences of Nipponese immigrants. Unfortunately, like most movies base on extensive books, I believe this movie whitethorn underachieve in representing the authors intentions. This movie seems almost as an outline to what it should be. The major problem area is with portraying the emotions between characters. For example, the sting between Ishmael Chambers and Hatsue Miyamoto seems significant at prototypal, but does not seem to be as painstakingly hard to break as they try to represent towards the end. Also, hints of prejudice are revealed in various protrudes by out the movie, but they fail to represent the attitudes that were more prevalent during the era.The first trace of good research for the movie is realized with the situation that it takes place on a fictional island n ear Puget Sound, Washington. This is an acceptable setting because Japanese immigration into the U.S. was focused mainly on the West Coast. Also, depicting the Japanese as grape farmers represents the fact that most of the immigrants moved to rural areas and 40% of them were farmers by 1940 (213).* Japanese immigration rose in 1882 after the Chinese Exclusion Act. This was in part to fill the gaps in the labor supply. These Japanese in turn were discriminated against. Much of the American prejudice against the Japanese was carried all over from feelings about the Chinese. The ideas were that the Japanese were racially inferior, cruel, crafty, and threatening (222). It is also apparent by social duration scales that extreme prejudice existed at the time against the Japanese. In 1946 they ranked at the very bottom of the list, even under the more traditionally stigmatized groups such as the Mexican Americans, African Americans, and other racially identifiable groups (38). The movie does a good job of representing the social distance between the Japanese and White Americans. It makes it apparent that there is not oftentimes interaction between the two segments of the adult population. This most likely stems from the fact that during the time most Japanese immigrants functioned in the rural economic enclaves based on agriculture. This limited secondary morphologic assimilation, and thus primary structural assimilation.