Japanese-Americans: Middleman Minority Theory

 

Sophie Homlar

Kiyoko Nakatsui illustrates her family's multi-generational relationship with agriculture as a means of livelihood living as Japanese-Americans. As immigrants, Nakatsui’s family relied on farming as their source of income. She notes that "All of my grandparents’ families were farmers at some point” (Nakatsui) and before World War 2, they primarily farmed “up and down the West coast” (Nakatsui). This blog post seeks to conceptualize Nakatsui’s generational experience in reference to Edna Bonacich’s theory of middleman minorities. 
          

 During this time period, the treatment of this ethnic group is an example of Edna Bonacich’s theory of middleman minorities– a group of migrants in an intermediary economic and social position that develop and persist despite constraints. These people are often at the will of those in power and forced into marginal economic occupations. During World War 2, when Japanese-Americans were forced into concentration camps, they abandoned the land and farms that they owned. After the war, Nakatsui describes the conflicts that her family faces economically with the “host society” and the unity that comes from their labor solidarity and cultural heritage. After losing their land, her mother’s family needed to work on other’s farms in order to save enough money to purchase their own farm. The community of Japanese-Americans created a high sense of group solidarity, and Nakatsui highlights the crops, plants, and trees that bond the strangers together. She illustrates the process of upward social mobility that her family experiences– depicting the hard work that it took to develop the Okada Brothers Farm. This entrepreneurial success within the family business is a characteristic of middleman minorities (Bonacich 1973). Many of her family members were sojourners: those who intended on returning back to Japan. The Nakatsui family is not described in relation to other businesses or farms; however, Bonachich notes that based on these groups' intermediate statuses, there is often labor and business competition (Bonacich 1973). Nakatsui doesn’t necessarily describe her family as an outsider to the community or illustrate her own relationship with her country, but her described generational dynamics are indicative of outsiders within America-- where they are "bound by economic success" even if they face "conflict with the surrounding society" (Bonacich 1973: 593). 

Bonacich, Edna. 1973. “A Theory of Middleman Minorities.” American Sociological Review.

Nakatsui, Kiyoko. 2022. “Japanese American Farming in California: A Personal History.” Sherman Library and Gardens, May 27. Retrieved January, 2023.