Etymologically, crucible means that, from creation or birth, it must be propped up towards excellence or given a sense of purity to the essence. The “Melting Pot” comes from there; that is, trying to maintain the purity of a race including culture and civilization.
That word was used a lot in the 18th and 19th centuries during the conquests and subsequent population movements, especially from Europe to the new American continent, and it was about protecting and consolidating the white race as the dominant one in the new continent, to the exercise of their supremacy over the native ethnic groups that for the conquerors were not worthy of being considered as of the same category and of good customs as the Europeans who arrived in America. The other races, so to speak, the indigenous, the black, the copper, later the yellow, should be subordinate to it or to the service of those lords.
This concept of superiority was the domain of European culture from the 15th century to the mid-20th century and still persists on a smaller scale to this day. The European model was imposed in the new lands with education, customs, languages, religion; Likewise, with social and political behavior. All of this continued to be practiced as an indisputable pattern in all aspects of human life and as a consequence of the colonizing feat of the Europeans. This melting pot was achieved to perfection through fusions of the different civilizations with the common denominator of the white race that brought the European conquest and expansion in the new land that was called by them the American continent.
This isolation imposed by the conquerors reduced the blacks to slavery, the yellows as coolies (similar to slavery) and as workers for the cultivation of sugar cane on the large haciendas of the Caribbean and Peru during the 19th century. With this background, what do the Nikkei have to do with the issue of the melting pot of the race?
As we mentioned before, the crucible is the achievement of purification and can be applied to other ethnicities, not necessarily to the white one. Each ethnic group was and continues to be a group of human beings that is the result of social creativity, the degree of adaptability and acceptance of another culture and of interethnic, respectable and dignified relationships that are consolidated among themselves.
The phrase "melting pot", perhaps out of use today, can be applied to the Nikkei of the Americas as beings brought to maximum perfection, with a cultural hybridization that carries within themselves the ' kokoro ' or soul of the race. Japanese, inherent in each Nikkei being, and the peculiar characteristics of its detectable place, even when the conjunction of various ethnicities flows within itself.
The value of the isolation of the Nikkei lies precisely in the set of cultural hybridization that has developed for more than a century with the formation of a new model of society that can be called “the Nikkei society” that was established in this part of the continent. , where the cultural wealth of two nations merges perfectly, giving birth to a new generation of beings that purify themselves in the crucible of a new race and culture with the common denominator of being Nikkei of the Americas .
The name “melting pot”, which was applied only to whites, is now behind us. Today we live in an interactive, interethnic, intercultural world; borders and barriers have been shortened. The United States of America has a “colored” President who has aroused great sympathy and hope among the different ethnic groups that make up the world and it would be good for us to clarify ourselves; That is, let us achieve purification culturally and, increasingly, among all, to achieve peace in the world.
© 2009 Emi Kasamatsu
