The Two Faces of Ethnic Business
The Two Faces of Ethnic Business
This chapter examines the dual role often played by small Japanese business owners in Honolulu's Japanese American community, with particular emphasis on the separate strategies they employed to attract both haole customers and Nisei youths. The advertising campaigns of Musashiya, a Japanese dry goods store located in the heart of downtown Honolulu, in the Japanese American press illustrate Japanese retail merchants' resourcefulness in Honolulu in both an inter- and intra-racial context. The chapter first considers the retail codes promulgated by the National Recovery Administration (NRA), along with the fukkō sales event held in 1934 as part of a larger effort to boost the spirits of the Japanese American business community in the midst of the Great Depression. It then turns to the week-long on-the-job-training (OJT) program at Musashiya and twenty other Japanese-owned businesses for Nisei graduates of local high schools. It also explores how Issei businesses got embroiled in the statehood debate in the mid-1930s and concludes with a discussion of the boycott of Japanese goods in the wake of Japan's 1937 invasion of China.
Keywords: advertising, Musashiya, Honolulu, Japanese retail merchants, retail codes, National Recovery Administration, sales event, on-the-job-training, statehood, boycott
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