FINAL PAPER

SYRENE TANAGRAS

HISTORY 300

ROUGH DRAFT

NOVEMBER 10, 2004

ASIAN CHILDREN: THE CHINESE, FILIPINO AND JAPANESE CULTURE; A MODERN COMPARISON TO LUCY PERKINS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….Page 3

LUCY FITCH PERKINS (1865-1937)………………...…………….Page 3-4

THE CHINESE TWINS (1935)………………………………………Page 4-8

THE FILIPINO TWINS (1923)………………………………………Page 8-11

THE JAPANESE TWINS (1912)……………………………………..Page 11-14

            

THE CHINESE TWINS VS. THE GHOST FOX…………………...Page 14-15

THE FILIPINO TWINS VS. ………………………………………....Page 15-16

THE JAPANESE TWINS VS. TWO SISTER’S DOWRIES………Page 16-17

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………...Page 17-18

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………..Page 18-22

INTRODUCTION

Lucy Fitch Perkins was the first and only author who wrote children’s books

using Asian children as main characters to portray Asian cultures.  Her most famous books were part of a series called Twins of the World.  Among the twenty six books in this series were the stories of the Chinese, Filipino and Japanese twins.  Her usage of Asian children portrays the wayward societies of

China

, the

Philippines

and

Japan

.  The Asian twins from these countries are depicted as traditional, bygone characters living in agrarian communities. 

Before writing her series, Lucy Fitch studied art in

Boston

.  She then worked as a teacher of design at the Pratt Institute in

Brooklyn

(Perkins, 60).  Throughout this course in her professional career, she met and married a young architect named Dwight Perkins, adding Perkins at the end of her name.  During their relationship, she further developed her interest in art and design through architecture.  Dwight eventually became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Together they promoted architectural projects for

Chicago

and other cities.  Her understanding of architecture became so advanced that she went beyond the protocols of beautification in her husband’s many civic projects.  Like her books, she developed each project with detail and worked out every piece to fit together perfectly. 

No other female author since Perkins has taken up the task specifically to tell stories of other country’s cultures using native characters.  Most women of her day wrote journals regarding the places they have seen in their travels.  In her Twins of the World Series, she told stories of the Asian culture which helped uncover the mystery that was the people of the Orients in the early twentieth century.  This also paved the way for the Asian culture to become recognized by its American neighbors enabling it to make its way into mainstream

America

.  Today, in comparison to the Perkins books, contemporary authors use the Asian children’s character in fictional stories that teach a lesson or for mere entertainment in lieu of main characters of a book telling stories of the Asian culture.  Unlike Perkins, these authors use Asian children in stories with parts that are equal to characters of their Caucasian counterpart. 

Throughout her life, Lucy Fitch Perkins was a distinguished children’s author, among many things.  She was also a renowned artist, book illustrator, and art teacher.  Her most popular works were the Twins of the World Series, which were printed throughout 1911 and 1938.  In each book, she describes the culture and environment of each set of twins.  In doing so, she portrays the current state of their culture at that period in time.  This enables her young readers to imagine a land completely and unknowingly different than their own.  She also educates the children of those regions about their own culture and their traditions.  Being a young child reading about other children that live on different parts of the world can be fascinating to someone with a curious mind.  Each story depicts a two generation household living in an agrarian society.  For an American child, this sort of lifestyle may seem a bit out of the ordinary compared to their single family home in the suburbs.  In these books, Perkins writes clearly and accurately of the traditions of these forgone cultures with accuracy. 

THE CHINESE TWINS (1935)

One of the books from the popular Twins of the World Series is The Chinese Twins.  Moon Flower and Golden Boy belonged to the Chang Family.  Along with other members of their family, they lived in a compound surrounded by a stone wall, much different from the open spaced suburban neighborhood of an American child.  In this compound stood three houses made of cement.  In one house lived the Chang Family along with Grandma Chang.  In the house to the right lived their uncle’s family.  In the third structure to the left of the Chang residence is where they housed the family livestock such as their goats, chickens and pigs.  Immediately, the young reader will see that this is a simple, tight knit culture, with the extended family living in the same compound.  This is a tradition that has been followed by many Chinese families for centuries.  The family of Moon Flower and Golden Boy Chang are religious followers of this tradition.  And while Chinese families were all living together in their homes, American children in their homes were comfortably built with only their immediate family living with them.  By comparison, the single family American home of the early twentieth century was much cozier than those in

China

and was not as crowded.

Perkins describes the Chang family as avid followers of the Chinese customs.  Moon Flower being a girl in a Chinese household, she must obey her elders and has no opportunities for a life outside once she is married.  Her way of life consists of an old age tradition of foot binding, serving her mother-in-law from an arranged marriage at ten years old and confinement inside the walled compound of her husband’s home.  Her American counterpart at age ten is learning in school and has the freedom to play outside among friends of the same age with unbound feet. 

In the story, Perkins stated that Moon Flower is a burden to her family because they will need to endure the task of finding a husband (Perkins, 15).  Fully aware of her predicament, Moon Flower is insistent on avoiding this fate.  She decided to runaway with her brother to attend school in the big city.  She walked the many miles to her destination, enduring the hardship of walking along a dirt road disguised as a boy.  Perkins painfully and sympathetically describes Moon Flower’s struggle in great detail to the reader so that an awareness of living in this kind of a discriminatory culture is realized.  Moon Flower’s relatives in the city discovers what she has done and are eventually persuaded to allow her to stay once they have heard of the trouble she went through to get there.  Moon Flower in the end receives the education she fought for and roamed freely around the big city with unbound feet along with her twin brother.

Golden Boy has much more opportunities in life than Moon Flower.  He will never go through the trouble Moon Flower went through to receive an education.  Being a male in a Chinese family, Golden Boy was granted a formal education and will be able to secure a job outside the farm.  Golden Boy is the second boy in his family to become educated.  His cousin Great Scholar is the first.  Both boys attend school in a big city far from their farm.  Golden Boy receives the same opportunities as his American male counterpart. Perkins depicts this similarity with bitter comparison.  Her description of how boys are treated in both countries is an unfair comparison to that of how women in

China

were treated during the early twentieth century. 

             While Chinese girls like Moon Flower would eventually fulfill the traditional custom of bearing children and tending to the home in the walled compound, her brother Golden Boy will grow up to be able to get out and work.  Golden Boy would have the choice of tending to the laborious job of farming or holding official positions in the city. He was free to do as he pleased. 

China

, much like

America

, in the early twentieth century was evidently a male dominated society. This was the general distinction of the time.  The American man was educated and primarily supported the family.  Perkins describes a male populated economy in both countries, while the Chinese women did the chores of taking care of children and doing the work needed around the home.  In

America

, there were few exceptions to this segregation.  American women received an education in sometimes prestigious schools and were able to move on and have careers such as a writer.  This is probably one of the reasons why Perkins was the only writer of her time to embark on a writing project such as this.  No other female writer was taken seriously and that no such writer would choose a topic determined to teach its readers.

In early twentieth century,

China

was also in turmoil as the two-millennia-old dynastic system of imperial government was brought down during its first confrontation with Europe, one of many western countries that secluded

China

would have to face.

China

during this time was no place for a child to grow up in. 

China

saw its neighboring countries and others around the world as barbarians.  This was a Chinese opinion that formed during the two times that

China

was defeated and conquered by two of its neighbors.  These barbaric people, the Chinese felt were uncivilized, war mongers and were unfit to rule.  After the final defeat of the Chinese imperial government in nineteen eleven, the country was on its way to acknowledging its neighbors, even in the west, as equal countries who were just as capable and independent as

China

.  It was during this period that Perkins sets her story of the Chinese Twins.  She describes an agricultural economy supported by farm villages growing mainly rice, wheat and fruits.  Moon Flower and Golden Boy lived in such a village.  In their farm, they grew wheat and cherries.  Perkins was detailed in telling of

China

’s flourishing agricultural economy throughout the story.  In fact, one of the causes for

China

’s abrasive confrontations with countries from the west was for this reason.  Western countries at this point wanted to trade and establish other businesses relating to agriculture but

China

refused to allow an economic relationship to exist.  In the end,

China

was defeated due to more advanced western weaponry.  Today,

China

still limits its economic ties with other nations around the world but it has progressed in its culture.  The western culture is now interwoven with their ancient cultures and is evident in their clothing, daily lifestyle and family relationships.  If Moon Flower and Golden Boy were alive today they would be used in stories that depict a modern

China

.  Instead they were chosen as characters that depict a society lagging behind time. 

THE FILIPINO TWINS (1923)                        

The story of Rita and Ramon Santos takes place during a period when the islands of the

Philippines

were in the process of trying to gain its independence from the

United States

.  Until its independence in 1946, the inhabitants, the Filipinos[1] were considered part of the

United States

, therefore branding them Americans with brown skin.  Ramon and Rita were these brown Americans living in a remote farming village in the Bataan[2] regions on the

island

of

Luzon

[3] outside the big city of

Manila

.  Perkins paints a picture with words describing the farm life of the

Santos

twins.  Ramon and Rita make up the brother and sister set living in a nipa hut on the shores of

Manila

Bay

. The farm where Ramon and Rita’s house stood was surrounded by mangroves and coconut trees, much different scenery from the square wheat fields that map out the farm lands of

America

.  The little hut was perched on high posts; underneath it were always dried mangrove wood and guava branches and was sometimes used for shelter to small farm animals.  A coexisting American home of the time was made up of concrete and had separate huts containing the farm’s staple products and animals.  Also, the American farmers had better resources to build their homes and farming techniques was more advanced than that of the Filipino farmer who still used an animal called a Carabao to plow the rice fields. 

Rita and Ramon lived with their mother,

Petra

, father, Felix and many various farm animals.  They have Dingo (Dog), Maah (Goat), Fatty (Pig) and Bobtail (Carabao).  The twins attended school in a small town nearby and came home for lunch around noontime.  During this time, their mother has lunch prepared for them while their father ate his lunch out in the rice field.  The American child growing up on a farm in the nineteen twenties did not have to go back home for lunch.  Lunch was brought to school with the children.  Sometimes the American child did not attend school at all, tending to the needs of the farm with other family members.  These American children stayed home and assisted with the daily activities of the farm.  

The Filipino family culture during this time was only to help the family become more prosperous and the maintenance of close family relationships.  Utang Ng Loob[4] was a common theme in Filipino heritage.  This means to pay your respect to those who care for you.  This is when Ramon and Rita worship and obey their mother and father as retribution for taking care of them.  In return, Ramon and Rita’s purpose is to serve their parents and help them anyway they can.  They helped with daily chores around the farm as often as needed, even missing a day or two of school when necessary.  This consists of the feeding of farm animals, cooking, cleaning, tending to the rice fields and even earning money for the family’s survival.  This was their answer to the struggling economic state of the nineteen twenties in the

Philippines

.

A good example of this economic instability experienced by the family was the time when the rice harvest was not what Felix expected.  The

Santos

family did not have enough to eat after the rice was sold and the profit was used to pay for various farm expenses.  In reality, the

Santos

family, like many, was too poor to sustain even the most basic needs of living in the early twentieth century

Philippines

.  To help their parents, Ramon and Rita came up with the idea of entering a contest based on the best home made project in the Harvest Exhibit in which the winner won a cash prize.  After months of hard work and labor, the twins’ efforts prevailed.  Rita won the cash prize, even hesitantly selling her hard earned homemade basket to an American observer from the big city.  This meant adding more money to the family purse.  Ramon’s project of raising a rooster did not win a prize but he was happy that his sister could take home the first prize.  In the end this act of self sacrifice saved the family from starvation and from sinking further into poverty. 

The country of the

Philippines

was still in its transitional period during the nineteen twenties.  In addition to being children, the young Filipinos like Ramon and Rita were accepted as laborers.  Children were allowed to miss school for the sake of helping their family.  Like the American child living on a farm, life for the Filipino children on a farm was not easy.  In both countries, the children were expected to do their fair share of work.  Meanwhile, the new reforms that would better the economic conditions in the

Philippines

were slowly taking shape and have not reached the remote farming regions like Ramon and Rita’s village.  And the Nacionalista Party[5], allowed to rule by the

United States

, did very little in the meantime to better the economic situation and uplift the living standards of the Filipino people.  Many families like Ramon and Rita’s family had to fend for themselves and could not depend on the government for monetary support.  In fact, most of the political elites only cared for their own personal wealth under the Utang Ng Loob theme, where the rich would grant favors to the poor in exchange for the popular votes.  This was a patron client relationship between elitist politicians that did nothing to promote an honest government and did not represent the people.  Basically, the non elite Philippine citizens were being cheated by the people they elect into office.  It is this kind of politicking that did not establish or change reforms like land ownership, tenancy rights and population growth.  Ramon and Rita’s family had to depend solely on their land and their hands to get food on the table.  At the same time, American politicians were busy approving or passing acts that would eventually help in shaping and changing the political environment in the

Philippines

.  Several Acts were passed replacing or establishing new ones that promote the welfare of the citizens.  The Nacionalista Party was also replaced by the new House of Representatives.  But before all of these changes were made, Ramon and Rita shared the burden along with their parents of providing the family’s livelihood.

THE JAPANESE TWINS (1912)

Taro and Take were two Japanese twins who lived on the

island

of

Japan

.  In nineteen twelve, Perkins portrays a culture under an imperialistic rule. It is yet another politically unstable, agrarian society in

Asia

, but with a much older, more defined culture.  Taro and Take live in a paper house with their Father, Mother, Grandmother and Baby.  Much like the Chinese twins, there are three generations living together under one roof.  The children’s names are also chosen to signify their place in the family.  Taro’s name means eldest son, Baby is called Jiro, second son or Bot’Chan, which means Baby Boy.  Take’s name means Bamboo.  Her parents wanted her to grow up to be slender and graceful like a Bamboo.  Perkins gives her verbal account of an aged culture full of symbolic figures and rituals.

As previously mentioned, the twins’ home was made of paper.  It is fragile but it blends in with Perkins’ description of a serene environment.  It also served its purpose of being cool amid the hot climate of

Japan

.    The house was built in the middle of a beautiful Japanese garden.  The garden had a bamboo orchard, a small pond full of tiny fish, floating lilies and small trees called Bonsai[6] trees growing near a little mountain nearby a red colored bridge. There were also streams that emptied into the pond where the little fish swam.  In this same garden close to the paper house was a small structure used for storage for the family’s most prized possessions called the

Kura

.  The

Kura

’s main purpose is to store the family’s valuables to protect it from earthquakes and fire. Lavish and beautiful by Perkins description, this house will never be built in the industrial setting of

America

in nineteen twelve. 

Perkins writes the story of Taro and Take with the ancient Samurai[7] history in mind.  Taro and Take are members of the military class called the Samurai; they were Japanese warriors that hold great importance and influence in Japanese culture.  The Samurai date back to the early seven hundreds.  They lived by the ethic code of the bushido[8].  Strongly influenced by the Chinese philosopher Confucius[9], the code emphasized loyalty, self discipline and respect.    Perkins adds these principles in the story by describing the peaceful, tranquil environment in which the Taro and Take live.  The Samurai’s main purpose is to defend their family and their country.  Take being the eldest boy in the family will have to take on this role.  Once he is old enough, it is customary for his father to give him the family sword, which is symbolic of the family’s honor.  With all of the good intentions of the Samurai principle, these military warriors were in the end seen as a derogatory symbol of

Japan

.

Taro and Take’s father and their Grandfather were Samurai warriors.  The center of Taro and Take’s life was honor and obedience, influenced by their Samurai heritage.  Take being the daughter of a Samurai warrior had to be obedient to her father, brother and Baby Brother.  Even her mother and grandmother had to do same.  The only one who would be able to be obedient to Take would be her daughter-in-law when it comes time for her to have one, which will be a long time since she is still a little girl.  To prove her obedience, her father made her bow her head low to the ground only to feel her Baby Brother’s little feet stepping on her neck.  This was a Japanese ritual signifying the obedience of a daughter to the male members of her family, even to her Baby Brother.      An American child growing up in nineteen twelve did not have to have their necks stepped on or being worried about upholding the family honor.  A normal American child in nineteen twelve grew up with either a laborious childhood if the child came from a poor family or grew up with all of the extravagances that were fitting to a child coming from a wealthy American family.  Either way, the American counterpart of Take and Taro were oblivious to any historical rituals.  Back in

Japan

, Taro and Take’s life was bounded by their Samurai heritage.  Take precociously fulfilled her role as a sister and daughter according to the Samurai way of life.  Both siblings overall did their share in minding their manners to their mother, father and grandmother. 

Perkins further depicts the Japanese culture, like the others, as completely foreign and untouched by western civilization in nineteen twelve.  The only relationships

Japan

hesitantly cultivated with the west were economic and legal ties. 

Japan

was making her debut in the world arena and it was not easy.  Taro and Take lived in such times.  These relationships were fostered only because the Europeans and the

United States

contrived military pressure on the Emperor.  Among all of the political changes and traditional living in

Japan

, Americans in nineteen twelve were ruled by William Taft who unsuccessfully filled the very big shoes of replacing Theodore Roosevelt in shaping the nation and taking care of the state of global affairs.  The wealthy American child knew nothing of Presidents and their political strife.  And the impoverished American child knew only of hardship from working in the big industrial Carnegie[10] and Rockefeller[11] factories, a child labor issue unresolved by the current American government of the time.  The treaties that were presented to the Japanese emperor in the meantime, were inferior, unequal and gave the westerners advantage to political power in the international arena. 

Japan

fought back with a vengeance by creating new reforms that would win back their political independence from the west prior to World War II. One of their most drastic measures was withdrawing their membership to the

League of Nations

. 

Japan

steadily became a military power among the Asian countries.  Perhaps Perkins chose a more barbaric time in Japanese history to portray the violent origins of a more tranquil culture today. 

THE CHINESE TWINS (1935) VS. THE GHOST FOX BY LAURENCE YEP

The Ghost Fox is a story about a young Chinese boy named Little Lee.  Little Lee struggles to find a way to rescue his mother from the ghost of a Red Tailed Fox who is trying to take her soul.  The Red Tailed Fox is offended by Little Lee who clumsily bumped into him in the market.  The Fox then vows to haunt Little Lee’s family until he has stolen all their souls.  The Fox cleverly breaks a window to Little Lee’s house while his father is away and makes his way to his mother’s bedroom in the middle of the night.  Determined not to let this happen, Little Lee defies Chinese traditions of devising unconventional schemes to save his mother’s life.  At least this is the perception of the village people including Little Lee’s own aunt.  With Little Lee’s witty mind, he plans a strategy to put the Fox to its death by disguising poison as chocolate.  The Fox eats the chocolate and meets his death.  Little Lee spares his mother’s life and in the end is seen as a young hero.

Throughout the book Little Lee is portrayed not as an obedient Chinese son but a rebellious child who will not listen to words of wisdom from his elders.  This stereotype is reminiscent of the Chinese twins and their relationship with their grandmother.  In Little Lee’s unconventional efforts to prove to the village that the ghost of the Red Tailed Fox is real and at the same time, try to save his mother, he is seen as defiant in his behaviors.  Compared to the Chinese Twins, Little Lee is similar to the character of Moon Flower.  As you recall, Moon Flower is the defiant female Twin of Golden Boy who wanted to learn and gain more freedom from the conventional ways of the Chinese culture.  But Perkins describes Moon Flower as defiant due to pressures from her culture and tradition not because she is that way by choice.  Yep writes the story with Little Lee as an individual, an independent thinker.  He thinks with a purpose not because he was taught by Chinese tradition but because he wanted to have his mother back.  He puts his obedience and manners aside and is motivated by the thought of losing his mother completely.  In both stories, the usage of Asian children is different but the characters still have elements of the Chinese culture incorporated.  . 

THE FILIPINO TWINS (1923) VS. SIKO BY MARIANNE VLLANUEVA

The story of Siko is one of tragic beginnings and an even more horrendous

ending.  Villanueva writes a sad story of a boy named Siko from the farming

village

of

San Pablo

in the

Philippines

.  He is the favorite son of Aling[12] Saturnina and the youngest

boy of eight children.  Following the footsteps of his other siblings, Siko ran away as soon as he was old enough taking his mother’s savings with him.  As he grew older, Siko made his living by stealing other’s people fruits and vegetables.  One day Aling Saturnina’s daughter, Ana, came with bad news.  Ana told her mother that Siko has been shot dead.  Siko’s mother showed no signs of sadness, only the bitter remembrance of her thieving son.  She took the news with a light heart but wanted to be left alone to think back on her son.  Aling Saturnina wandered into the rice paddies.  Alone in the dark, she suddenly heard the dogs barking.  The Filipino superstition is that the wild barking of dogs normally symbolized the appearance of a ghost or demon, since dogs have a stronger sense than humans.  In an instant, Siko, her dead son appeared in front of her.  His shot wound still fresh and his face full of cuts.  He explained to his frightened mother that he was shot because he was trying to defend his sister Lina from her brute lover and his wife.  The wife of her lover had beaten Lina beyond recognition while her lover watched.  In finding this out, Siko went to the brute’s home to try and avenged his sister.  This is the point where he was shot and cut many times by a knife.  Villanueva ends this tragic story with Aling Saturnina rushing back home after her brief encounter with her son’s ghost and praying to their patron saint to bless her and all her children. 

The children of this story are not at all the family oriented characters of Perkins’ Filipino Twins.  The children in Siko were self serving, immoral characters while the twins are obedient and respectful to their parents.  The Utang Ng Loob theme from Perkins’ story is now gone from Villanueva’s story.  It is now replaced with ungratefulness and desertion of their mother who is struggling to raise eight children with no help from her eldest children.  In turn, Aling Saturnina was an unfit mother who cared nothing for the disciplining of her children.  She beat them every time they made her angry and she starved them just to spend the money on drinking alcohol.  Rita and Ramon’s parents would never do such a thing to their children.  The seventy two years that has passed since Perkins wrote her books, a tremendous variety of characters have sprung up for Filipino characters.  The story of Siko is one a great example.  The story is filled with different characters of Asian children with different roles.  No longer are Filipino children portrayed in characters that describe culture and discipline.  Perkins wrote her book during a time when Americans were curious about their brown brothers and sisters.  Perkins provided her contemporary authors the basis for writing with Asian children characters in mind.  In this case, she opened the door and introduced the Filipino culture so that future authors may use the Filipino character for other roles instead of roles that simply portray the Filipino culture.   

THE JAPANESE TWINS (1912) VS. THE TWO SISTERS’ DOWRIES BY BERNADETTE AND DR. DONALD

Further, the Japanese have a different take on writing about their culture of today.  In the story of Two Sisters’ Dowries, a fable is interlaced with the Japanese culture and traditions. The story includes two Japanese sisters, Nayoda and Masumi, and their father who is in desperate need of money for his daughter’s dowries, as it is Japanese tradition to include a dowry when each daughter gets married.  Problems arise when the father consults with an evil snake on how he would acquire a large sum of money. The snake then offers a magic Apple seed in exchange for his life.  The father agrees and the two daughters mournfully accept the magic seed.  Nayoda, the older sister, cares nothing more for the seed.  She only cares for herself.  Masumi, the younger sister, takes great care of watering and pruning the leaves of the Apple tree.  Masumi soon acquires great wealth by selling the golden Apples that sprung off the now fully grown tree.  The careless sister, Nayoda, learns that her sister has enough to pay for her own dowry and becomes enraged.  As she is older, Nayoda demands that Masumi return the Apple tree to her as she is the rightful owner.  Masumi obediently returns the seeds to her older sister, respecting her wishes.  Nayoda became so greedy about the Apples that the seeds grew but never produced any golden Apples.  Eventually, engulfed in her greed, Nayoda turned into a black crow forever encircling her unfruitful tree. 

The story of the two sisters teaches a hard moral lesson while rewarding those who do good deeds.  But the children in this story are not all characteristic of those from the Lucy Fitch Perkins series.  The Japanese Twins are more dependent on their family relationships while the two sisters and their father seemingly are independent of each other.  The two sisters follow the Japanese tradition of marriage however both are different in their style of how they go about doing it in the process.  While one is loyal and caring, the other is deceitful and greedy much like the father.  In the end, the book teaches a lesson to all people, not just for the Japanese culture.  The story promotes honesty, love and caring.  In addition, the story adds a fictional hint of the historical origin of the black crow and what it symbolizes (Bernadette and Dr. Donald).  The black crow encircling the Apple tree is reminiscent of the black crows encircling grain fields.  The presence of black crows symbolizes death or evil deeds that will happen, which is the fate that engulfed Nayoda.  It is a much different story than that of the Japanese Twins not only in style but also in tone.  It portrays a more complicated web of family relationships between the children and parent and the characters themselves are more challenging to understand.  The contemporary story has a more psychological depth than that of the Lucy Fitch Perkins story because the Asian image is no longer a new thing to be discovered.  When the Japanese Twins story was released, the Asian culture was still an enigma.  Today, it is as common as the Chinese take outs at every block and has immersed with the mainstream cultures of

America

.  Now the issues surrounding children’s literature are more abstract and intended for a more mature young reader. 

CONCLUSION

Perkins paved a way for future authors to use characters of Asian children in books.  In our search for understanding about other cultures, Perkins used Asian children in literature to depict the by gone traditions of an unknown society, the Asian society.  During the early twentieth century, Perkins opened the door to a world foreign to American beliefs and standards.  The Asian culture has not caught up with modern times according to standards of early twentieth century

America

.  The Asian ways of living were very defined by a structured tradition that has guided them over many centuries.  To Americans, looking into the Asian way of life meant judging them by their financial status and political power, which was a far lower that those in

America

.  Today many of the conflicts and issues that plagued

China

,

Philippines

and

Japan

have now subsided.  All three countries have slowly adapted to the western ways of living while keeping their traditions at bay.  In literature, contemporary authors now use characters of Asian children as a way to teach a moral lesson and still following Perkins footsteps in continuing the tradition of using Asian children as main characters in books. 

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[1] Filipino – a native of the islands of the Philippines

[2] Bataan - the peninsula and island in the Philippines where Japanese forces besieged American forces in World War II; United States forces surrendered in 1942 and recaptured the area in 1945

[3] Luzon - The largest island in the archipelago of the Philippines

[4] Utang Ng Loob – Filipino phrase meaning payment owed for a good deed received.

[5] Nacionalista Party – tying the traditional patron-client relations (utang na loob) to the new institutions of the modern civil state. The party was a network of overlapping patron-client relations that were more concerned with particular local and personal interests and little inclined to address the larger national issues of social reform; land ownership, tenancy rights, population growth and the distribution of wealth

[6] Bonsai - The Japanese horticultural art of pruning plants to maintain an extreme dwarf growth habit, production of dwarf trees or shrubs by root pruning and restriction

[7] Samurai - The swordsmen of feudal Japan who were impeccably at a wide variety of martial arts practices, particularly the sword, and served and lord and fief. Masterless samurai were known as "ronin”

[8] Bushido - literally, "the way of the warrior;" the code of honor of the medieval Japanese samurai class. Gounded in a combination of Shinto reverence for nation and Confucian relational ethics, bushido may be compared to the Western/Germanic concept of "fealty" to one's lord and tribal identity

[9] Confucius - (551-479 B.C.E.). Westernized transliteration of Kong Fu-Zi, a teacher, scholar. After his demise and to this day, he became

China

's most influential philosopher and political reformer. His philosophy is based on worship of the ancestors, and the study of the ancient classics. He promoted social harmony based on the moral obligations between individuals and social systems

[10] Andrew Carnegie – (1835-1919) United States steel industrialist and philanthropist who endowed education and public libraries and research trusts, ironically his steel mills employed mostly children

[11]John Davison Rockefeller - (July 8, 1839 - May 23, 1937) was the guiding force behind the creation and development of the Standard Oil Company, which grew to dominate the oil industry and became one of the first big trusts in the

United States

.  Rockefeller also was one of the first major philanthropists in the

U.S.

, establishing several important foundations and donating a total of $540 million to charitable purposes; equal to the Carnegie steel mills, he employed mostly children in his oil factories

[12] Aling – Filipino word describing an older, married woman