Theories of silence tend to depict silence as the opposite of sound, speech, or presence. In this limited depiction, it is the binary opposite indicating absence, and theorists have used this understanding of silence to illustrate musical rests, political oppression, and divine mystery. However, Japanese Americans employ silences in their arts in order to resist oppression and to pass on religious ideas and practices. Since Japanese Americans use multiple kinds of silence, this dissertation offers a theory of "non-binary silence" that explains how a single silence can accomplish multiple functions. The dissertation explores the multiple layers of silence in Japanese American history and in several Japanese American arts, including farming, gardening, hip hop, jazz, monuments, origami, rhetoric, sculpture, and comedy.

This exploration reveals that Japanese Americans have maintained some persecuted and marginalized religious ideas and practices by transforming them into artistic silences. This process of gaimenteki, which means outward assimilation, is a tactic for spiritual survival that was developed to resist the oppression of Buddhism, Christianity, Shinto, and indigenous religions in Japan and in the United States. For example, during the World War II internment camps several Japanese American religions were categorized as dangerous, yet Japanese Americans communicated their religious ideas and practices through gardening and jazz music, which were considered innocuous and American. In such ways, Japanese Americans have responded to political and racist silencing with artistic silences that simultaneously preserve religion.

This dissertation examines these religious silences through ethnographic and historical work. Case studies of Japanese American artists will be used to demonstrate how Japanese Americans have used religious silences to preserve ideas from Buddhism, Confucianism, and indigenous religions by transforming them to appear to match the racial, imperial, national, and colonial projects of Japan and the United States. The religious silences contain Japanese American conceptions of kami (Shinto deities), mediumship, Confucian attunement, the ethical treatment of life, an independent and interconnected self, sorrowful joy, and justice.