POPULATION: Japanese-Brazilians Not Happy in their Second Home

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 20 2002 (IPS) - Though they are more privileged than other people who have come to Japan for work, immigrants from Latin America feel lonely and alienated and are struggling to fit into a society with whom they have a cultural affinity.

Beneficiaries of Tokyo’s first official post-war open immigration policy, Japanese-Brazilians, the biggest group of Latin American immigrants, have not fully integrated themelves in a country that was once the home of their forefathers. ”The Japanese-Brazilians have still a long way to go to be accepted in Japan. The government’s immigration policy has been short-sighted on this front,” says Kunihiro Otsu, editor for International Press, a weekly publication covering Japanese Latin American issues.

In a bid to meet growing demands for manual labour during Japan’s bubble economy in the early nineties, the government passed a landmark policy to allow Latin Americans of Japanese descent to work in the country.

The new policy that gave working visas to the Nikkei, as they are called, was considered a precedent in a country that had long protected and taken pride in its homogeneous society.

”The government decided to allow descendants of Japanese in foreign countries because these people can better fit into Japanese society given their cultural affinity,” explained an official at the Justice Ministry who declined to be named.

The new policy lured back the sons and daughters of the waves of poor Japanese who in 1908 left their homeland to find prosperity in Latin America.

Currently, Brazil has the largest ethnic Japanese population outside Japan, followed by Peru. These people represent the first generation of emigrants and their children.

While the Nikkei could speak Japanese they could not read or write the language, but they easily picked up jobs in factories that needed the cheap labour.

Today there are around 260,000 descendants living in Japan, which the media reports is comparable to the number who left the country in 1908.

This group represents the third largest minority in Japan, after the South and North Koreans and Chinese settlers who arrived here when their countries were Japanese colonies.

Despite the initial optimism, stories of these Japanese-Brazilians reveal lives of hardship and struggle.

”People treat me like I am a gaijin (foreign) because of my Japanese,” says Gilberto Oda, 39, who arrived in Japan in 1989.

Oda, a former disc jockey from Sao Paulo, now works in a local Portuguese publication for Brazilian Japanese. He says could not get into the radio business because of racial discrimination.

In accordance with their jobs, most Nikkei Brazilians settled down in areas close to large automobile or electronics factories where they worked.

Hamamatsu, in Shizuoka-prefecture, a large city 260 km west of Tokyo, hosts several car manufacturing plants, and is home to 12,000 Nikkei Brazilians, who form the largest bloc of workers in the factories.

Shuichi Uchiyama, a partner of Nova Vesao, a monthly publication in Portuguese, says letters to the editor reveal that many of the Nikkei harbour deep anxiety over their lives in Japan.

"Of foremost concern is their future. They worry about the stability of their jobs and the future of their children," he says.

While the Nikkei still find work in automobile factories due to the stability of that industry, many fear they could lose their work given the unstable economy.

”The situation is leading to depression, especially among the women who also find it hard to adjust due to language barriers and local customs,” says Uchiyama.

Most Japanese Brazilian families have been given short work visas. According to Uchiyama only about half of the population intend to reside permanently in Japan. Many of them want to return. ”Brazil, not Japan, is home to them,” he says.

Another pressing problem for these families is the schooling for their children. Difficulty in keeping up with Japanese language instruction has prompted more children to skip school.

Last fall Hamamatsu Mayor Yasuyuki Kitawaki invited the mayors of 13 cities across Japan with large Brazilian populations to discuss growing problems and the need for solutions.

”The revision of the immigration law in 1990 was a stopgap measure…It utterly failed to take into account the problems that arise with the new situation,” he told the meeting.

Local schools and governments have taken steps to help the Nikkei, but counsellors say the steps are piecemeal and that more needs to be done.

Masuko Joao, publisher of Nova Vesao, and one of the first Nikkei to move to Japan, predicts easier assimilation for the younger generation in the future.

”There will be more acceptance after a decade as the younger generation are being reared in Japan,” he says.

But Joao, who is also married to a Nikkei, says someday he plans to return to Brazil. ”If there is no more work in Japan, I will go home to Brazil.”

POPULATION: Japanese-Brazilians Not Happy in their Second Home

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 20 2002 (IPS) - Though they are more privileged than other people who have come to Japan for work, immigrants from Latin America feel lonely and alienated and are struggling to fit into a society with whom they have a cultural affinity.
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