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BRAZIL-JAPAN: One Hundred Years of Migration

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 18 2008 (IPS) - One hundred years ago, 781 Japanese immigrants arrived at the Brazilian port of Santos on the steamship Kasato Maru, marking the start of a labour flow that gave rise to the ethnic group with the highest levels of education and per capita income in Brazil – a migration that reversed direction in the 1980s.

Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito, who arrived in Brazil for the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the start of Japanese immigration, remarked Wednesday in Brasilia on the social ascent of the Nikkei (Japanese immigrants and their descendants) in Brazil, from the difficulties faced by the first migrants, who were hired to work on coffee plantations, to the high-level positions they hold today in many areas of society.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva welcomed Naruhito, and underscored the contribution made to development in Brazil by Japanese investment and the strong prospects for the expansion of bilateral trade, in areas like biofuels and the adoption of Japanese digital television technology in Brazil.

A coin and a postage stamp were launched Wednesday to commemorate 100 years of Japanese immigration.

The crown prince will take part in commemorative acts Thursday and Friday in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, which is home to the biggest Nikkei community. He will then tour Santos and four other cities with large Japanese-Brazilian populations, ending his visit in Rio de Janeiro on Jun. 24-25.

Brazil has the largest Nikkei population in the world: 1.5 million. There are also 300,000 Japanese-Brazilians who have emigrated to Japan since the 1980s, known as Dekasegi.

But that is “a derogatory term,” complained Paulo Yokota, a renowned economist who is a member of the committee that organised the centennial celebrations.

He prefers to refer to them as “Brazilians living in Japan,” who are creating “a strong community over there” and “contributing to the internationalisation of that country.”

The high profile celebrations in Brazil should help the younger generations of Nikkei gain a better understanding of Japan and Japanese culture, with which “they are only superficially familiar,” and encourage the community to “serve as a bridge” for bilateral trade, which it has not been doing, said Yokota.

Economic relations between Brazil and Japan, which experienced a major expansion in the 1970s, began to lose momentum in the last decade, while investment from other foreign countries intensified in Brazil.

The descendants of Japanese immigrants have stood out in Brazil for their strong performance in education. “The people of east Asia were influenced by Confucianism,” which explains the high priority placed on education, Yokota told IPS.

But the development of agriculture was the main contribution of Japanese immigrants to Brazil, in his view. Today, the Nikkei stand out in different areas, with the exception of those that require “the gift of gab,” which they don’t generally have, he said.

That is the explanation, he said, for the scant Nikkei presence in politics, in contrast with the leadership positions they hold in the technological, business, professional and academic spheres.

In Peru, which has a much smaller Japanese community, a son of Japanese immigrants, Alberto Fujimori, served as president from 1990 to 2000.

In Brazil, there have been few ministers and legislators of Japanese descent. But in the United States, their participation in politics has been even more limited, according to Jeffrey Lesser, a history professor at Emory University in the southeastern U.S. state of Georgia.

Lesser has researched immigration in Brazil and recently published a book, “A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960-1980,” on the Nikkei and Dekasegi.

It is curious that many Nikkei politicians in Brazil are descended from people in Okinawa, the Japanese island whose people suffer a certain degree of discrimination in their own country. “The Okinawans are like Brazilians, they come from a tropical land where they like to dance, drink and eat spicy foods,” was an explanation that Lesser heard in his interviews.

“They use a stereotype about Brazilians to identify themselves as more Brazilian than other Japanese,” the professor told IPS.

According to his assessment, the biggest contribution by Japanese immigrants to Brazil was “to change the idea of what it is to be Brazilian,” by incorporating “a group that is neither white nor black,” he said.

The descendants of Jews, Arabs or Europeans can largely blend in with other Brazilians, because of their appearance and in many cases their names, but that is not true of Brazilians of Japanese descent, who have distinct physical features, said Lesser.

In an earlier book, “Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil”, Lesser pointed to the strong cultural rejection faced by Japanese and Arab immigrants in Brazil, where political and intellectual leaders regarded them as culturally “non-assimilable.”

But there were also strong views in their favour, and that contradiction or ambiguity is still reflected today in Brazil, where the Nikkei have the image of being “the best or the worst Brazilians,” he said.

The high educational attainment and income levels of Japanese-Brazilians awaken both envy and praise from the Brazilian elite, commented Lesser, who recalled graffiti that he saw a few years ago: “Secure your place at the University of Sao Paulo tomorrow: kill a Japanese today”.

The Dekasegi are repeating the general pattern of immigrants: while most of them plan to save up enough money in Japan to return to Brazil and set up a business of their own, a majority end up settling down in their new country.

Many of them believe they can transform Japanese culture and “save the Japanese from themselves,” by bringing them a touch of “Brazilianness” or a more creative, fun-loving and relaxed way of living, in order to mellow that “closed, cold and overworked society,” said Lesser.