2005 Tinker Summer Research Report Zelideth María Rivas East Asian Languages and Cultures “Jun-nissei Literature and Culture in Brazil: Conceptions of Memory, Adaptation and Victimization”

A Japanese immigrant poet at a literary corner meeting in Brazil.

My project, based on my dissertation, “Jun-nisei literature in Brazil: Conceptions of memory, adaptation, and victimization,” examined the production and consumption of fantasy through the literature surrounding Japanese immigration to Brazil. In Brazil, the physical and linguistic isolation of the Japanese colonias, or colonies, limited the circulation of information to and from the colonias, allowing for the production and consumption of fantasy. This fantasy reveals itself most clearly through the autobiographies, short stories, and poetry produced in the Japanese-Brazilian colonias which I explore in my dissertation.

Many Japanese immigrants to Brazil were born in Japan and accompanied their parents to Brazil as children. The concepts of memory, adaptation, and victimization frame the literature the immigrants compose as adults. In my discussion of the emergence of memory in Japanese-Brazilian literature, I will examine the individual perceptions of loneliness, longing, and nostalgia towards the homeland of Japan and the country of residence, Brazil. In the cases of writers who were child immigrants, I examine memory through the terms adaptation and victimization. The process of adaptation began upon arrival for the children who arrived in Brazil between birth and six years of age.* On the other hand, victimization manifests itself primarily in older children, who arrived between the ages of six and twelve. Before arrival to Brazil, these children received education in war-time Japan and learned such values in school as revering the Emperor and placing state above family. Through the state propaganda taught to them at school in Japan, they learned that their families’ immigration to Brazil was regarded by the state as shameful. In addition, their family and neighbors in Japan regarded their families as deserters, which culminated in producing a higaisha ishiki, or victimization mentality, for the older child immigrants. Another layer of victimization is added to the immigrants’ psychological frame of mind by considering the effective propaganda campaigns used by the immigration companies to contract Japanese immigrants for labor in Brazil. As representations of memory, adaptation and victimization are topics that have been previously suggested in Japanese-Brazilian articles but have yet to be explored in depth.

A poet composing at a poetry association meeting.

I continued my research this summer by exploring one of the colonias whose project was initiated in 1924, Colonia Aliança. The conception of Aliança began in 1922, with an encounter among Nagata Shigeshi, who belonged to Nihon Rikko-kai and wanted to plan a community of permanent immigration of Japanese youth in Brazil, Wako Shungoro, and Kitahara Chikazō. In other words, through their emphasis on permanent Japanese immigration, they differentiated their project from those funded by the Japanese government and immigration companies. Through the name Aliança, they invoked the mutual cooperation of the immigrants that would become the objective of the colonia.

Finale of a perfomance of Ballet Yuba, in the Comunidade Yuba, located near Mirandópolis, São Paulo in Aliança.

Composed of different communities, I had the opportunity to visit Comunidade Yuba, located near Mirandópolis, São Paulo in Aliança, approximately 600km from São Paulo city. The founder of Comunidade Yuba, Yuba Isamu (1906-1976), arrived in Brazil in 1926 with his ten-member family, believing in the concept of permanent immigration in Brazil. Isamu founded Comunidade Yuba, or Yuba nōjo, in 1935 in order to implement the following project: “Cultivate, pray, and love the arts.” The community’s project further developed with the arrival of Ohara Hisao and Akiko in 1961. Through their contributions of sculpture and dance, they brought to the community new energy. Akiko founded the Ballet Yuba, the community’s modern dance troupe which has performed over 800 shows throughout the world.

Ballet Yuba.

Comunidade Yuba is currently composed of issei (first generation) through yonsei (fourth generation) Japanese with 24 families totaling in a population of approximately 70. A day in the community begins at 6AM with a bell that signifies that breakfast is ready in the meal hall, the central base of the community. Every meal preceded by prayer led by elders in the community. The sole language of communication within the community is Japanese although the children attend local schools and also speak Portuguese. After breakfast, work begins for the community. The community’s principal economic activity is horticulture and they principally cultivate guavas, pineapples, and mango. Since work is shared in the community, there are those that go to the fields and work and also those that stay in the principal living areas to clean, cook the next meal, and tend to the chickens, etc. Everyone gathers again in the meal hall at 12PM in order to lunch, after which they return to their respective jobs. The community’s cultural activities begin after 6PM. Although the community’s principal cultural activity is dance, they also focus on theater, choir, musical recitals, ceramic, paintings, and poetry.

In Brazil, it is said that every member of the Japanese community lived at some point in Aliança. Since Comunidade Yuba preserves the feeling of mutual cooperation through its community-based lifestyle, it is an ideal place to visit to understand the conditions of early Japanese immigrants. In addition, the community’s emphasis on Japanese as the language of communication extends the audience of Japanese literature in Brazil through the consumption of Japanese language materials by all generations.

Cooking in the community hall of Comunidade Yuba.

As I continue to explore memory as formulated through literature in the Japanese nikkei community of Brazil, I frequent the Japanese Festival in São Paulo, organized through the Prefectural Association (Kenren). Here, the various prefectural organizations that are structured around the “home” prefecture in Japan present food, dance, music, and cultural artifacts to an audience that is comprised of both nikkei (people of Japanese descent) and Brazilians. This year, the festival initiated a literary corner at which members of the literary community posted their poetry, photos, and brief genealogies of the various poetic schools in Brazil.

Throughout the remainder of my stay in Brazil, I conducted interviews with members of the Japanese community and writers. While in Liberdade, I had access to the Center for Japanese-Brazilian Studies and the Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil and their respective archives. In addition, I met with professors from Universidade de São Paulo, Universidade de Campinas, and Universidade Federal de Bahia to discuss my dissertation.

Lying at the nexus of Latin-American Studies and Asian Studies, this dissertation project interacts with larger questions of globalization, migration, and identity. Breaking down disciplinary boundaries in academia that hinder cross-cultural interaction and intellectual exchange is vital. Through my research, I strive to bridge the gap that separates present hemisphere-centered area studies.

* Scholars such as George De Vos, Celia Jaes Falicov, Takeyuki Tsuda, Min Zhou, and Carl L. Bankston III argue for adaptation in lieu of assimilation, as the assessment of a child’s self-identification with the minority culture despite competence in the host country’s language and culture. See George De Vos, “Adaptive Strategies in U.S. Minorities,” Minority Mental Health (New York: Praeger, 1982), Celia Jaes Falicov, Latino Families in Therapy: A Guide to Multicultural Practice (New York: The Guilford Press, 1998), Takeyuki Tsuda, Strangers in an Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), and Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III, “Social Capital and the Adaptation of the Second Generation: The Case of Vietnamese Youth in New Orleans,” International Migration Review 28.4 (1994): 821–45.