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Introduction

An Interdisciplinary Approach

This research compares the familial relationships of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Bastos, Brazil, to those of transnational Japanese Brazilians, from the point of view of those who lived in Bastos at the time of the fieldwork, 2005–2006. The Bastos colony, founded in 1928 in São Paulo State, was known as the most “racially homogenous” Japanese colony in the 1930s. Race relations consist of a social category, in which individuals are conscious of each other’s different “permanent physical trait” (Park 2000: 105). Compared to other Japanese colonies, Bastos stood out due to its predominant phenotype. The only non-Japanese there were Brazilian workers who had come from Minas Gerais State and the northeastern region in order to cut down the trees.

My approach is interdisciplinary: I integrate sociological, historical, political, economic, and ethnographic knowledge. This approach allows me to view the subjects of my research from many points of view. It is socio-historical, because “Every social fact is a historical fact and vice-versa.” A concrete science of human reality can only be achieved as a historical sociology or a sociological history. Otherwise, I would be working with two partial images of society (Goldman 1969: 23). Historical sociology regards the origin and the ongoing process of the migration phenomenon, referring to Marx’s writing about the primitive accumulation of capital, as the genesis of the capitalist mode of production (Marx 1975: 891–954).

Until the mid-1960s, Brazilian sociology did not set sociology apart from anthropology. When they diverged, both were impoverished. Political science joined those sciences but with an inferior status. Social scientists conducted research on Native Brazilians, folklore, peasant culture, slavery, immigration, and other topics. Joint efforts in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and political science made the research more productive and also led to a marked difference in their approach. Marxism strongly influenced sociology in Brazil, and sociologists’ criticism of social inequalities grew. American and French anthropology influenced Brazilian anthropology through cultural anthropology and structuralism, respectively. Political science found its own way researching societal economic gaps and state politics. Some researchers, such as Antonio Candido (1964), could be classified as an anthropologist or a sociologist. Candido also employed a historical approach. Researchers specialized in specific segments of Brazilian society, which in turn resulted in an impoverished or diminished framework for understanding it as a whole. Such fragmented methods are only able to provide a very narrow view, and their conclusions refer only to the point studied (Pereira de Queiroz 1992).

Currently, it is difficult to differentiate Brazilian sociology from anthropology, apart from the fact that some sociologists may use quantitative research methods and anthropologists only employ qualitative methods. Both disciplines may choose the same research object and use the same approach to collect and analyze their empirical material. This differs from the stricter boundaries between American sociology and anthropology. However, American ethnography, which started as an anthropological branch, has been used within sociology as a methodological approach (Burawoy 1991).

American anthropologists were the first to apply a transnational approach to the study of contemporary migrants, those who “develop and maintain multiple relations—familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political that span borders” (Glick Schiller et al. 1992: 1). Sociologists have incorporated and re-created transnationalism according to their own theoretical perspective (Portes 1999; Vertovec 1999).

This short, and at the same time important, analysis of the convergences between sociology and other fields in the Americas demonstrates that sociology is receptive to other disciplines. This “is reflected in the popularity and acceptance of the notion of interdisciplinary by sociologists everywhere, indicating their willingness to establish cooperative relations across fields” (Portes 2002: 6). Although sociology incorporates knowledge from other disciplines, at its core it is based on its “intellectual heritage received from the founders of the discipline [which gives] a distinct outlook on social phenomena . . . Sociology’s perspective centers on the dialectics of social life” (Portes 2002: 6). Interdisciplinary social sciences research requires a specific discipline to lead, and this discipline is sociology. In my research, I use sociology in order to understand socioeconomic formations, their social production processes and relationships, and the social conditions of people’s lives (Marx 1976: 38).

A Comparative Method

The history of the Bastos colony began with the foundation of Yugen Sekinin Brasil Takushoku Kumiai (Bratac), also known as Sociedade Colonizadora do Brasil Ltda, funded by Japanese capital in São Paulo City in 1928. Bratac intended to establish a colony of Japanese immigrants who had come straight from Japan. However, Brazil’s immigration policy in the 1930s and the Pacific War in 1941 brought Japanese emigration to a halt.

In the 1930s, Bratac decided to sell plots of land to the “earlier immigrants,” those who had arrived previously to work as laborers on coffee plantations. According to the company’s statistics, 20 percent of Bastos’ population in 1937 consisted of those who had come straight from Japan and 80 percent who had come from São Paulo coffee plantations (Mita 1999: 65). There were two types of Japanese immigrant rural communities in Brazil before World War II: those composed of families related to one another who had already formed rural communities in Japan and those who were not related. Before World War II, these rural communities of related families in Japan had shared ancestry, religious customs, and mythological beliefs, allowing them to maintain a strong allegiance to the group, even though it was now made up of new members. Families in Bastos, however, were not related, and had come from different regions, and so were at the opposite end of this spectrum, with very little in common (Mita 1999: 96). Traits that they did share included physical attributes, language, customs, values, endogamy, and their self-identity (Weber [1968] 1978: 385–98). This enabled them to identify as members of the same ethnic group. They developed their self-identity as Japanese colonists who differed from the Italian, German, and Spanish colonists, and Afro-Brazilian former slaves, with whom they worked on the São Paulo coffee plantations (Mitta 1999: 99). But the non-related Japanese immigrants’ cohesion was vulnerable, especially in regard to their link to Japan.

Thus, the Japanese government emphasized patriotism to overcome the immigrants’ distant location and their internal cultural differences. It stressed emperor worship and civic virtues as the most important elements of Japanese national identity in order to strengthen the link between the Japanese state and the immigrants (Endoh 2009: 9). Japanese immigrants in the Bastos colony adopted the Emperor Jimmu, whose accession has been recorded as occurring in 660 BC in their mythology, as the spiritual leader of their community. Other colonies did so as well. This attitude provided much-needed cohesion for a disparate people trying to come together as a community. They celebrated the anniversary of the colony’s foundation, the New Year, sporting events, and official school ceremonies to strengthen their social links. Every Japanese family’s living room boasted a picture of the Japanese imperial couple next to a picture of Brazilian President Vargas. This was true even after World War II, and this proved to be true, at least until 1952 (Mitta 1999: 96–101). For immigrants, it symbolized the affirmation of their ethnic identity, their strong connection to Japan, and their integration into one civil religion.

Sociologists note that a civil religion has the function of preserving a society’s values and providing social cohesion (Marshall 1998: 73). Robert Bellah was one of the first sociologists to make use of this concept. Based on Durkheim, he stated that any social group has a way of expressing its identity that is “religious.” Civil religion is a way of connecting a nation and a people through ethical principles, helping guide the population “to some form of self-understanding” (Bellah 2006: 221).

Reverence for the emperor played a very important role before World War II. When war came, immigrants and their descendants divided into two groups, those who refused to believe that Japan was losing the war and those who did not question it. The first group, Kachigumi, created an association called Shindo Renmei (“Liga do Caminho dos Súditos,” Association of the Emperor’s Subjects), which attacked and killed some members of the second group, the Makegumi (Morais 2000; Mott n.d.; Nakasato 2011). They believed that the relationship between the emperor and the Japanese people was akin to the relationship between father and son (Bastos Shuho 1952: 8). “To betray the Nation is the same as to betray one’s own father” (Nakasato 2011: 142).

Bastos represented, in microcosm, the trajectory of the transnational experience and its lifespan, which is not the same as that of the individual. It has, as Oscar Nakasato beautifully portrayed in his novel Nihonjin (2011), a movement and life of its own, based on the comings and goings of generations of its inhabitants. His book traced the genesis of the initial Japanese immigration (first generation) to Brazil (a coffee plantation in São Paulo State), and followed the third generation as they return to Japan as immigrants in their ancestors’ native land.

When the second and third generations returned to Japan, they found a world far different than that of their parents and grandparents in the 1920s. This ethnic return migration affected their ethnic identity. If in Brazil they were called Japonês/Japonesa (Japanese male and female), in the land of their ancestors, they were seen as foreigners, even if they shared the same phenotype. Their cultural identity was now Brazilian. Many emphasized this identity as a reaction against discrimination (Tsuda 2009, 2003)

In Brazil, not all Japanese immigrants saw themselves similarly. They separated into two ethnic groups: those who had come from Nippon and those from Okinawa, an island that Japan conquered in 1879. Japanese immigrants devalued people from Okinawa, who had their own language, their own cooking, and their own culture. They did not want their children to marry Okinawan immigrants. According to Kubota (2008), there were conflicts between the two groups in Campo Grande City located in Mato Grosso do Sul State. Nihonjin (Japanese people) used derogatory terms to refer to Okinawans such as “Black Japanese” or “non-Japanese,” although there were more Okinawans than Nihonjin in this city. For this reason, the immigrants founded two associations: the Clube Nipo (Japanese) and the Clube Okinawa. During her fieldwork, Kubota observed that the two groups and their descendants never felt comfortable with each other. In contrast, Brazilians from a variety of origins did not perceive the differences between Okinawans and Nihonjin.

Soba, a dish that originated in Okinawa and was incorporated by Nihonjin, became so popular that Brazilians currently consume it too. Soba became a symbol of the entire Campo Grande Japanese colony, and in 2006, it became a national cultural patrimony according to Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico National, IPHAN (Historical and Artistic National Patrimony Institute) (Kubota 2008). Although the differences between the two groups still persist, they have lessened in Brazil.

Applying Weber’s definition of ethnic groups (Weber 1978: 385–98), Tsuda elaborates the concept of ethnic return migration as a new kind of transnational migration in which poorer countries have expelled diasporic descendants to their richer ethnic homelands. Homeland governments, such as Japan, welcome them back “through preferential immigration and nationality policies as ‘ethnic brethren’” (Tsuda 2009: 6, 7).

Ethnic return migration is not a new phenomenon in the history of capitalist societies. However, it presents peculiarities according to the stage of capitalism in each society. In the nineteenth century, an ethnic return migration sent former enslaved Africans and crioulos ¹ from Brazil to Lagos (a city currently located in Nigeria). Brazil was then a capitalist plantation society based on slave labor. The return migration started in 1830, and most of the migrants belonged to the ethnic group Yoruba. It was not a matter of choice for them. They were coerced to choose between working for plantation owners and leaving the country. Brazilian politicians and elites were afraid of slave revolts, as slavery was the only secure way of ensuring labor. Some free men decided to remain in the cities, although they were politically persecuted, others went to work in plantations, and those with enough capital returned to Africa.

The return migrants were seen as foreigners in Africa, although they made use of this identity on their behalf. They were merchants; they exported slaves and azeite-de-dendê ² and imported aguardente ³ and tobacco. Others were proud of working as artisans as they did in Brazil. Brazilian women were well known as seamstresses and cooks. African Brazilians were seen as a sophisticated bourgeoisie. They retained the Portuguese language as much as possible and preserved the Portuguese names of their former masters, and they professed Catholicism (Carneiro da Cunha 1985).

African Brazilians preserved their separate identity as a badge of distinction. According to the circumstances, they were either Brazilians, returnees, or returnee Yorubas. However, the most important trait of their identity was Catholicism. Their ethnic Brazilian identity in Lagos was only possible as a local identity not as a remnant of earlier circumstances (Carneiro da Cunha 1985: 15).

Japanese Brazilians are more than a labor migration. They are part of a kind of transnational migration that involves ethnic return. Some migrants settled permanently in the host society, some went back and forth between Japan and Brazil, and some returned to their homeland and remained there. Although they belonged to the middle class, the economic crisis of the 1980s in Brazil and the Japanese preferential immigration policy for “ethnic brethren” compelled them to migrate to Japan to work as cheap labor in its factories (Tsuda 2009: 230).

However, Japanese Brazilians occupy a status of lower middle class in 2004 based on their level of education as most had only as elementary or middle-school education. Among those Japanese Brazilian laborers interviewed in Japan in that year, nobody had a master’s degree or Ph.D., while in Brazil, Japanese descendants have a higher scholarship than the population median (Beltrão and Sugahara 2006: 70).

Japanese Brazilian immigrants arrived in Japanese society as marginalized minorities in their ethnic homeland. Their position in the labor market, their cultural differences (many were second and third generation born and raised in Brazil) and even their different phenotype due to mixed ancestors, and the position of Brazil as a developing country are responsible for this social exclusion (Tsuda 2009: 228).

Comparing the two kinds of ethnic return, I observe that African Brazilian immigration to Africa was not a transnational migration, unlike the contemporary ethnic return. The Brazilians who returned to Africa remained there, and became merchants, among other occupations. Thus, they moved up the social ladder in a highly stratified society. They used their identity as foreigners on their own behalf as a sign of distinction. Japanese Brazilians who migrated to Japan moved down the social ladder in a very rich country, which is divided into social classes and racially stratified. They faced discrimination because they took on the least-valued occupations in Japanese society due to their cultural identity as Brazilians. They reacted by affirming their Brazilian identity strongly. They lived among themselves, mainly apart from Japanese society.

The social incorporation of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Brazil was not easy. Brazilians called them Japonês/Japonesa (Japanese male and female) even if they were second and third generation. Gradually, things changed. Many became owners of small agricultural properties; others settled in cities. Most became members of the middle class and were respected and considered to be “intelligent” and “hard workers.” As Japan ascended as a world technological power, Brazilians looked upon the immigrants and their descendants with a newfound respect and admiration. Yet, none of this had any effect on the way transnational migrants seeking work in their ethnic homeland were viewed. A grandson heard from his grandfather before his emigration to Japan: Ojiichan (Grandpa) opened his dull tired eyes and said in crude words that Brazil is my homeland. I didn’t confront him, I only understood that ojiichan liked me, and he didn’t want his grandson to endure his experience of exile (Nakasato 2011: 173).

Racial ethnic similarity is no guarantee of social acceptance of immigrants, as we will find in interviews with Japanese Brazilian immigrants about their experiences in Japan. Many were mistreated. Sociocultural ethnic differences overcame the shared phenotype and were extremely difficult to deal with.

Diasporic return is an ongoing process, which involves first-generation migrants as well as the second and third generations. Ethnic return migrants create links between the ethnic and birth homelands. However, diasporic return often makes the migrants’ link to their ethnic homelands ineffective and can re-enforce their parochial nationalist feelings, such as Japanese Brazilian immigrants who affirmed their contrasting (Brazilian) identity by dancing and enjoying Carnival in the streets (Tsuda 2009).

However, as this book is centered in Bastos, I was not able to observe the contrasting Brazilian Japanese identity in Japan. The contrast between Japanese descendant identity and Brazilian identity is not so evident in Bastos due to mixed marriage and to Japanese descendant adjustment to Brazilian food and language. Although, the Japanese culture is preserved by institutions such as ACENBA, which teach Japanese language classes, Japanese music instruments, and other classes related to Japanese culture, a gym to learn judo, and another place to practice Taiko. I observed that non-Japanese descendants participate in the Japanese sports and also in the parties at ACENBA.

The expansion of globalization has allowed ethnic minority groups to reconnect with their ancestral homelands. It can also increase the volume of ethnic return migration depending on the ethnic homeland’s labor market and national policies. As one interviewee said, “Everybody has someone in Japan.” However, diasporic return migration results in new ethnic minorities due to cultural differences that have developed among peoples, who earlier inhabited the same country but have been separated for generations (Tsuda 2009). As I deal with returnees, Japan offers a recurrent labor market that provides temporary jobs and the possibility of savings, for those who live in Bastos, a small city, where jobs are scarce.

Based on interviews with elderly immigrants, and using the concept of adjustment (Gans 2000) among other concepts, this book examines the twentieth-century immigration to São Paulo State, specifically to Bastos. Then, I deal with the circular migration of the twenty-first century or transnational labor migration, also based on interviews with the returnees using concepts such as labor broker, and others necessary for data understanding and explanation. The dialogue between the analyzed material and the social sciences allows the creation of concepts, such as the messianic movement in order to understand the national conflicts within the Japanese colonies, especially in Bastos, between the Kachigumi and the Makegumi during and after the end of World War II.

However, the concept of circular migration or transnational ethnic return has been questioned lately due to the dichotomy between Japan and Brazil being undermined by other options, such as moving from Japan to the United States, or other first world countries (Oda 2010). Young middle-class Japanese Brazilians have another option of moving among Brazil, Japan, and Australia, thus creating a triangular circulation on their own behalf (Rocha 2014). Nevertheless, in this research I did not find those migration movements.

Therefore, after analyzing the information, I will compare the data with the adopted concepts and the theory of socioeconomic formation, in order to find whether they explain the phenomena (Marx 1976: 38). I eventually take into account the impact of other migrants (white Brazilians, Italian immigrants, Afro-Brazilian former slaves, and mixed ancestor migrants) on the immigrant community as a whole in the twentieth century.

Using the comparative method, the only one suitable for sociology according to Durkheim (1966), I compare the familial relationships of the twentieth-century immigrants to those of the twenty-first-century transnational migrants, based on socio-historical studies of Brazilian families and Japanese families. I also compare Japanese immigrants to different ethnic immigrants’ families and their adjustment in Brazil, focusing on gender and generation based on literature and my empirical material (Cardoso 1995; Handa 1980, 1987; Vieira 1973; Kawamura 2003; Tsuda 2003; Glenn 1986; Ueno 2009; Kosminsky 2014, 2012, 2009a, 2009b, 2007, 2004).

I also compare the childhood of the earlier immigrants to the current one of children who went to Japan and returned to Bastos and to children who were left behind by their parents. I use the concept of socialization in analyzing one interview with a girl and an observation of a boy, and in analyzing the interviews with adults collected in Bastos, and references collected in Japan. I consider the interviewed girl as an extended case study due to the peculiarities that she presents, which highlight most of the problems these children face according to the literature (Burawoy 1991; Durkheim 1922; Fernandes 1942; Lareau 2003; Plaisance 2004; Kawamura 2003; Ishikawa 2014; Kosminsky 1992, 2000a).

Ethnographic research helps to explain the value of using the theory of transnational labor migration in this setting. I conducted fieldwork in Bastos, with several students, including observation, interviews as dialogues, and participant observation of the immigrants and their descendants (Burawoy 1991). One of the students assisted the elderly Japanese immigrants, translating from Japanese into Portuguese. Others played Taiko ⁴ with other students at a Taiko classroom. The students and I participated in a lot of activities with the city’s inhabitants and the members of the Cultural and Sport Nikkei Association of Bastos (Associação Cultural e Esportiva Nikkei de Bastos, ACENBA). Before the students and I left Bastos, we followed the Japanese ritual, according to my former Japanese Brazilian student, of giving each person in the community a small gift.

The students and I invited those who were able to come from Bastos and Marília to a round table to commemorate the centenary of the Japanese immigration to Brazil at São Paulo State University, Marília. We heard the stories of hardship and deprivation experienced in their first years of colonization. We also offered Japanese food—one dish showed a sign of adjustment to Brazilian culture, a dessert with coconut—after their testimony. Translators were provided for those who had difficulty communicating in Portuguese. We chose to work in Bastos due to its past as the most Japanese city outside Japan. Its small size also made the fieldwork more manageable.

I’ve used pseudonyms for all interviewees even for those from Marília who took part in the centenary of the Japanese immigration to Brazil.

The sociological history of the two migration movements provides a framework for our ethnographic research which, mediated by the sociological imagination, investigates the relations between history and biography within society or the links between “the personal troubles of the milieu and the public issues of social structure” (Mills 2000: 6, 8). It is comparative due to the cross-cultural comparison between Japanese immigrants’ families and transnational Japanese Brazilian families (Baily 1990; Baily and Ramella 1988; Kosminsky 1996, 1999, 1999a, 2000b).

Detailed Fieldwork

My first fieldwork step started in 2005 when my students and I interviewed the elderly immigrants who had arrived years earlier as landowners in Bastos. They had come directly from Japan and settled on land that their parents had bought before leaving. Among these immigrants were Mrs. Saito and Mrs. Tanaka. Monica Sasai conducted most of Mrs. Saito’s interview in Japanese and translated it into Portuguese. A couple of Nisei, Elisa and Cesar, who ran a local photo shop, introduced my students and me to Mrs. Saito’s daughter, who owned a gift store. Takahashi Akira drove us to Mrs. Tanaka’s home; she spoke Portuguese in her interview. Both women spoke about their childhood and youth, their families’ relationships, their experiences, and their feelings about their immigration. Both were middle class, although Mrs. Tanaka might be considered upper middle class in Japan. They came with their own families, as proprietors of land in Bastos and brought capital with them. They felt their adjustment to life in Brazil ran smoothly. I noticed how they valued their links with Japanese culture and their concern about keeping Japanese customs, especially when they talked about marriage and the responsibility of the oldest son to his parents.

My second fieldwork step occurred in 2006 when my students and I arrived at the kaikan ⁵ (Associação Cultural e Esportiva Nikkei de Bastos—ACENBA—Nikkei Sport and Cultural Association of Bastos), where we were very well received. We sat down around a big table in the meeting room that displayed pictures of former directors on the wall. Old picture albums of directors and houses were on a small table in the corner. Mr. Takahashi Akira introduced us and then presented everybody who was there: Mr. Goichi Watanabe, Mr. Kobayashi, Mr. Fukui, Mr. Roberto Hiroshi Takeuchi, Dr. Yoshi, professor of anthropology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, who spoke only Japanese, and came with a grant to assemble the Regional Museum Saburo Yamanaka of Bastos; Cleide Yamamoto, a bilingual young woman who had been helping Dr. Yoshi and later showed us the city and a poultry farm, and Ms. Yanagisako, professor of Japanese who came through JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) in order to teach Japanese at the ACENBA. The following day Mr. Hasegawa and Dona Luisa, who were labor brokers, were interviewed.

My students and I interviewed seven men and two women: Takahashi Akira, seventy-eight;⁶ Goichi Watanabe, a medical doctor and president of ACENBA, in his late seventies; Mr. Kobayashi in his late sixties; Mr. Fukui in his early seventies; Mr. Hasegawa in his early seventies, Antonio Suzuki, eighty-three; Dona Luisa in her early thirties, and sixty-eight-year-old Keiko Fukui,⁷ who with her husband owned the hotel where we stayed as guests during the field research.⁸ All the interviews with men were collected at the kaikan, with the exception of Antonio Suzuki, whom we interviewed at his home, and Keiko Fukui, interviewed at the hotel. Takahashi Akira also spoke about the colonization process. I also interviewed Mr. Roberto (fifty-four years old), as he was known, at the kaikan and at the shoe store that he owns. Mr. Kobayashi immigrated after World War II, and for this reason is called New Japan (Japão Novo).

After talking to Japanese and Japanese–Brazilian migrants to Bastos, I decided that it was time to interview the Dekasegi. Then, my students and I interviewed two elderly women, one man, one woman, two couples, one teenager, and a psychologist who attended Dekasegi children. I noticed that the dominant presence among the first group is male. Maybe it’s an inheritance of the patriarchal society, where men had an active voice.

The final fieldwork step was realized in 2006 at the seminar on the Centennial of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, at UNESP–Marília, financially supported by CNPq, where I collected the testimonies about colonization of Mr. Takahashi Akira, from Bastos, Ms. Fumiko Morita, in her seventies, who represented the Buddhist temple of Marilia, Mr. Akihiro Otoko, in charge of Tenrikyo Church, and the lawyer Dr. Rodolfo Yamashita. All the three last colonization witnesses lived in Marilia.

NOTES

1. The term crioulos refer to children of African slaves who were born in Brazil.

2. Azeite-de-dendê is a vegetable oil used in European industrialized countries, especially in England. It is also used as cooking oil in Bahia State, Brazil.

3. Aguardente is an alcoholic beverage made of sugarcane.

4. Taiko in Japanese means any kind of drums.

5. Kaikan is the Japanese translation of community center.

6. In Japan, the family name comes first followed by the given name. We noticed in this research that some of our interviewees followed the Japanese tradition, and others were influenced by Western culture, saying their given name first followed by their family name. The use of Mr. replaces the Portuguese Seu, used as a sign of respect when one is dealing with older or unknown men. The same is the case for older or unknown women, where Mrs. or Ms. replaces Dona. The male interviewees talking to each other added the suffix San, such as Takahashi-San.

7. She is called Mrs. Keiko, as Brazilians call older people by their first name preceded by the word Dona.

8. The students who participated in the field research were also guests at the hotel. All the fieldwork expenses were paid by my CNPq research grant.