Читать книгу An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants - Ethel V. Kosminsky - Страница 11
ОглавлениеAn Overview of Japanese Migration to the Americas
The Background to the Japanese Migration
A detailed history of Japanese migration is beyond the scope of this book, but I will provide a brief history to establish the context of Japanese migration to Brazil. At first, Japanese migration was connected to the industrial development and urbanization that started in Japan in 1868. This year marked the beginning of Japan’s modern history and the start of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), which ended long centuries of isolationism (1600–1867, the Tokugawa Era). In the last years of the Tokugawa Era, Japan introduced Western technology in several branches of industry. Metallurgy industries and shipyards were developed in around fourteen han (usually translated as feudal property or clan, this refers to the property under the dominion of a daimyo, an important feudal owner who was a vassals of the Tokugawa government) (Vieira 1973: 25–26)1 .
By the 1800s, rural villages became characterized by very few landlord-occupied households, a limited number of small, autonomous landholders, and a relatively large and increasing number of partial or full tenant farmers who might be away from home working for extended periods. All these changes, which started in the late seventeenth century, became more pronounced in the nineteenth century, leading villagers to engage in protests, lodge lawsuits, and commit violent acts against their wealthy landlords, moneylenders, and small businessmen. These well-to-do people were often the village’s own officials. In the late years of the Tokugawa Era, villagers demonstrated their dissatisfaction due to crop failures and famines (1783–1786 and 1836–1838) and the uncertainty around the Meiji Restoration (Totman 2005: 281–82).
From the 1720s onward, deprivation in cities and towns increased due to monetary manipulation by the government, losses of income and employment due to the reduction in the numbers of samurai, the ruralizing of production, irregular food shortages, and price oscillations due to crop failure. Police action was often used to quiet outbursts of discontents. By the nineteenth century, these eruptions involved thousands of people and could last several days before receding. These protests increased in intensity during the later Tokugawa period, but the regime and its social order survived despite famine, deprivation, and riots. However, from the 1860s, the Japanese people were pushed without choice into an age of industrialization. This change was related to the beginning of industrial imperialism in England, France, Russia, and the United States (Totman 2005: 283–85).
The increased industrialization was associated with the arrival of social problems, in Japan as in the rest of the world. They included destructive environmental pollution and industrial labor unrest. Pollution worsened due to the increase in mining and manufacturing during the Meiji Era. Pollution followed common patterns, such as complicity between industry and a government centered on profit and “the sacrifice of the vulnerable in the name of the greater good or some other fine principle” (Totman 2005: 339–40). The result was a tragedy: rivers, agricultural land, and people poisoned due to copper mining.
These changes were accompanied by increasing concern about the fate of the rural population, a beginning feminist interest in women’s rights, and the appearance of an intelligentsia who were knowledgeable about the radical thought developing in Europe. The social outcasts (eta) also protested against the discrimination they faced (Totman 2005: 339–40).
The workers’ protests were more widespread than those against pollution. They protested against poor industrial wages, cruel working and living conditions, and exploitative employers. Most industrial laborers worked in factories, but miners were also very important to the economy. The coal industry began in the Tokugawa Era, when rural households used their spare time for mining. During the Meiji Era, technological changes allowed deeper mining of coal and minerals, increasing the specialization of labor and reducing domestic miners to harsh poverty and sporadic employment. As profits increased, wages diminished and housing conditions worsened. Workers organized labor unions and employed socialist strategies such as strikes and sabotage, which mine owners reciprocated. One of the most infamous labor protests happened at the Ashio pits in 1907 (Totman 2005: 342–43).
Angry miners launched a violent protest that quickly boiled out of the mine to involve other poor workers in Ashio town proper. In the resulting turmoil rioters dynamited and torched many of the mine’s facilities, including sixty-five buildings lost to flames, which led to police and army intervention. (Totman 2005: 343)
The growing textile industry employed the teenage daughters of poor rural families. With the installation of factories in the 1880s, thread mills employed girls and children for long hours. Dangerous jobs in heavy industries, such as foundries and shipyards, became more mechanized, repetitive, and disciplined. These labor conditions fed worker dissatisfaction. In the 1890s, discontented industrial workers gained access to European socialist ideas and agitated for labor legislation, trade unions, and party organization.
The government tried to prevent the expansion of radicalism. In 1910, as labor unrest intensified, the government drafted a set of factory laws against objections by factory owners. The Factory Act, which was enacted in 1911 to take effect in 1916, established the minimum employment age at twelve and the maximum hours of work for women and children at twelve (Totman 2005: 343–45).
The deterioration of the rural economy led to a decline in the influence of rural elites in the government. At the same time, rapid urbanization led to protests against rising taxes, higher prices of rice, and other issues. The government and the agrarianist ideologues started to react against the rural decline and the urban protests in the 1890s, and even more so after the Russo-Japanese War. They promoted agricultural production and rural industry and established several private and government-backed village youth associations and agricultural cooperatives. They also supported local branches of the Patriotic Women’s Society, an organization that aimed to solidify the links between villages and the armed services by assisting soldiers, sailors, and their families. The government used its ties to local leaders throughout the country to control agrarian unrest (Totman 2005: 345–47).
When Japan signed Trade Agreements in 1858 and 1866, it started to engage in international trade but resisted any external economic influence and refused international loans. The politicians of the Meiji Era began pushing for rapid industrialization, since the transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial one was the only guarantee against imperialist intervention from Western nations. Japanese capitalism developed with the state as the principal entrepreneur due to the lack of commercial capital. At the beginning of the Meiji Era, rich trading families focused on traditional activities, such as trade and loans. Thus, the state raised the necessary capital through internal loans and heavy taxes on the agriculture sector (Vieira 1973: 26–27).
Japanese capitalism presented peculiarities, as the state was both entrepreneur and economic control agent. Besides this, Japan applied an unequal distribution of taxes that exploited peasants in order to modernize the non-agrarian sector of the economy. Modernization depended on the heavy new land tax. This tax worsened the gap between poor peasants and urban inhabitants and spurred the rural to urban migration for factory work (Vieira 1973: 27–28).
The government played the role of principal industrial entrepreneur until 1880, financing and controlling the nation’s transportation and communication system, mining, heavy industry, and textile industry. The Japanese state attracted private capital to invest in industry through low interest loans and generous subsidies. Governmental control of economic life was more significant than in other countries at that time. However, in 1880, the state sold all the industries except for railroad companies, telegraph, shipyards in Yokosuka, and armament factories. Thus, the state and the new capitalist class created an alliance that concentrated capital among a small group of people. At the same time, the government founded a new education system, used Western medicine, sent and financially supported students in Western countries, opened consulates, and expanded the military and marine forces based primarily on the new land taxes and on internal loans (Vieira 1973: 28–29).
In 1873, taxes upon land changed from payment in produce, which varied annually, to a fixed currency payment. Peasants found it impossible to pay this tax; they often had to sell their land, or saw their land confiscated and then rented. Several peasant revolts erupted. Compounding the problem, the peasants’ manufactured goods could not compete with the cheapest imported products. Peasants also had to deal with the loss of communal land, which was a source of wood and soil fertilizers. This struck the agrarian sector hard and compelled further migration to the cities (Vieira 1973: 29–30). Thus, similar to the British accumulation of capital (Marx 1975: 891–954), rural–urban migration was both a product and precondition of the industrial development of Japan. Peasants became the labor force of the factories.
The Expansion of the Japanese Empire
As Japan’s population increased, it spread beyond the three principal Japanese islands (Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku) into new areas, occupying Hokkaido in the north and Okinawa in the south. The colonization of Hokkaido started in 1872. Eventually in 1920 and 1930, it became a source of emigration to other industrialized locations and to other countries (Vieira 1973: 30).
The Ryukyu Islands (which include Okinawa) were incorporated into the Japanese empire in 1879. Once an independent kingdom with its own culture, it became a Japanese province, which exported sugar and coal to Japan. Eventually, the Japanese government promoted the emigration of Okinawans to the Japanese Pacific colonies, to Hawaii, the United States, Canada, and South America. Around 1930, more than 54,000 Okinawans were living in other countries. In 1962, there were 19,100 Okinawans in Brazil according to the General Census of the Japanese Colony. Discriminated against in Japan because they were not considered Nihonjin, Okinawans suffered discrimination in Brazil as well for several decades after the Japanese colonization. Okinawans in Brazil have had their own associations, and formed a predominantly endogenous group (Vieira 1973: 30–31).
Starting with the Chinese-Japanese War (1894–1895), Japanese migration was part of an imperialist expansion that included Taiwan, Karafuto, Korea, and Manchuria. Taiwan was the first imperialist conquest as a result of the war between Japan and China. Besides being a colony for Japanese capital investment, Taiwan was a point of departure for future economic and political control of continental Asia and Oceania. As a result of the Russian-Japanese War, Japan conquered Korea in 1910. The Korean labor force was used to industrialize Manchuria. Korea became a source of raw materials, a destination for Japanese capital investment, and a market for Japanese consumer products (Vieira 1973: 30–32).
Karafuto, located in the south of Sakhalin Island, was conquered by Japan in 1905 in the Japanese-Russian war, and the Japanese state colonized it by subsidizing its earlier emigrants. From 1905 to 1931, Japan made its way through Manchuria, creating the puppet state of Manchukuo to develop its agricultural resources and industries (Vieira 1973: 32).
After World War I, the League of Nations transferred some South Pacific islands to the Japanese state, which then subsidized a colonization company to exploit its tropical resources. The company enjoyed a monopoly and did not pay taxes. On the other hand, it provided shelter, medical assistance, and accident insurance to its workers. The workers received half of the wages paid in Tokyo and had to pay for their own transportation (Vieira 1973: 32–33).
Migration outside the Japanese empire reached the following countries: the Philippines, Hawaii, Canada, the United States, Peru, and Brazil. Japanese migration started in the 1880s, when migrant families moved to Hawaii and North America. By 1940, immigrants comprised a total of 439,316 people, among them 226,847 who settled in Latin America (193,156 in Brazil) and 206,871 in Canada, the United States, and Hawaii. Most emigrants had a low socioeconomic background and came from less-developed agricultural regions. Migration to Brazil was planned and subsidized by the government under the supervision of private companies and, from 1920 on, was more politically driven. Emigration companies sent immigrants bound by agricultural agreements and motivated by active propaganda. Almost all of them considered emigration to be temporary and this impacted their adjustment into Brazilian society (Vieira 1973: 33–34).
Japanese imperialism conquered China’s market and others in Asia and Africa. The Japanese government reformulated its emigration and colonization policy and unified the emigration companies. Kaigai Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (KKKK) or Overseas Company of Enterprises S.A. was founded in 1917 through the reorganization of Tõyõ Imin Kaisha with the financial support of the Foreign Relations Department. KKKK incorporated all the earlier companies and in 1920 enjoyed a monopoly on emigration and colonization. Brasil Takushoku Kabushi Kaisha, which had already established a Japanese colony in Registro, São Paulo State, was incorporated into KKKK in 1919. The total number of Japanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil from 1908 to 1940 was about 180,000 (Mita 1999: 41–42).
The founding of KKKK was also related to an economic crisis and postwar unemployment, which provoked worker protests. Those who left Japan did so in order to survive a severe crisis and did so with the help of the Japanese government (Tsuda 2003: 55–56). The Japanese government also sent emigrants to Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, and Mexico between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century.
The official reasons for the policy promoting migration to Latin America from the 1920s to 1960s were overpopulation and poverty. In fact people who were disadvantaged and marginalized due to the state’s modernization and capitalist development radicalized their resistance, and the Japanese state decided to get rid of those who questioned its policies by sending them to Latin America. Besides increasing its internal social control, the nation-state spanned borders in an imperialist way through its migration-colonization program (Endoh 2009).
People throughout North and South America distrusted Japanese immigrants due to their different phenotype and their preservation of a nationalistic feeling, which connected them to their homeland. Peruvians shared analogous feelings. Referring to Japanese immigration to Peru, Mário C. Vázquez (1970: 91) said, “The Japanese established associations of people from the same ‘home town.’” This attitude prevented them from marrying Peruvian women. Thus, they lived in “isolation.” When their contracts expired, some went back to Japan and others went to the cities to find work. Their stated claim to return to Japan also annoyed the nationalistic Peruvian elite as well as authors such as Vázquez, who wrote from an assimilation perspective. It did not occur to them and to the population of the American continents that Japanese immigrants faced harsh living conditions due to discrimination and had created associations to protect themselves and keep their culture alive.
Another problem is that the population in general saw Japanese immigrants as strangers who could threaten their “achievements, possessions and social standing” (Bauman 2016: 15). Bauman was referring to European, especially French attitudes toward refugees and asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016. He was analyzing the attitudes of “the emergent ‘precariat’” sector of society, whose social position has been endangered by socioeconomic and political transformations. However, it could also be applied to the nineteenth-century/early twentieth-century working and middle classes in the Americas and to government policies in relation to Japanese immigrants. This was especially true in Canada and in the United States, where there was strong competition between the established population and Japanese immigrants. This fear of strangers seeing them as a threat to people’s social positions and to their nationalist feeling has lasted for more than a century, and currently shows an upward trend.
Japanese Immigration to Hawaii and the United States
Japanese emigrants went to work on plantations in Hawaii as temporary migrant workers, and from there they migrated to the United States. Among the 200,000 Japanese who immigrated to Hawaii, 180,000 later went to the United States. Most of them were young educated men due to the Japanese law that required eight years of schooling. Compared to the European immigrants who settled in the United States, the percentage of people who could not read and write was low among Japanese immigrants. Most Japanese immigrants came from rural areas and were not severely poor. They arrived in the United States with more money than the average immigrants from Europe (Takaki 1994: 22).
The first Japanese emigrant flow went to Hawaii in 1868, when Hawaii was an independent kingdom. They also immigrated to the west coast of the United States. Those who arrived first were rural young single men. They came from the Provinces of Hiroshima, Wakayama, Kumamoto, and Yamaguchi. Some of them later returned to Japan; others sent for their wives. The American government denied citizenship to those who were born in Japan, although their American-born children had citizenship automatically. Considered foreigners, Japanese immigrants could not buy land for agriculture (Kitano 1980: 185).
The Japanese government controlled who emigrated. Moved by an increasing nationalism, the government considered Japanese emigrants as representatives of their homeland: “Anyone who wanted to go to Hawaii or the United States had to apply for permission. Review boards screened the applicants to make sure that they were healthy and educated, and that they would uphold ‘national honor’ abroad” (Takaki 1994: 22–23).
In 1908, the United States called for a Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan, in which the latter country agreed to prevent the emigration of Japanese laborers. However, there was a loophole: close relatives of workers already in America would be allowed to emigrate. At this time, Hawaii was a territory of the United States, so it followed the same policy (Takaki 1994: 24). Most Japanese immigrants settled in California, where they became shopkeepers and small farmers. Others worked for railroad owners and landowners. Another Japanese community was founded in Seattle in the 1890s. Much like the other west coast communities, these immigrants came primarily from prefectures in the south and west of Japan. Initially, the community was predominantly young, single men. In contrast, emigrants to Brazil were required to be part of family units (Yanagisako 1985: 3).
Immigrants to the mainland faced intense racial prejudice and discrimination. In 1920s, California Nisei, or second-generation Japanese Americans, represented only 2 percent of the total population, yet were treated with scorn and hostility. In contrast, immigrants to Hawaii represented 43 percent of the population by the 1920s, when the majority of islanders were of Asian origin (Takaki 1994: 28–29, 31, 33).
In reaction to this intense racial prejudice, many Japanese immigrants formed tight social and economic bonds among themselves. Issei in America preserved their ethnic solidarity and cultural values. This attitude of self-protection was used against them. White racists accused Japanese immigrants “of not wanting to fit into America” (Takaki 1994: 35).
Gaining American citizenship was another struggle for Japanese immigrants. According to the 1790 federal immigration law, only white immigrants could become American citizens. In 1882, a law prohibited Chinese immigration and declared that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens. The laws did not clearly assert that Japanese immigrants were prevented from becoming citizens; thus, several hundred Japanese immigrants won citizenship in the courts. But in 1906, the U.S. attorney general ordered the federal courts to deny citizenship to Japanese immigrants. A few years later, California approved a land law that prohibited immigrants from buying or renting land. In 1921, the state of Washington passed its own Alien Land Law preventing foreign-born Japanese from buying or leasing land. This stands in stark contrast to the emigrants’ ability to purchase land in Brazil (Yanagisako 1985: 3).
The Japanese immigrants’ situation in America worsened in 1921 when Japan and the United States signed the “Ladies’ Agreement.” Under this contract, Japan stopped the flow of picture brides to the United States. In 1924, Congress approved a general immigration law that proscribed all immigration from Asia. One anti-Japanese Californian told Congress: “Of all the races ineligible to citizenship, the Japanese are the least assimilable and the most dangerous to this country” (Takaki 1994: 88).
As a result, many Issei parents registered their children as citizens of Japan. They were really citizens of two countries, American by birth and Japanese by registration. Issei parents were afraid that they could be evicted and made to return to Japan; therefore, they wanted to be able to take their children with them (Takaki 1994: 100).
Japanese immigrants and their children faced the worst time of their lives in the United States during World War II (1942–1945) when they were confined in internment camps. Japanese in Hawaii also suffered restrictions due to war laws, but there was no mass confinement in internment camps. In the camps, the most difficult problem faced by the Japanese and their children was the monotonous daily routine, poor food, and their loneliness in undesirable, obscure locations. Familial life was disrupted because the government assumed the role of parents: meals were served in big dining halls, and the immigrants had their basic survival necessities provided without working. However, some immigrants worked for farmers nearby. There were conflicts among the immigrants and their children and also between them and those who were in charge of the camp administration. Finally, the camps started to be closed in 1945, and by 1946, all Japanese and their families were free. After liberation, some of them settled in Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Minneapolis, but most of them preferred to return to the west coast, especially to California (Kitano 1980: 186–87). It was extremely difficult for these adults to resume their previous lives, given that they had lost all their property and had to start anew as wage earners (Yanagisako 1985: 4–5).
Many Issei had to wait for several years for their naturalization process, and many of them died before getting it. The Naturalization Law of 1790 was finally replaced by the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which promoted Issei’s citizenship and the right to vote, and stated that the anti-miscegenation law was unconstitutional (Kitano 1980: 188). This law applied to Japanese and all other Asian immigrants.
Japanese Immigration to Canada
Japanese emigration to Canada started at the end of the nineteenth century when young workers from southwest Japan crossed the Pacific and settled in British Columbia. Their aim was temporary migration; they intended to save money after working for a few years and then return to Japan. Japanese immigration started in 1896 with 1000 immigrants; in 1901, the number increased to 4,438, and in 1911, the number reached 9,057 immigrants due to the arrival of family members allowed entry following the 1908 agreement between Canada and Japan that regulated Japanese immigration.
The immigrants settled in British Columbia, where they found work in fishing, forestry, and mining. They were able to live well because the climate and geography were similar to their own country. In the 1920s, after years of working as laborers, they were able to save enough money to buy farms, stores, fishing boats, and houses. By 1941, Japanese–Canadians had reached a steady financial situation, although they faced discrimination and prejudice. There were 23,149 people of Japanese origin; among them 22,096 or 96 percent lived in British Columbia. They lived in a segregated community based on Japanese mores, as self-protection due to the harsh social environment. From their arrival, they experienced prejudice. Canadians were afraid of the “yellow danger,” afraid of this population, who had different phenotypes and mores, and who might threaten their way of life. Canadians also believed that Japanese immigrants would never assimilate into Canadian society.
The fact that Japanese immigrants and their descendants had to live apart from the social environment in a cohesive colony increased the anti-Japanese feeling. In 1907, there was a rebellion in Vancouver, which damaged Chinatown and Little Tokyo. In 1902, the provincial British Columbia Congress approved a law that prevented all Asians from getting British citizenship. Those who had already been granted citizenship had it revoked. Those born in Canada and those who had arrived from Japan had no right to vote. This restriction lasted until 1949.
The revocation of citizenship excluded Japanese immigrants and their descendants from several occupations, such as ownership of fishing and timber businesses. This discrimination, whether according to law or custom, prevented them from holding certain jobs and from adjusting to Canadian society. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor greatly increased discrimination against Japanese immigrants and their descendants. Canadian wartime policy removed all “foreign enemies,” people of Japanese origin and Japanese Canadians, from British Columbia. The eviction and confinement signified the destruction of the community, familial life, business, and personal properties. This measure was intended to keep the nation safe, according to the Canadian government.
Japanese immigrants and their descendants were sent to work in road construction, agriculture, state industries, or to internment camps. This situation lasted for more than four years. After the war, the government scattered Japanese Canadians across Canada to prevent future colonies. Only after 1949 were they authorized to settle back in British Columbia. At the same time, the Canadian government pushed Japanese to return to Japan instead of remaining in Canada. Therefore, 4,000 people went back to Japan. Among them, more than half were born in Canada and two-thirds held Canadian citizenship. In 1948, the Canadian government granted citizenship to people with Japanese ancestors (Makabe 1980: 195–213).
Japanese Immigration to Latin American Countries
Japanese emigrants considered Latin America a less attractive destination than Hawaii and the United States due to Latin America’s agrarian-based economy and low level of industrialization. Japanese immigrants who were dekasegi (migrant workers) expected to make money more easily in the United States than in Latin America, which was their second or third choice. Thus, they considered Latin America much like Hawaii, a place of passage while they waited for acceptance into the United States (Endoh 2009: 18).
Japanese migration to Latin America was unusual due to the fact that emigrants flowed from a developing economy (Japan before World War II) to less-developed ones, such as Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Argentina was at the time more economically advanced than the rest of Latin America (Endoh 2009: 19). In the 1920s, at a time of increased anti-Japanese sentiment in Brazil, Japan was able to maintain and even expand its emigration by directing immigrants to rural, unpopulated hinterlands, such as the northern and western interior of São Paulo state and northern parts of Paraná, or to the Amazon rainforest, where neither Brazilian people nor European immigrants wanted to move. This strategy was sought to avoid any conflict of interest with local Brazilians and also to weaken the ethnic presence of Japanese people (Endoh 2009: 31).
Despite the precarious and hostile immigration environments in Peru and Brazil, Japanese proponents stimulated migration with a new approach, sending the immigrants to remote hinterlands while upholding Japan’s responsibility to protect its citizen-migrants at a minimum level. This decision led to the death of many immigrants from malaria and yellow fever in the Brazilian Amazon region and in São Paulo State. Why did the Japanese government have this attitude? It was a “result of a marriage of convenience between the different interests of the sender (Japan) and host states” (Peru and Brazil) (Endoh 2009: 34).
Japanese Immigration to Peru
Japanese immigration to Peru began in 1899 as a labor migration organized by a Japanese migration agency through an agreement with Peruvian sugar plantation owners. The Japanese government approved this contract despite inadequate information about local environmental and labor conditions. Seven hundred and ninety immigrants went to work on eleven sugar plantations on Peru’s Pacific coast, where they faced “harsh working and living conditions in the haciendas and an unfamiliar tropical climate” (Endoh 2009: 20).
Disputes quickly arose between Japanese laborers and Peruvian employees. Feeling the competition of the labor market, townspeople and Peruvian unions did not welcome the newcomers, and Japanese laborers felt exploited and mistreated. Some Japanese workers “fled the quasi-slavery of the plantations” (Endoh 2009: 21), appealing to the Japanese company for repatriation, while others went to Bolivia looking for better jobs. Those were the luckiest ones, because after the first year, 143 of the 790 migrants died from malaria. Due to increases in the settlement rate and the immigrants’ remittances, the Japanese state took over the migration business in the early 1920s.
By 1923, there were 20,630 contract migrants in Peru. The agreement between both countries ended that year. However, the Japanese government sent 12,440 immigrants as late as 1941, including new brides in arranged marriages and employees of Japanese-owned plantations in the Peruvian countryside (Endoh 2009: 22).
Japanese immigrants and their descendants improved their lives by moving to cities and finding jobs in the service sector, such as in barbershops, restaurants, tailor shops, and general merchandise stores. Nevertheless, urban Peruvians were hostile to their presence. They were concerned that the Japanese “would ‘Asianize’ their cities as Chinese immigrants had threatened to do half a century earlier” (Endoh 2009: 22). Therefore, in 1903, the first bill to eliminate Japanese immigration was proposed, but it was defeated in the national legislature.
The Peruvian government continued trying to prevent the entrance of Japanese and other Asian immigrants and enacted a bill in 1906 in favor of European and American immigrants, whose travel expenses would be subsidized. In 1918, the Peruvian Congress defeated another bill that proposed to exclude “people of color,” as Japanese and other Asian people were classified. The Peruvian population’s racist and discriminatory attitudes continued through World War I (Endoh 2009: 22–23).
The return to power of a former president (1919–1930), who was a sugar plantation owner and favored Japanese immigration, diminished the anti-Japanese movement and increased immigration. During the 1920s more than 9,000 Japanese arrived. However, the Great Depression of 1929 jolted Peru, which was heavily dependent on raw material exports. The following year, the president fell to a coup d’état, and the new leaders were far less sympathetic to this ethnic minority. The coup and the political instability of 1930–1931 involved physical assaults and looting against Japanese residents.
Despite the vehement anti-Japanese sentiment expressed by the Peruvian government and public, Tokyo did not suspend its emigration policy; it redirected its emigrants to the interior. But the new administration responded to public sentiment by increasing restrictions on Japanese immigration and the freedom of immigrants living in Peru. In April 1932, the government approved an Act that required all businesses to employ a workforce that was at least 80 percent Peruvians. The law’s intention was to prevent Japanese immigrants and Nikkei from achieving prosperity in Peru.
A trade dispute aggravated the bilateral relationship between the two countries in the 1930s. Peru felt disadvantaged in the cotton trade with Japan, and in 1934, the Peruvian Congress approved the unilateral repeal of its bilateral trade treaty with Japan. Following U.S. efforts to deter Japan’s imperialism, while at the same time making an agreement with that country, the Peruvian government exchanged its trade agreement for an intensified anti-Japanese campaign.
Therefore, at the Inter-American Peace Conference in Buenos Aires in 1936, Peruvian representatives asked neighboring nations to tighten legal restrictions on the naturalization of Japanese immigrants. They looked to prevent Japan from repeating its military-imperial expansion already achieved in Asia. The international zeitgeist against Japanese imperialism was quickly expressed as hate politics in Peru. The simmering racism finally erupted in 1940 in an openly anti-Japanese rally in Lima sponsored by the state. The demonstration deteriorated into looting, assaults, and murder, victimizing Japanese (Endoh 2009: 23–25).
The breakout of war between Japan and the United States in the Pacific struck a catastrophic blow to Japanese immigrants in Peru. The government of Peru joined the Allied Forces and soon severed diplomatic relations with Tokyo. Japanese nationals and their family members were forcibly relocated overseas. Japanese adult males became the target of arrests based on lists prepared by the U.S. Consulate. They were transferred to U.S. internment camps in Texas at Crystal City, Kennedy, and Seagovill. From January 1943 to February 1945, 1,771 men and women of Japanese origin were deported from Peru to the camps. That accounted for more than 80 percent of the total number of Japanese deportees from Latin American countries (Bolivia, Venezuela, Panama, and El Salvador), showing the severity of Peru’s persecution against the Nikkei. Those who remained faced the loss of their properties and were severely persecuted. After the war, it took a long time until the deportees could return to Peru to join their families. Others never did. Victory in World War II was seen to legitimize Peru’s mistreatment of its ethnic Japanese minority. Racism against people of Japanese origin persisted in peacetime society and workplaces. No postwar Japanese immigrants went to Peru (Endoh 2009: 26).
Japanese Immigration to Brazil
As Japanese immigration to Brazil is my ultimate focus, I will describe it in detail, especially immigration to São Paulo State, where Bastos is located. First, I deal with the characteristics of land ownership, the labor relationships between plantation owners and slaves and immigrants, and the Brazilian elite’s aspirations of making the population white through miscegenation, which would affect Japanese immigration.
Slavery, Land Ownership, and Immigration
The major source of property in Brazil was the Portuguese Crown’s donation of large areas of land called sesmaria, under the condition that it would be cultivated within six months (Candido 1971: 59). This form of land concession predominated in the 1700s.
The sesmaria system was created in Portugal at the end of the fourteenth century. Its goal was to solve the problem of supplying the country, putting an end to a severe crisis of general foodstuffs. The objective of legislation was not to prevent land from remaining uncultivated, but rather to impose the obligation that the soil be utilized. In an effort to understand the peculiar characteristics of the system, researchers have stressed that, in Brazil, the Portuguese Crown needed to establish a judicial system capable of securing colonization. The sesmaria system was established in Brazil not to resolve the question of access to land and its cultivation, as was the thinking in Portugal, but to regularize colonization. . . . Sesmeiro is used to indicate one who holds title to land under such system. (Motta 2005: 2, fn.1)
The different points of view held by Candido and Motta regarding the sesmaria system show that there is still much research to be done on this subject. Little work has been done in terms of examining the conflicts between those who had legal ownership, sesmeiros, and those who were identified as posseiros. This more numerous group lived poorly and cultivated the land for its own subsistence (Motta 2013).
To counter England’s prohibiting the African slave traffic in 1831, São Paulo’s coffee plantation owners bought slaves from the impoverished sugarcane plantations in the northeast and/or bought them from illicit trade. Yet, England’s ban increased the price of slaves and hindered the replacement of enslaved workers. This threatened Brazilian agricultural exports. The solution at the time was to create an immigration policy that would populate the southern region of the country in order to protect the Portuguese Crown’s property.
This immigration policy, however, did not mesh with the country’s colonization goal to create a free labor market for coffee plantations owners. Therefore, the Brazilian Empire enacted the Law of Land (Lei das Terras) in 1850 (Law no. 601), which allowed land ownership through direct acquisition only. Now, the sesmaria system was forbidden. In this way, land became merchandise. Free workers and poor immigrants received wages in return for working on coffee plantations. Depending on how much they could save and the working conditions imposed by plantations owners, they could buy a plot of land after several years of very hard work (Martins 1973: 50–52).
This Law of Land (Lei das Terras) extended to the posseiros as well. Cultivating a plot of land and building a simple house to live in did not qualify for ownership; they had to pay the state for the land (Martins 1973: 82). Some people found jobs hauling merchandise by donkeys; others had no choice other than to work for those who legally owned land. Those who could choose the second option rented a plot of land for agricultural purposes. They were called foreiro or arrendatário. However, not all of them could pay rent. This resulted in increased numbers of people from mixed ancestry living in poverty without any land and the concentration of land in the hands of a few owners (Martins 1973: 87–88).
Colonization officers faced several problems: land bought by the government (land that had always belonged to the state) now needed to be located and measured, abandoned properties dealt with, and the status of earlier owners and foreiros in São Paulo state needed to be regulated (Martins 1973: 91).
Colonization in southern Brazil faced similar problems. Arriving immigrants found their plot of land was neither located nor measured, which caused many problems. This colonization created a large area populated by European immigrants and evicted Native Brazilians and Caboclos, people whose ancestors were Native Brazilian and white. The immigration policy considered European immigrants to be agents of civilization and progress. Other objectives of colonization were to create agriculture for consumption and to initiate industrial progress. This colonization was based on small familial property. The imperial government went to great expense to hire agents to bring immigrants from Europe and to subsidize them upon their arrival. As a republic (from 1889), Brazil invested more in foreign colonization companies, which were responsible for selecting and transporting immigrants, measuring plots of land and selling them (Seyferth 2004: 136–37).
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the imperial government debated which European nations could provide the most adequate immigrants for developing “modern” agriculture. The emancipation of slaves was necessary to include Brazil among the civilized countries and attract European immigration, which represented free labor. Thus, Brazilian free workers and slaves were not considered for the colonization system. Blacks, natives, and people from mixed ancestry were seen as incapable of working free from outside control. The debate about possible Asian immigration, especially from China, exposed inherent racism. Chinese people were regarded as an inferior race. This discussion also created a hierarchy of immigrants and resulted in the establishment of homogenous colonies of Germans and Italians in southern Brazil. Blacks, natives, people from mixed ancestry, and Portuguese immigrants were eligible only for jobs in deforestation and were prevented from owning land. The Portuguese were considered best suited for shop keeping, not farming. In short, race determined a person’s ability to work autonomously and to accumulate wealth (Seyferth 1996: 45–48).
Between the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889 and the outbreak of World War I, foreign scientists debated the hierarchy of race based on the superiority of the white race and pointed to miscegenation as the harbinger of a pessimistic future for the country. However, Brazilian scientists countered this criticism with their ideology of whitening (branqueamento), which they claimed would create a people with a “superior” blend of mixed ancestry. This last category was defined as predominantly being a civilized race and being a responsible individual. Thus, European immigrants would be assimilated into the Brazilian population, and the third generation would be white. Besides race, Brazilian intellectuals were concerned with Brazil’s status as a nation. It already had its own culture, language, and religion, so it was logical for the policy of immigration to favor immigrants of Latin origin, such as those from Spain, Portugal, and Italy. German immigrants threatened the consolidation of the Brazilian nation. The hierarchy of white European immigrants obeyed a different criterion: they should belong to the “Latin civilization” and be able to assimilate into the Brazilian population. Other intellectuals criticized Portuguese immigrants because of their trade vocations and their hatred of agriculture. However, this did not prompt them to exclude Portuguese from coming to Brazil. Brazilian workers were considered racially inferior in the Brazil Empire as well as the Brazilian Republic, both before and after the emancipation of slaves in 1888 (Seyferth 1996: 44–56).
Private immigration companies were criticized for funneling Japanese immigrants directly to São Paulo coffee plantations owners. The arrival of the first Japanese immigrants 1908 increased the debate on the dangers of Asian immigration. As previously stated, Brazilian nationalists abhorred non-white immigration and, as such, Chinese, Hindu, and Japanese people were seen as descending from decadent civilizations that would impede the historical goal of Brazilian whitening and superior racial formation (Seyferth 1996: 56–57).
German and Swiss immigrants who went to work for São Paulo coffee plantation owners faced such mistreatment that Prussia and other German states prohibited further immigration to São Paulo State in 1859 through the Restrito von der Heydt (Richter 1986: 15). Until this law was revoked in 1896 (Richter 1986: 20), Germans were only allowed to immigrate to the southern states not to São Paulo.
Italians encountered similar hardships, compelling the Italian government to prohibit subsidized immigration to São Paulo coffee plantations under the Decreto Prinetti in 1902. According to this decree, some ships were prevented from transporting Italian emigrants without payment in advance. But São Paulo coffee plantation owners adjusted to the new situation by no longer paying for families’ tickets (Alvim 1986: 53). The Italian government, due to regular non-compliance with the Decreto Prinetti, decided in 1905 that those who wanted to immigrate to Brazil would have to pay for their passage or have tickets already paid for and sent by family members. However, this political decision prevented few people from traveling to Italy in order to pay for the emigrants’ tickets (Alvim 1986: 59). This situation changed only when the United States replaced Brazil as the preferred destination of Italians at the turn of the century (Alvim 1986: 60).
Both the Brazilian imperial government in the nineteenth century and the republic in the twentieth century opposed Japanese immigration, considering it to be “the yellow danger.” Plantation owners, intellectuals, and the São Paulo state government, too, preferred immigrants to be white Europeans rather than Asians, in order to further whiten the Brazilian population through miscegenation. These groups envisioned a modern Brazil based on the white race and European civilization. In this racist ideology, Chinese, Hindu, and Japanese people represented decaying civilizations that would only hinder the “advancement” they saw as necessary in Brazil (Seyferth 1996: 56–57). However, the government made no effort to prevent the first Japanese immigrants from arriving in 1908, hired to replace African slave labor and replenish the dwindling supply of white European workers for São Paulo’s coffee plantations.
The Arrival of Japanese Immigrants
Brazilians were surprised when the first ship of Japanese immigrants arrived at Santos harbor in 1908 and they saw men and women in Western dress. Besides Western dresses, women wore hats and white cotton gloves. These European-styled clothes were bought with the immigrants’ own money in Japan and were made in Japanese factories. Traditionally, only male teachers in Japan’s rural areas wore European clothing (Handa 1987: 5–6). Brazilians were not accustomed to seeing well-dressed immigrants, as poor Southern European immigrants had arrived very dirty and tired. However, Brazilians saw Japanese, upon their arrival, as an odd people, who had a different phenotype, spoke another language, were not Catholics, and had different mores.
These feelings only began to change years later in the 1950s when many Japanese immigrants and their descendants began moving to cities and blending into Brazilian culture. They learned Portuguese, attended Brazilian schools, converted to Catholicism, and began marrying outside their ethnic group. Brazilians conceded that those whom they would always call Japanese were an intelligent, hardworking people.
Most Japanese immigrants settled first in São Paulo State, and then in Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Paraná. A few others settled in the Amazon region, northeast region, and in the states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.2
According to the environment where they settled, the Japanese colonization companies’ resources, and the kind of agreement with the Brazilian government, Japanese immigrants faced several challenges, some worse than others.
Japanese Immigrants’ Adjustment in Brazil
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 or 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 as “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.
The immigrants’ intention was to stay for a few years in Brazil, work hard, save money, and then return to Japan. However, World War II interrupted their plans, and they had to settle in Brazil indefinitely. The novel Haru e Natsu e as Cartas que Não Chegaram (Haru and Natsu and the Letters that Did Not Arrive) compares the flawed relationships between family members who had left Japan and those who chose to stay (Hashida 2005). Some families maintained links and during World War II sent sugar and other foodstuff to their relatives in Japan, as told by an elderly immigrant referring to her father in Bastos. Some immigrants from Bastos were able to visit their families in Japan in the 1960s.
The Japanese government decided to promote emigration through Shakai Kyoku, a division of Naimusho (Department of Interior) in 1921. That division promoted the policy of emigration to Brazil, subsidizing KKKK, and establishing an Emigration Settlement in Kobe in order to help the emigrants in 1928. Through Shakai Kyoku, the government started paying the cost of the entire trip in 1924. In 1932, the Japanese government also began to help defray the costs incurred by immigrants while preparing to travel (Mita 1999: 42–43).
As a result of this Japanese policy, the number of Japanese immigrants reached 148,975 between 1926 and 1941, or 75 percent of the 180,000 immigrants that arrived between 1908 and 1942, when diplomatic relations between Brazil and Japan were interrupted. The spike in Japanese immigration to Brazil between 1928 and 1934 was particularly intense due to the closed-door policy that the United States implemented in 1924. During these seven years, 108,258 individuals arrived, representing 57.3 percent of all Japanese immigrants before World War II (Saito 1961: 34).
After 1934, the number of Japanese immigrants diminished in Brazil for a number of reasons. The 1934 Constitution created a quota system, which limited the number of arrivals in the country, among them Japanese immigrants. Immigration was further interrupted due to the diplomatic rupture between the two countries in 1942. In addition, when war between Japan and China began in 1937, the Japanese government passed the National General Mobilization Law as Japanese society prepared itself for further war. Emigration to Brazil ended in 1942 and began again only in 1953.
Japanese immigration to Brazil can be summarized in three periods according to Saito (1961):
The First Period of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, 1908–1925
Japanese immigration to Brazil started in 1908 with the arrival of 167 families containing 772 people to work on local coffee plantations. They replaced Italian immigration, which the Italian government had prohibited due to harsh working conditions on the plantations and the laborers not receiving their annual pay when the price of coffee fell sharply (Reichl 1985: 25–26). The Japanese immigration was subsidized by the São Paulo state government and by the coffee plantation owners.3 The São Paulo state government required that immigrants come as families not as individuals, demanding that three people from each family work on coffee plantations. Thus, some immigrants created fake or “composite families,” which excluded non-productive children and elders and increased the number of people able to work as if they were part of the same family. Hiroshi Saito (1961: 47–75) refers to this period as the first Japanese immigration to Brazil, from 1908 to 1925. Most of these immigrants came from Japanese agricultural areas.
The Second Period of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, 1926–1941
The second period of Japanese immigration to Brazil began in 1925, in response to the 1924 U.S. law that officially prohibited Japanese immigration. With the door to the United States closed, Japanese immigrants turned to Brazil. Between 1926 and 1941, 148,975 settlers arrived, which represented more than 75 percent of the total number before World War II. Most newcomers remained in São Paulo State (Mita 1999: 57).
Compared with the earlier period, the number of people who came from Japanese cities increased, although still more than half came from agricultural areas. As the Japanese government subsidized this immigration, the number of “composite families” diminished, and real families, which included both children and elders, grew (Saito 1961: 47–75).4
The colonization of Bastos started in 1928, when the Japanese government engaged Bratac, the Brazilian Colonization Society Ltd. (Sociedade Colonizadora do Brasil Ltda.), and a division of the Department of Interior, to buy a big plot of land (12,932 alqueires) and send Japanese emigrants who could afford to settle as small agricultural owners5 . However, as there were not enough people, the company sold plots to earlier Japanese immigrants, who had come to São Paulo as laborers on coffee plantations.
The Third Period of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, Post-World War II
Between 1942 and 1952, Japanese immigration to Brazil stopped due to World War II. During this period of extreme Brazilian nationalism, the Vargas government, as well as the Brazilian elite, held Japanese immigrants in contempt as an insular people—virtually cocooned within their own ranks—who did not wish to integrate into Brazilian society. Prohibitive measures meant to punish this behavior were set in place. One such example was the banning of Japanese schools. At the same time, a terrible conflict within the Japanese colonies ensued between those who did not believe that Japan was defeated in World War II and those who believed it was. This conflict led to killings and the arrest of some immigrants who did not accept the Japanese defeat.
Japanese immigration resumed in 1953 (Saito 1961: 38–40), primarily to reunify relatives or partners of previously settled immigrants and their descendants. Immigrants now were primarily mechanical engineering technicians, young males who went to work in Japanese industries located in agricultural colonies (such as Bastos), in São Paulo, and in other states starting in the second half of the 1960s. They were fewer in number compared to those from earlier periods who went into agriculture (Bassanezi 1996: 30). Even so, some immigrants settled in less-developed agricultural areas of the Brazilian Western-Center and Amazonia, as well as in Paraguay and Bolivia (Sakurai 2008: 255–257). They were known as “new Japan” (Japão-Novo) among Japanese Brazilians (Vieira 1973: 152).
The data is not precise but we can estimate that there are currently 1,500,000 people of Japanese origin in Brazil, mostly living in São Paulo (Sakurai and Kosminsky 2006). They are the descendants of the almost 250,000 Japanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil between 1908 and 1972 (Levy 1974; Quoted by Bassanezi 1996: 8).
Japanese Settlements in Brazilian States
Before focusing on São Paulo State, I will describe Japanese settlements in some Brazilian states that were arranged by Japanese emigration companies with the support of the Japanese government.
Japanese Immigrants in the Amazon Region
The first Japanese immigrants arrived in the Amazon region, in the state of Pará, in 1929. They settled in Acará colony, now called Tomé-Açu. The immigrants had a terrible life and those who didn’t die from deprivation and tropical diseases eventually moved to south Brazil.
In 1929, forty-three Japanese immigrant families arrived at the port of Santos. From there they went by ship to the colony of Acará inhabited by Native Brazilians, which was located 200 km from Belém, the capital of Pará state. The 1929 Great Depression affected the Amazon region very badly. The Amazon elite hoped that the immigrants would work in agriculture in order to improve the area’s economy. Therefore, they gave extensive land concessions to Japanese immigrants and to whoever wanted to cultivate the soil. Nanbei-Takushoku-Kaisha (Natanku), a branch of the company Kaneboo, received a concession of one million hectares of land located in several parts of Pará State, including the colony of Acará. This colony was the only one established by that colonization company. Tsukasa Uetsuka and Kotaro Tuji later received a concession of land in 1931. This second concession of land saw a group of young male students, who had graduated from Koto Takushoku Gakoo or Kotaku, a college of colonization, settle in the Amazon area.
The immigrants intended to cultivate cocoa in order to develop the colony and for subsistence they would cultivate rice, corn, manioc, and other cereals and fruits. However, the cocoa crop failed, perhaps due to the lack of experience of the immigrants or due to the lack of time and resources that could support its adaptation to the soil. Moreover, many immigrants died from malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases. Even cultivating plants for subsistence proved difficult, because the plants needed to adjust to the climate and soil. After cocoa failed, the immigration company abandoned them in 1935, helping them only with transportation, medical care, and education. Impoverished and sickened, the immigrants decided to leave the colony and most went to São Paulo. From 1929 onward, the colonization company brought 352 families or 2,104 people, but by the end of World War II in 1945, only 60 families remained.
Immigrants who came through the second concession of land faced similar problems. From 1931 onward, 270 families arrived in that area, but only 50 or so families remained. This group cultivated jute, but when World War II started, they abandoned the crop and scattered in outposts along the Amazon River. Some of their leaders were sent to the Acará (Thomé-Açu) internment camp.
The colony of Thomé-Açu began to prosper due to the cultivation of black pepper, which was sold throughout the country and eventually exported. This boom lasted from 1950 to 1970. At the same time, the second group of Japanese immigrants succeeded in cultivating jute. In 1953, a new flow of Japanese immigrants started arriving in Thomé-Açu and within ten years 700 families lived in the Amazon region. As the economic basis of the colony was the monoculture of black pepper, all subsistence products had to be brought from outside. Typically, the eldest sons followed their parents’ agricultural occupation. The younger children including those who were born in the colony were sent to college in Belém, the capital of Pará State.
In the 1950s, more colonies were established through the Uetsuka/Tuji company, and eventually with the financial support of JAMIC (under the name of Japanese Immigration and Colonization Ltda. in Brazil), a Japanese government enterprise. All the colonies failed for reasons similar to those that affected the earlier immigrants before World War II with the exception of the second Thomé-Açu colony. Most immigrants moved to the colony of Thomé-Açu, some went to big cities such as São Paulo and Belém, and others settled as small horticulturalist and poultry farmers in the outskirts of these big cities. The immigrants eventually cultivated black pepper, too. Others emerged as intermediaries selling these products in the cities. Other colonies appeared in Belém’s suburbs in the 1960s.
In 1967, a disease decimated all the black pepper plants in Thomé-Açu and the Belém suburbs, compelling Japanese immigrants and their families to move to western Pará State, where they cultivated black pepper in small colonies. When the disease reached the plants as well, the immigrants finally decided to stop monoculture and began cultivating several crops. Among these crops, melon and papaya were successful and were sold in the south of Brazil. Thus, immigrants and their families cultivated fruit plants on the outskirts of cities and left their residences in the distant countryside. Several immigrants and their children moved to Belém, where parents opened small stores, and children attended college and worked in professional occupations. After 1965, very few immigrants arrived in the Amazon area. There was also a temporary immigration of Japanese technicians and company administrators, who came to work in the company’s branches in Belém and Manaus (Koyama 1980: 11–37).
Japanese Immigrants in the Northeast
Japanese immigrants established eight colonies in the following northeast states: Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco, and Bahia, comprising 115 families. The immigrants in Bahia had probably migrated there from São Paulo and Paraná States. All of them grew agricultural crops and raised poultry. They cultivated green peppers, carrots, tomatoes, chayote, and squash, and watermelons, melons, bananas, passion fruit, papayas, and oranges. Their cereal crops included rice and corn. Besides these crops, they planted sugarcane and black pepper. They also cultivated flowers. This produce was sold directly to consumers or through intermediaries or cooperatives. The immigrants also created new agricultural techniques, such as hybrid crops.
Almost all Japanese immigrants were able to read and write. Although children worked in the field, they attended school too, despite having to walk two hours each way through a forest in order to attend classes at a junior high school and college located in the closest city (Valente 1980: 29–37).
Japanese Immigrants in the South: Rio Grande do Sul
Japanese immigrants, totaling 2,249 people, arrived in Rio Grande do Sul State before World War II. They moved to this state due to the availability of public land, government support, favorable environmental conditions, a developing economy, and rich soil. Italian and German immigrants had inhabited this state since the 1800s. Japanese immigrants and their descendants settled in cities located on the border between Brazil and Argentina and on the border between Brazil and Uruguay, as well as in nearby suburbs. They settled among Italian, German, and Polish immigrants and their descendants. They spread throughout the state, scattered in small numbers, even on the coast and in the cattle-raising areas.
Most Japanese immigrants rented land to cultivate; others quickly became landowners. These Japanese immigrants and their descendants came in small groups traveling from the São Paulo countryside. They understood that the social environment allowed them to become landowners or easily rent a plot of land, so few worked as wage laborers at the beginning of colonization. Many of them cultivated fruit and vegetable in the suburbs, thus supplying nearby cities with produce. Most also raised poultry. Other farmers cultivated flowers. A few immigrants also arrived in Rio Grande do Sul directly from Japan between 1955 and 1963 (Laytano 1980: 39–65).
Japanese Immigration to São Paulo State
São Paulo State sought Japanese immigrants to work on its coffee plantations due to the labor shortage caused by the Italian ban on emigration. Japanese emigration to South America started at the end of the nineteenth century as temporary migration, following similar flows to Hawaii, the United States, and Canada. Japanese emigration to Latin American countries, of which Peru was the first, was spurred by the 1907 “gentlemen’s agreement” between the United States and Japan, which barred prospective Japanese immigrants from the United States. At the same time, Japanese emigration to Canada and Australia was prohibited. Both Peru and Brazil, however, needed cheap labor for agricultural work. The first immigrants faced “misery and hardship” in Peru (Takenaka 2004: 77) and many problems in Brazil (Saito 1961: 21).
After ten years of negotiation between Japan and Brazil, an agreement was signed in 1907 between the São Paulo state government and the Kõkoku Imin Kaisha (Imperial Company of Emigration) that opened the door. According to this agreement, the Japanese company would send 3,000 emigrants over three years. Thus, in 1908, the first group of 772 Japanese emigrants was sent as laborers to the coffee plantations. This immigration to Brazil was subsidized by the São Paulo state government, which paid part of the trip’s cost to the Japanese emigration company. The coffee plantation owners, who paid the immigrants’ wages, covered the other part. This type of immigration lasted until the end of World War I. When European immigration resumed, the São Paulo state government stopped subsidizing Japanese immigrants, arguing that they were unreliable workers and had ultimately left the plantations (Mita 1999: 39–40). The real reason they left, however, was that they were treated poorly, as if they were slaves, suffering from poor living conditions, debt to the coffee plantation company stores and malaria, which killed some of the colonists. The only alternative for the immigrants was to run away from the plantation at night (Sternberg 1970: 279–93).
When the Japanese immigrated to São Paulo State for the first time in 1908 as coffee plantation laborers, they faced many hardships. They had a different phenotype, spoke another language, ate different food, had particular habits and customs, and were not Catholics, as most Brazilians were. Plantation owners exploited them, treating them as if they were slaves. African–Brazilian slaves were freed only in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so, and it took a long time for plantation owners to change their mentality toward their laborers.
Japanese emigration companies had a dual role in sending workers overseas. They sent families to labor on coffee plantations and promoted the emigration of landowners in order to establish colonies in Brazil. The first colony, named the Colony of Iguape, was built in Vale do Ribeira do Iguape, São Paulo State. Tokyo Syndicate was founded with financial resources from private individuals and from the Department of Agriculture and Commerce of Japan in 1910. In 1912, the São Paulo state government donated 50,000 hectares of land to Vale do Ribeira do Iguape. Four thousand Japanese arrived over four years in order to cultivate rice, with the São Paulo government subsidizing their travel expenses (Mita 1999: 44–45).
Another company dedicated to emigration and colonization, Brasil Takushoku Kabushiki Kaisha, was founded in 1913. The Japanese government, with financial support from Tõyõ Imin Kaisha, helped fund this company. As all the Japanese emigration companies were unified and given state approval, Brasil Takushoku Kabushiki Kaisha was incorporated into KKKK in 1919, which is when this company started building and administering the Colony of Iguape. From the start, immigrants were provided with a medical clinic, rice processing factory, schools, a food store, and a designated settlement house (Mita 1999: 45).
Japanese immigrants who labored on coffee plantations lived in poorly built houses made of wood that lacked a floor and furniture or a bathroom and kitchen. They were forced to make their own mattresses using grass or hay stored in the plantation barn and purchase fabric at the plantation owner’s store to sew clothing. Tables and stools were made from discarded branches, and there was no sewage disposal. Food was very expensive at the local store, and there were no doctors nearby. In order to bathe, they made an ofuro in the back of the house. It was a very difficult life, as Nakasato describes in his novel (2011):
German, Italian, and Swiss who immigrated as laborers for coffee plantations faced similar situations. These immigrants who traveled to southern Brazil as familial small landowners fared no better: the land was not yet measured; there were no houses, roads, schools, or food stores. In addition to these problems they had to deal with loneliness, because the distance between plots of land was great. (Seyferth 2004)
Shinano Iju Kyokai (Associação de Emigração de Shinano), from Nagano Province, established the Colonia de Aliança, later called Mirandópolis, in northwest São Paulo State in 1924. Other Japanese provinces, such as Tottori, Toyama, and Kumamoto, inspired by the example of Nagano Province, built their colonies nearby. This emigration and colonization was financially supported by these Japanese provinces and preceded those activities subsidized by the Japanese government. These settlements motivated Japanese capital to invest in the founding of Yugen Sekinin Brasil Takushoku Kumiai (Bratac), named Sociedade Colonizadora do Brasil Ltda. in São Paulo City in 1928. Under its leadership, the number of Japanese colonies where immigrants owned their land increased (Mita 1999: 46, 48).
In Brazil, Bratac represented Kaigai Iju Kumiai Rengokai (KIKR), or the Foundation of Japanese Provinces Association (founded in 1927), whose president was the Japanese Minister of the Interior. The Japanese government lent money to KIKR to buy 90,000 alqueires of land in São Paulo State and northern Paraná in order to establish coffee plantations under Japanese authority. The colonies of Aliança became part of KIKR. Bratac provided the Japanese colonies with a rice processing factory, ice factory, flourmill, lumber mill, brickyard, coffee processing factory, cotton spinning factory, school, hospital, and food stores. Among all the immigrants who came from Japan, only 4 percent settled directly into these colonies before World War II (Saito 1960: 295–96). However, many immigrants who had arrived earlier as coffee plantation laborers later moved to the Bratac colonies.
NOTES
1. All translations are by the author unless noted otherwise.
2. Brazil is divided in five administrative regions, each one with its own states. The North Region includes: Acre, Amapá, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia, Roraima, and Tocatins. The so-called Amazon area has, besides those states, part of Minas Gerais state in the Center-West region and most of Maranhão state in the Northeast region. The Northeast region includes these states: Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, and Bahia. The Central-West region has these states: Mato Grosso, Federal District, Goiás, and Mato Grosso do Sul. The Southeast region and includes: Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo. Finally, the South region includes the states: Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul.
3. This kind of agreement mandated that the Japanese laborers had to work for three or four years in a plantation, and during this time, they had to pay back their debt to the landholder (Saito 1961: 31, footnote 25).
4. Most Japanese immigrants, who came before World War II, were from the following regions: Kyushu, Chugoku, Okinawa, Hokkaido, Tohoku, and Shikoku (Sakurai, 2000: 133).
5. In São Paulo, 1 alqueire is equal to 2.42 hectares; 12,932 alqueires is equal to 31,295 hectares. One acre is equal to 0.4047 hectares.
