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
