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
