Japanese migration to Latin America began in the late nineteenth century, and today the continent is home to 1.5 million persons of Japanese descent. Combining detailed scholarship with rich personal histories, The Japanese in Latin America is the first comprehensive study of the patterns of Japanese migration on the continent as a whole. When the United States and Canada tightened their immigration restrictions in 1907, Japanese contract laborers began to arrive in mines and plantations in Latin America. Daniel M. Masterson, with the assistance of Sayaka Funada-Classen, examines Japanese agricultural colonies in Latin America, as well as the subsequent cultural networks that sprang up within and among them, and the changes that occurred as the Japanese moved from wage labor to ownership of farms and small businesses. Masterson also explores recent economic crises in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, which combined with a strong Japanese economy to cause at least a quarter million Latin American Japanese to migrate back to Japan. Illuminating authoritative research with extensive interviews with migrants and their families, The Japanese in Latin America examines the dilemma of immigrants who maintained strong allegiances to their Japanese roots, even while they struggled to build lives in their new countries.

Japan has witnessed the arrival of thousands of immigrants, since the 1990s, from Latin America, especially from Brazil and Peru. Along with immigrants from other parts of the world, they all express the new face of Japan - one of multiculturality and multi-ethnicity. Newcomers are having a strong impact in local faith communities and playing an unexpected role in the development of communities. This book focuses on the role that faith and religious institutions play in the migrants' process of settlement and integration. The authors also focus on the impact of immigrants' religiosity amidst religious groups formerly established in Japan. Religion is an integral aspect of the displacement and settlement process of immigrants in an increasing multi-ethnic, multicultural and pluri-religious contemporary Japan. Religious institutions and their social networks in Japan are becoming the first point of contact among immigrants. This book exposes and explores the often missed connection of the positive role of religion and faith-based communities in facilitating varied integrative ways of belonging for immigrants. The authors highlight the faith experiences of immigrants themselves by bringing their voices through case studies, interviews, and ethnographic research throughout the book to offer an important contribution to the exploration of multiculturalism in Japan.

This edited volume examines Japan's increasing links with Latin America from three perspectives. First, the introduction looks at the US role in `mediating' Japan's relations with Latin America. Second, three chapters by Japanese scholars offer their perspectives on the economic, political and cultural links between their country and the Latin American region. Finally, scholars from five Latin American countries - Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile and Panama - trace historical, current and future ties between Japan and their respective nations.

This book confronts the question of who and what is a Nikkei, that is, a person of Japanese descent, by presenting 18 case studies from throughout the Americas—including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States.

Building on the pioneering work of Edward Said in fresh and useful ways, contributors to this volume consider both historical contacts and literary influences in the formation of Latin American constructs of the “Orient” and the “Self” from colonial times to the present. In the process, they unveil wide-ranging manifestations of Orientalism. Contributors scrutinize the “other” great encounter, not with Europeans but with Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese cultures, as they marked Latin American societies from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean to Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. The perspectives, experiences, and theories presented in these examples offer a comprehensive framework for understanding wide-ranging manifestations of Orientalism in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world. Orientalism and Identity in Latin America expands current theoretical frameworks, juxtaposing historical, biographical, and literary depictions of Middle Eastern and Asian migrations, both of people and cultural elements, as they have been received, perceived, refashioned, and integrated into Latin American discourses of identity and difference. Underlying this intercultural dialogue is the hypothesis that the discourse of Orientalism and the process of Orientalization apply equally to Near Eastern and Far Eastern subjects as well as to immigrants, regardless of provenance—and indeed to any individual or group who might be construed as “Other” by a particular dominant culture.

One of WW2 Reads "Top 20 Must-Read WWII Books of 2018" • A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of September •One of The Progressive's "Favorite Books of 2018" The gripping and little known story of the fight for the allegiance of Latin America during World War II The Tango War by Mary Jo McConahay fills an important gap in WWII history. Beginning in the thirties, both sides were well aware of the need to control not just the hearts and minds but also the resources of Latin America. The fight was often dirty: residents were captured to exchange for U.S. prisoners of war and rival spy networks shadowed each other across the continent. At all times it was a Tango War, in which each side closely shadowed the other’s steps. Though the Allies triumphed, at the war’s inception it looked like the Axis would win. A flow of raw materials in the Southern Hemisphere, at a high cost in lives, was key to ensuring Allied victory, as were military bases supporting the North African campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic and the invasion of Sicily, and fending off attacks on the Panama Canal. Allies secured loyalty through espionage and diplomacy—including help from Hollywood and Mickey Mouse—while Jews and innocents among ethnic groups —Japanese, Germans—paid an unconscionable price. Mexican pilots flew in the Philippines and twenty-five thousand Brazilians breached the Gothic Line in Italy. The Tango War also describes the machinations behind the greatest mass flight of criminals of the century, fascists with blood on their hands who escaped to the Americas. A true, shocking account that reads like a thriller, The Tango War shows in a new way how WWII was truly a global war.

Placing a distinct focus on the role of the sending state, this book examines the history of postwar Japan's migration policy, linking it to the larger question of statehood and nation-building in the postwar era. Pedro Iacobelli delves into the role of states in shaping migration flows by exploring the genesis of the state-led emigration from Japan and the US-administered Ryukyu Islands to South America in the mid-20th century. The study proposes an alternative political perspective on migration history to analyze the rationale and mechanisms behind the establishment of migration programs by the sending state. To develop this perspective, the book examines the state's emigration policies, their determinants and their execution for the Japanese and Okinawan migration programs to Bolivia in the 1950s. It argues that the post-war migration policies that established those migration flows were a result of the political cost-benefit calculations, rather than only economic factors, of the three governments involved. With its unique focus on the role of the sending state and the relationship between Japan, Okinawa and the United States, this is a valuable study for students and scholars of postwar Japan and migration history.

Joining the U.S.’ war effort in 1942, Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho ordered the dislocation of Japanese Mexican communities and approved the creation of internment camps and zones of confinement. Under this relocation program, a new pro-American nationalism developed in Mexico that scripted Japanese Mexicans as an internal racial enemy. In spite of the broad resistance presented by the communities wherein they were valued members, Japanese Mexicans lost their freedom, property, and lives. In Uprooting Community, Selfa A. Chew examines the lived experience of Japanese Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during World War II. Studying the collaboration of Latin American nation-states with the U.S. government, Chew illuminates the efforts to detain, deport, and confine Japanese residents and Japanese-descent citizens of Latin American countries during World War II. These narratives challenge the notion that Japanese Mexicans enjoyed the protection of the Mexican government during the war and refute the mistaken idea that Japanese immigrants and their descendants were not subjected to internment in Mexico during this period. Through her research, Chew provides evidence that, despite the principles of racial democracy espoused by the Mexican elite, Japanese Mexicans were in fact victims of racial prejudice bolstered by the political alliances between the United States and Mexico. The treatment of the ethnic Japanese in Mexico was even harsher than what Japanese immigrants and their children in the United States endured during the war, according to Chew. She argues that the number of persons affected during World War II extended beyond the first-generation Japanese immigrants “handled” by the Mexican government during this period, noting instead that the entire multiethnic social fabric of the borderlands was reconfigured by the absence of Japanese Mexicans.

Beginning in 1990, thousands of Spanish speakers emigrated to Japan. A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan focuses on the intellectuals, literature, translations, festivals, cultural associations, music (bolero, tropical music, and pop, including reggaeton), dance (flamenco, tango and salsa), radio, newspapers, magazines, libraries, and blogs produced in Spanish, in Japan, by Latin Americans and Spaniards who have lived in that country over the last three decades. Based on in-depth research in archives throughout the country as well as field work including several interviews, Japanese-speaking Mexican scholar Araceli Tinajero uncovers a transnational, contemporary cultural history that is not only important for today but for future generations.

Latin America is looking towards China and Asia -- and China and Asia are looking right back. This is a major shift: for the first time in its history, Latin America can benefit from not one but three major engines of world growth. Until the 1980s ...