After talking to Japanese and Japanese–Brazilian migrants to Bastos, I decided that it was time to interview the Dekasegi. Then, my students and I interviewed two elderly women, one man, one woman, two couples, one teenager, and a psychologist who attended Dekasegi children. I noticed that the dominant presence among the first group is male. Maybe it’s an inheritance of the patriarchal society, where men had an active voice.
The final fieldwork step was realized in 2006 at the seminar on the Centennial of Japanese Immigration to Brazil, at UNESP–Marília, financially supported by CNPq, where I collected the testimonies about colonization of Mr. Takahashi Akira, from Bastos, Ms. Fumiko Morita, in her seventies, who represented the Buddhist temple of Marilia, Mr. Akihiro Otoko, in charge of Tenrikyo Church, and the lawyer Dr. Rodolfo Yamashita. All the three last colonization witnesses lived in Marilia.
NOTES
1. The term crioulos refer to children of African slaves who were born in Brazil.
2. Azeite-de-dendê is a vegetable oil used in European industrialized countries, especially in England. It is also used as cooking oil in Bahia State, Brazil.
3. Aguardente is an alcoholic beverage made of sugarcane.
4. Taiko in Japanese means any kind of drums.
5. Kaikan is the Japanese translation of community center.
6. In Japan, the family name comes first followed by the given name. We noticed in this research that some of our interviewees followed the Japanese tradition, and others were influenced by Western culture, saying their given name first followed by their family name. The use of Mr. replaces the Portuguese Seu, used as a sign of respect when one is dealing with older or unknown men. The same is the case for older or unknown women, where Mrs. or Ms. replaces Dona. The male interviewees talking to each other added the suffix San, such as Takahashi-San.
7. She is called Mrs. Keiko, as Brazilians call older people by their first name preceded by the word Dona.
8. The students who participated in the field research were also guests at the hotel. All the fieldwork expenses were paid by my CNPq research grant.
An 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