An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants. Ethel V. Kosminsky
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