An Ethnography of the Lives of Japanese and Japanese Brazilian Migrants. Ethel V. Kosminsky
work.
The second aim was to internationalize research results, by presenting papers at conferences, exchanging papers, developing research projects with professors-researchers from other countries, inviting some of them to deliver lectures or give courses to students, and go to other universities too. All of these activities require financial support that professors-researchers usually receive from the federal research agencies and from FAPESP.
Currently, UNESP, especially the Marilia branch is falling apart. There is no money to replace retired professors and officials. The number of professors has diminished greatly and, as a result, so has the number of courses offered. That spells the end of the Brazilian public university. And as a reminder, with few exceptions, public universities have a higher quality of teaching and research acumen than private ones.
I would like to reinforce that this book is a collective work that was only possible some years ago. First, I would like to thank my former social sciences students for their incredible participation in this research: Mônica Emiko Sasai (undergraduate student, PIBIC/CNPq grantee), Rodrigo Fessel Sega (undergraduate student, PIBIC/CNPq grantee), Juliana Nicolau (master’s degree student, FAPESP grantee), and Rodrigo Tavarayama (undergraduate student). Rodrigo only participated in 2005, whereas Mônica and Rodrigo had previously been conducting bibliographical research on immigration to Brazil and emigration from Brazil.
Without diminishing the importance of the others, I feel that Mônica was the soul of this work. She conducted the interview in Japanese with three old immigrants and, as she had previously lived and worked in Japan for ten years with her family, I asked her to write about her experience. This became an important ethnographic part of this book. Besides this, she and her mother translated those interviews from Japanese into Portuguese. Mônica also showed us how to relate to our interviewees, and my students and I are very grateful to have her as a researcher in the group.
Mônica Emiko Sasai and Rodrigo Fessel Sega wrote fieldwork notes that were very useful for this work. Rodrigo was very young at that time. However, he worked hard and integrated himself into the Japanese Brazilian community very easily. His mother helped too, lending her car, so that he could drive us from Marília to Bastos. Rodrigo wrote a published article based on his bibliographical research about immigration. He now has finished his master’s thesis and has been working on his PhD dissertation at another public university.
Juliana Nicolau was my master’s student, whose research focused on underage girls who worked as housemaids. A very hard worker, interested in several subjects, she found time to take part in this field research and to attend our meetings on migration and on children and youth. Juliana has finished her master’s thesis, and currently teaches at a public technical college.
I, myself, was a CNPq grantee, Bolsa Produtividade de Pesquisa. This award allowed me to pay for our field research and to go to local conferences. It allowed me to create two research groups with my students, one about sociology of migration and the second about sociology of children and youth. We met to discuss articles, books, and each ones research.
I would like to thank Elson Menegazzo, who was my master’s student and a FAPESP grantee, who researched how Internet chats have united Italian descendants around the world. Elson worked with me and another professor to help organize the Centennial of Japanese Immigration to Brazil financially supported by CNPq, which reunited Japanese descendants from Bastos and Marília, and was held at UNESP–Marilia on October 19–20, 2006. Currently, he is working on his PhD dissertation.
Unfortunately, Rodrigo Tavarayama had to move back to his home in another city, leaving UNESP-Marilia behind.
I would like to thank Camila Vedovello for her contribution on material about violence in Brazil. Camila was a FAPESP grantee of Iniciação Científica and a master CAPES grantee. Her IC was about youth who committed infractions and were kept in prisons for young people. Her master thesis was about delinquent youth who were in a specific re-socialization prison. I supervised both works. Currently, she is writing her PhD dissertation at another public university. Thanks to Cizina Célia Fernandes Pereira Resstel, PhD at UNESP–Assis, for sending her master’s thesis about returned Dekasegi children, and to UNESP–Marilia PhD student Fernanda Rais Ushijima for bibliographical references and documents related to this research.
This research was only possible due to the welcome and the wonderful collaboration of the Bastos Japanese community. I would especially like to thank the board and members of ACENBA, Associação Cultural e Esportiva Nikkei de Bastos (Nikkei Cultural and Sports Association of Bastos) and the hospitality of the family who run Hotel Sato.
I would like to thank Vera Tanaka de Melo, who was the UNESP–Marilia technical-administrative director, for introducing me to a friend of hers living in Bastos. That was how the fieldwork started.
I would like to thank the following professors: Tullo Vigevani, UNESP–São Paulo; Sadao Omote and Yoshiko Tanabe Mott, UNESP–Marília; and Mary Okamoto, UNESP–Assis. Tullo suggested some important books, and Yoshiko donated several books about Japanese immigration to Brazil and an unpublished Shindo Renmei work that she wrote. Sadao and Mary, child and grandchild of immigrants respectively, answered my questions about the relationship between the Japanese adjustment to agricultural work and their familial relationships. Sadao also explained the meaning of several words in Japanese and their transliteration.
Thanks to Celia Sakurai, PhD at NEPO-UNICAMP, for donating books that she wrote about several subjects regarding Japanese immigration and also for answering my doubts.
Thanks to professors: Maria Catarina Chitolina Zanini at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Miriam Santos at Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, Sylvia Dantas at Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Geraldo José Paiva at Universidade de São Paulo, Cristina Rocha at University of Western Sydney, and Vânia Penha-Lopes at Bloomfield College and Seminar on Brazil at Colombia University for their suggestions and bibliographical references. Thanks to Professor Tatiana Savoia Landini at Universidade Federal de São Paulo for suggesting the title of this book.
Thanks to the late professor Giralda Seyferth for our many anthropological discussions on immigration.
I would like to thank the Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Estudos Migratórios, organized by Professor Helion Póvoa Neto at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and its website where I could post questions and receive substantive answers.
Thanks to Professor Steve Gold at Michigan State University for his articles, suggestions, and constant encouragement.
I am indebted to Chris Tribe who translated three chapters of this book very carefully and at the same time enjoyed learning about Japanese Brazilian migration. Thanks to Kate Leeson who edited the beginning of this book, which I wrote in a language that is not mine. My special thanks to Courtney Lachapelle Morales and Shelby Russell, associate acquisition editor and assistant editor, respectively, at Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, for their patience and stimuli.
Thanks to Professor Arthur Sakamoto for writing this foreword, which added significant meaning for this book.
I am very grateful to my friends Elena Epstein Shahom and Dr. Bipin Subedi who have provided critical and emotional support for this research.
Thanks to my children and grandchildren for their tenderness and concerns about their mother and grandma.
I am deeply grateful to my husband Stephen Weinstein, a historian and archivist, for all his work in editing this work of interdisciplinary sociology, with all the challenges that sociology presents. Besides this, he cooked dinner and covered all the household chores, so that I was able to work on the book. He did all this after a full day working and, although sometimes, with not so much patience but with a lot of love.
As always, I am the only one responsible for any problems that this book could have.
An Interdisciplinary Approach
This research compares the familial relationships of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Bastos, Brazil,