Japanese migration to Brazil was part of a peaceful expansionist policy

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive on 2013-08-17 02:22Z by Steven

Japanese migration to Brazil was part of a peaceful expansionist policy

Agência FAPESP: News Agency of the Sao Paulo Research Foundation
2012-07-25

Elton Alisson

USP historian Shozo Motoyama makes the above assertion in a study on the first stage of Japanese immigration to Brazil, which covers the process of cultural integration

Agência FAPESP – Japanese immigration to Brazil beginning in 1908 represented a peaceful means for Japan to continue developing without the military excursions it was using to become a global power at the time.

However, the arrival of Japanese in Brazil under the auspices of the coffee barons during the Old Republic (1889-1930) split opinion and sparked an intense debate between those in Brazilian society who were in favor of and against this immigration.

The less than cordial integration of the two cultures through immigration is described in the book Under the sign of the Rising Sun: A Story of Japanese Immigration in Brazil – volume 1 (1908-1941) (Sob o signo do sol levante: Uma história da imigração japonesa no Brasil – volume I (1908-1941), penned by historian Shozo Motoyama, who is also a professor at Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Philosophy, Letters and Humanities (FFLCH) and president of the Nippo-Brazilian Studies Center.

Released at the end of April, the book describes the first stage of immigration to Brazil – begun in 1908 and ending in 1941 when Japan entered World War II – as part of a peaceful expansion orchestrated by the Japanese government…

…Supported by certain representatives of the Brazilian elite of that day, the theory known as “whitening” stated that Brazil’s lack of development was due to the country having been peopled by “inferior races” (blacks and Indians) and that the country would only develop as its population turned “whiter.”

As the cycle of immigration of Negros to Brazil ended, the focus shifted to the Japanese, who had begun to arrive in the country.

Defending the Japanese, the São Paulo farmers accepted an absurd theory touted by a Brazilian farmer and congress member that these immigrants were whiter than the Portuguese, who had undergone an intense process of miscegenation in the country…

Read the entire article here.

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