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Rethinking Peruvian Nikkei Memory: Crónica de mujeres nikkei by Doris Moromisato as a Memory Space Disconcerting the Legacy of Japanese Immigration in Peru
Thu, February 17, 9:45 to 11:15am, Virtual Building, VR101Abstract
Around the year 2019, when Peru celebrated the 120th anniversary of Japanese immigration in the country, the editorial house of the Japanese-Peruvian Association (APJ) in Lima published four books (between 2017 and 2020) as a series of “Memories of Japanese Immigration.” Because of the timing of the publications and the series’ title, I cannot help considering this series as a Nikkei memory project creating the mood of honoring the legacy of Japanese immigration in Peru. The APJ, through their commemoration projects, museum exhibitions, and other activities, has been a main agent in solidifying the unified image of the Japanese immigration experience that linearly develops from the overcoming of hardships to achieving success. Despite the APJ’s project that tends to consecrate the legacy of suffering and overcoming, what the books show is not necessarily harmonized with the mood of honoring that legacy. I argue that the authors become trespassers of the APJ’s project, while simultaneously contributing to and benefitting from it as inside collaborators. Focusing on Crónica de mujeres nikkei by one of the trespassers, Doris Moromisato, who dexterously appropriates and negotiates with the normalized space of the memory project, I will first explore how her alternative interpretations revealing transgenerational women’s testimonial voices bring dissonances into the legacy of Japanese immigration imagined and established by the APJ. Then, I will demonstrate how and why such dissonances serve to illuminate the multidirectional connections and entanglements that constantly arise when Crónica trespasses the APJ’s memory project, both colliding and converging with that normativity of the legacy.