LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

Nikkei Communities Intersecting Latin America and Japan

Session Submission Type: Featured Session

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th century, when Japanese immigrants left Japan for Latin America, their identity as Nikkei people have been constructed and constantly transformed into something new. In this session, we will scrutinize the meaning of the term “Nikkei,” by exploring the close relations between the living experience of Japanese immigrants and their descendants, the construction of Nikkei collective memory, and that of their identity. In particular, we will examine the implications of thinking about Nikkei memory and identity as those that are constantly moving and crossing the borders of Latin America and Japan. The possible questions to be asked are: How and in what forms (literary, cultural, sociological, political, economic, etc. in the Trans-pacific) can we observe these movements? Who or what mobilizes Nikkei memory and identity? If they are constantly mutating, can we still use the term “Nikkei”?

Shigeko Mato is Professor of the Spanish and Latin American literature and culture at the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University (Tokyo). She has published studies on contemporary literature about Japanese Peruvian migration, identity, and memory. She is also the author of Las voces que entrecruzan el Perú y Japón (Ediciones Murrup, Lima, 2021) and co-author of The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe (Palgrave 2021).

Facundo Garasino is a research fellow at the JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development. He is currently working on a transnational history of migration, nation-building, and development in Japan and South America. He has recently published "Japan’s Last Colonial Frontier: Settler Migration, Development, and Expansionism in the Brazilian Amazon," in Transpacific Visions: Connected Histories of the Pacific across North and South (Lexington Books, 2021).

Yukako Nagamura is a research fellow at JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development. Her previous roles include postdoctoral fellow at Sophia University, research fellow (DC2) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), coordinator of support for foreigners at Ibaraki NPO Center COMMONS, and journalist for Jornal do Nikkey. She is currently working on networks of Japanese descendants between Latin America and Japan, their identity and cultures.

Sub Track

• Plenary Sessions

Session Organizer

• Nobuaki Hamaguchi, Kobe University

Individual Presentations

• Rethinking Peruvian Nikkei Memory: Crónica de mujeres nikkei by Doris Moromisato as a Memory Space Disconcerting the Legacy of Japanese Immigration in Peru - Shigeko Mato, Waseda University SILS

• Transnational Trajectories of Japanese Identities in the Americas - Facundo J Garasino, JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute

• Diversification of Nikkei identity by movements between Latin America and Japan: Experiences of Return Migration of Brazilian and Bolivian Japanese Descendants - Yukako Nagamura, JICA Ogata Research Institute