Guiding Settlers: State-led Japanese-Brazilian Migration as Modern Settler Colonialism

• In Event: Asian Migrations and Settler Colonialism in Latin America

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, some 200,000 Japanese farmers migrated to Brazil as part of a Japanese state-sponsored migration program. The Japanese government worked with state governments in Brazil, primarily in São Paulo, to settle what it considered surplus agricultural labor in the Brazilian hinterlands. There, these Japanese lived in colonias managed by Japanese state-led migration companies and isolated from Brazilian state institutions. For the governments on both sides of this migration, the sending and receiving of Japanese farming families served as part of larger developmental projects aimed at achieving prevailing Western notions of modernity.

Policymakers in Tokyo saw state-directed emigration as fundamental to Japanese colonial expansion, meaning that Japanese-Brazilian migration closely resembled the settlement of Japan’s Asian colonies. The isolated nature of Japanese colonias allowed migrants to maintain the agricultural modes of production that had become outdated in industrializing Japan, while also allowing them to serve the Japanese Empire. For Paulista elites, the settlement of Japanese agricultural families allowed them to finally establish an agricultural base that could support the state’s increasingly urban population. Furthermore, Japanese immigration brought stable population and investment to far-flung corners of the state, representing a major force of Paulista expansion over the land.

In this paper, I examine Japanese-language guidebooks presented to Brazilian emigrants and show how their journeys were articulated in colonial and civilizing terms. Ultimately, I argue that state-led Japanese-Brazilian migration was a settler colonial project in both its Japanese and Brazilian contexts and I explore the implications for each country’s history.

Author

• Andre K Deckrow, Columbia University