Abstract
Both for Japan and Brazil, the history of the 1930s can be split into the period before and after 1937. In that year, Japan commenced an undeclared but all-out war in China while Brazil, for its part, witnessed a coup in office by President Vargas and the start of a more assertively nationalistic regime which was to continue into the mid-1940s. These two events inevitably led to increased pressure on the loyalties and self-definition of the expatriate Japanese community in Brazil. Consequently, the years between 1937 and 1940 deserve fuller attention in a separate chapter. Even before 1937, however, Japan and Brazil were embarking on similar paths. In both societies, there was a new level of violence and unrest in the political system, and the economic impact of the Great Depression exacerbated public desires for strong action to restore a feeling of stability and security. In the case of Japan, this led to armed expansion on the Asian continent; in Brazil, it resulted in a marked tightening of immigration policy. Each of these changes had wide-ranging implications for the Japanese in Brazil. Despite the unsettled political and economic environment of the years 1930–36, however, the expatriate community was numerically to reach new heights, in Brazil’s economy to achieve a new and broader prominence, and culturally to become more organised and diverse.
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Notes
E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil, 2nd edn, NY 1980, p. 402. Figures showing the rise of rival coffee producers are in BJ, 28 January 1938.
Robert M. Levine, The Vargas Regime: The Critical Years, 1934–1938, NY 1970, pp. 36–8. Burns 1980, p. 399, adds, ‘Moderation and affability tempered his administration. Absent were the pomp, terror, and inflexibility so often characteristic of Spanish American dictatorships’. The idea that Vargas was a semi-dictator or dictator is offered by Mita Chiyoko, ‘Nashonarizumu to minzoku shūdan: Burajiru no kokka tōgō to Nihonjin ijūsha’, Gaikō Jihō, 1251, September 1988, p. 57. The view that his policies were intended rapidly to Brazilianise the Japanese community is expressed in
Handa Tomoo, Imin no Seikatsu no Rekishi: Burajiru Nikkeijin no Ayunda Michi, Sao Paulo 1970, p. 587; also Maeyama Takashi, ‘Nikkeijin no Wakon Hakusai-ron: bunka henyō ni tsuite no ichi-minzoku gainen’, Esunishiti to Burajiru Nikkeijin, Tokyo 1996, p. 178.
George Reid Andrews, ‘Brazilian racial democracy, 1900–90: an American counterpoint’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 31, 3, 1996, p. 486. Integralist’s enemies, Burns 1980, p. 406.
On xenophobia and Integralists, Andrews 1996, pp. 487–8. Foreign-born population, Burns, 1980, p. 362. On Freyre and Afro-Brazilian culture, Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil, Chapel Hill 1999, especially chapter 6. The migrant Japanese press was not indifferent to instances of racism towards ethnic Africans in Brazil. For example, in December 1931, it was reported that black Brazilians in Sao Paulo were being denied access to some of the ice skating rinks then enjoying a boom in popularity. However, some of those experiencing discrimination were able to appeal to the police and have the rink in question closed. In this way, discrimination on racial grounds clearly existed but so did institutional means of redress, BJ, 18 December 1931.
Government subsidies, San Pauro Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, Burajiru Nihon Iminshi Nempyō, Akita 1997, p. 70. Brazil as ‘paradise for workers’, BJ, 1 January 1934; protected from the Great Depression, BJ, 18 June 1933. By contrast, BJ, 3 October 1932, described the situation in rural Japan and asserted, ‘you work and you work and still you cannot eat’.
Konno Toshihiko/Fujisaki Yasuo, Iminshi 1: Nambei-hen, Tokyo 1994, pp. 69–71. For comments on the earlier exploitation of migrants to Hawaii,
Alan Takeo Moriyama, Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and Hawaii 1894–1908, Honolulu 1985, pp. 80–1.
1934 trade figures, Yoshinori Ohara, Japan and Latin America, Santa Monica 1967, p. 28. Content and increasing importance of bilateral trade, BJ, 14 April 1934. Volumes and values for Brazilian exports to Japan in 1935–37 are given in BJ, 1 January 1938. For cotton, the volumes were listed in thousands of kilos (the value in thousands of contos is in brackets — one contos was worth about US$82 in 1935): 1935 =2515 (2318), 1936 = 42 452 (44 764), first half of 1937= 1634 (1958). Equivalent figures for coffee volumes were: 1935 = 1025 (542), 1936 = 2538 (1372), first half of 1937 = 1254 (858). Japan as the primary outlet early in 1937 for Brazilian cotton, BJ, 8 January 1938.
On Nagata, Manchuria and Brazil, see Sandra Wilson, ‘The “New Paradise”: Japanese emigration to Manchuria in the 1930s and 1940s’, International History Review, vol. 17–2, May 1995, pp. 258–60. Migrant view of Manchurian wages, BJ, 1 January 1934.
Brazilian political and business attitudes to 1934 constitution, Inoue Miyaji, ‘Burajiru ijū seigen mondai ni tsuite’, Gaikō Jihō, 722, January 1935, pp. 316–21. That the quota was casually applied to Japanese migrants immediately after 1934 was perfectly apparent to contemporary observers, see J.F. Normano and Antonello Gerbi, The Japanese in South America: An Introductory Survey with Special Reference to Peru, NY 1943, p. 22.
Richard M. Morse, From Community to Metropolis: A Biography of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2nd edn, NY 1974, p. 253. An example of actual violence by a Japanese migrant towards a Brazilian was reported early in 1939. Two plantation workers, one Japanese, one Brazilian, argued over the rights to use a parcel of land. The Japanese, a kendo and judo practitioner, decided to resolve the dispute by taking his Japanese sword and trying to kill his rival during the carnival, BJ, 1 March 1939.
Post-1945 murder and terrorism within the Japanese community, James Lawrence Tigner, ‘Shindō Renmei: Japanese nationalism in Brazil’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 41–4, 1961, pp. 521–4. Birigui murders, SS, 24 August 1923. Lins shooting, BJ, 5 September 1929. Santos dispute, BJ, 30 March 1933. BJ, 23 July 1931, shows that these were not the only Japanese engaged in smuggling.
Migrant land ownership figures and Brazilian press, BJ, 7 September 1936; also BJ, 1 January 1934. For a different scale on land values which shows Japanese as fifth behind Brazilians, Italians, Portuguese and Spanish, see BJ, 5 May 1934. In a 1933 table of landowners by headcount, the Japanese moved even further up the ladder to third place behind Brazilians and Italians, NS, 1 January 1935. On the Japanese population of Noroeste, BJ, 18 June 1933. Additional figures for Brazilian and foreign ownership of coffee fazendas and coffee trees in Sao Paulo in 1934 are given in Herbert S. Klein, ‘European and Asian migration to Brazil’, p. 221, in Robin Cohen (ed.), The Cambridge Survey of World Migration, Cambridge 1995. These show a similar pattern to general landownership albeit with Japan trailing the Italians by a great distance, and both the Spaniards and Portuguese by relatively small margins.
Brazilian radio and record industries, Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba: Popular Music and National Identity in Brazil, Chapel Hill 1999, pp. 77–8. Five record labels appeared in Rio between 1928–29. These included Columbia and RCA.
Ikeda Shigeji, Sao Pauro-shi oyobi Kinkō Hōjin Hattenshi, Sao Paulo 1954, p. 82. Nippaku Cinema playbill, BJ, 1 January 1930.
Handa 1970, p. 579. Hosokawa Shūhei, Sanba no Kuni ni Enka wa Nagareru: Ongaku ni Miru Nikkei Burajiru Iminshi, Tokyo 1995, pp. 24–5. Miura recording, advert in Nambei Shimpō, 28 October 1930. On Japan Victor and Japan Columbia plus musical trends in Japan in the 1920s-30s, see Harris I. Martin, ‘Popular music and social change in prewar Japan’, Japan Interpreter, vol. 7, nos. 3–4, summer-autumn 1972, pp. 343–7. It is only fair to mention that Hosokawa 1995, p. 16, sees all records from Japan, irrespective of their style or their regional flavour, as being welcomed by migrants as reminders of the homeland and, therefore, broadened in their cultural meaning.
Rudyard Kipling, Brazilian Sketches, Bromley 1989, pp. 58–9.
On the origins of carnival and the rise of a national carnival centred on Rio, Vianna 1999, pp. 8–12, 78, 88, 90–2; William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America, London 1991, pp. 128–35. Rio authorities and 1935 ban on non-Brazilian themes,
Alma Guillermoprieto, Samba, NY 1990, p. 31. Carnival and expression of opinions,
James Woodall, A Simple Brazilian Song: Journeys Through the Rio Sound, London 1997, p. 224. Centrality of music in Brazilian society, Freyre 1970, p. 70.
Claus Schreiner, Musica Brasileira: A History of Popular Music and the People of Brazil, London/NY 1993, p. 22, notes the collection of folk songs by Brazilian intellectuals as early as the 1890s.
NS, 7 March 1924; see also NS, 14 February 1929. Tsuji 1930, p. 141. Roberto Da Matta, ‘Carnival in multiple planes’, in John J. MacAloon (ed.), Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, Philadelphia 1984, p. 224, writes, ‘It is crazy because all space is inverted, dislocated, and everything is called into question’.
Korean dancing queen, BJ, 25, 31 May, 7 June 1940; Sao Paulo performance, BJ, 5 June 1940. Ch’oe had earlier been invited to Argentina according to NS, 26 March 1938; scheduled 1939 visit, SS, 3 February 1939. Ch’oe showed both a nice sensitivity and a deft touch in public relations while in Sao Paulo, sending all her bouquets to patients at the Japan Hospital whom she had earlier visited. Her image is included in Japan Photographers’ Association, A Century of Japanese Photography, London 1981, p. 212, albeit without identifying her by name. Instead, it is given the title, ‘Dance of Delight on Red Hill’.
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© 2001 Stewart Lone
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Lone, S. (2001). Expanding: the Japanese Community, 1930–36. In: The Japanese Community in Brazil, 1908–1940. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932792_5
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