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  • The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi
  • César Ferreira
Riger Tsurumi, Rebecca. The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2012. Pp. 313. ISBN 978-1-55753-607-5.

The theme of The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature is the role of Japanese culture in contemporary Peruvian letters. Rebecca Riger Tsurumi posits that Peruvian writers present conflicting views about Japanese culture and its place in mainstream society. Japanese characters are seen either negatively or as the object of satire or victims of Peruvian nationalism after WWII. She also examines Nisei (second generation) writers who provide perceptions of immigration and personal experiences. While documenting Japanese emigration to Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century, the author also focuses on initial literary expressions of Japanese culture by contextualizing Japanese immigration that was triggered by the lack of manual labor. Even though Japanese assimilation was difficult throughout the twentieth century, Japanese-Peruvians came to the forefront when Alberto Fujimori, a Nisei son of emigrants from Japan, became president in 1990. The Nisei are the largest group among the approximately 80 000 Peruvians of Japanese descent.

The first manifestations of oriental imagery in Latin American literature appeared in modernista prose and poetry by Rubén Darío, José Martí, and others, who first stressed the ideographic nature of Japanese literature and haikus in Spanish. In another chapter, the author examines Fushía, a Japanese-Brazilian adventurer in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La casa verde (1966). His dark past begins in Brazil and ends in the Peruvian Amazon. After becoming a cult figure that plundered Indians and routinely kidnapped women, he is ravaged by disease, persecuted by the authorities, dying, and seeks refuge at a leper colony. Riger Tsurumi questions this portrayal of Fushía, who undermines the traditionally positive image of the Japanese community in Peru. In passing, she also examines two minor female characters in Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala (2006).

The author proceeds to examine images of Japanese people in the stories “Matavilela” and “Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid” by Miguel Gutiérrez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, respectively. Gutiérrez explores social tensions by examining the persecution of Japanese-Peruvians during World War II; seen through the eyes of a child, this story narrates an assault on a store owned by a Japanese family in the 1940s. In contrast to this hard-core realism, Bryce Echenique tells the story of a Japanese tourist who accompanies the protagonist Sevilla in a humorously absurd trip to Spain. According to Riger Tsurumi, the tourist’s caricaturesque portrayal and the protagonist’s tragic journey illustrate the thorny lack of communication between East and West. [End Page 162]

In other chapters, the author focuses on Las dos caras del deseo (1994) by Carmen Ollé and Puñales escondidos (1998) by Pilar Dughi. Ollé’s novel examines the role of a young Japanese descendant, who seemingly embodies traditional Japanese values, but her youthful approach to race and sexuality permits the novel’s protagonist to abandon her monotonous lifestyle and deal with her lesbian desires. In Dughi’s novel, Japanese literature also serves as a catalyst for change for the protagonist. This thriller explores her personal transformation through Japanese writers Endo Shusaku, Abe Kobo, Dasai Osamu, and Mishima Yukio, which stimulates her to rethink traditional views about society, religion, and love.

In another chapter, the author discusses two short novels by Mario Bellatin, who questions the relationship between reality and fantasy in his works. El jardín de la Señora Murakami (2000) focuses on a young female whose misfortunes typify the contradictions between tradition and modernity in Japanese culture. And irony and satire abound in Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción (2001), which tells the story of an aspiring writer whose fascination with text and photography make him a cult figure upon his death. Known for his experimental writing and his explorations of Japanese culture, Bellatin’s fiction always draws attention to the art of storytelling.

While several writers discussed in this study depict Japanese culture from an...

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