A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980 (review)

Starting from the premise that people can hold multiple and seemingly contradictory identities, in this book Jeffrey Lesser demonstrates some of the ways in which young Japanese-Brazilians from São Paulo in the 1960s and 1970s “militantly asserted their Brazilianness” (pp. xxi–xxii). More specifically, he examines the role of Nikkei participants in two areas, cinema—particularly, erotic films—and the armed struggle against the post-1964 military dictatorship, and shows the multiple ways in which they considered their involvement in these activities as also constituting a struggle against essentializing majority views of Japanese-Brazilians as ethnically immutable and perpetually linked to (an imagined) Japan. Despite their efforts, these “ethnic militants,” as Lesser terms them, nonetheless ended up reinforcing their minority status, in part because they too appealed to cultural beliefs and imaginings about their ancestral homeland. In this culturally astute text, Lesser not only contributes a critically needed perspective on the role of Japanese-Brazilian ethnicity within the culturally and politically turbulent 1960s and 1970s, but also suggests the continued importance of the nation as a concept with real meaning in people’s lives and identities.

After a meaty introduction that deftly yet succinctly lays out the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil, explores the many meanings of Japanese-Brazilian ethnicity prior to the period in question, and then analyzes the multiple images of Japanese-Brazilians that began to appear in 1960s São Paulo, the book turns to its two main foci: film and the armed underground. On this first topic, Lesser reveals that in a context of both increasing assertions of ethnic pluralism and of increasing migration of Nikkei from rural areas to São Paulo, the rise in popularity of Japanese-language movie houses and the proliferation of Nikkei actors in Brazilian-made films spoke to a wider debate about what role Japanese-Brazilians played in the formation of Brazil. In addition to deftly analyzing six films with significant Nikkei participation in order to suggest the ways in which ideas and stereotypes about Brazil, Japan, and Japanese-Brazilians were constructed, he most provocatively suggests that Nikkei actors self-consciously chose to act in these films as a form of “artistic militancy” in which they could prove their own Brazilianness, even if their roles often ended up emphasizing the idea that Nikkei were really “Japanese.” Yet while this is one of the most intriguing aspects of his broader argument of ethnic militancy, the section ultimately goes further in revealing the meanings of the films under discussion than the motivations of the actors who participated therein. Nonetheless, Lesser’s astute film readings pay close attention to the mutual constitution of ethnicity and gender—foregrounded in this section but carried throughout the book—and of the rich intersections between ideas about Japan, Brazil, and Japanese-Brazilians. In that sense the two chapters on film are critical to revealing the climate of cultural construction and contestation of national and ethnic identities in this period.

On the second topic—that of Japanese-Brazilian participation in the armed struggle—Lesser’s book truly flourishes. Drawing on multiple interviews with former activists, thorough research into the archives of the state security forces, and careful analysis of media coverage of Nikkei participants, Lesser shows that majority stereotypes of Nikkei as hard-working yet inclined towards violence influenced both the armed organizations who recruited Japanese-Brazilian militants and the security forces who pursued them. At the same time, his argument that Nikkei participants’ political militancy was also always about ethnic militancy is well substantiated. His analysis of militants’ codenames is particularly outstanding, as is his discussion of one organization’s decision to free an imprisoned Japanese-Brazilian member by kidnapping the Japanese Consul, and to thereby trade “our Japanese” for “their Japanese” (p. 136). In both this section and the book as a whole, Lesser reveals the...