Diaspora and Identity: Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan by Mieko Nishida (review)

Diaspora and Identity is perhaps the most comprehensive book about Japanese Brazilian history available today. The first part of the book covers the history of the Japanese who migrated to Brazil during both the pre–World War II period (1908 to the 1930s) and the postwar period (after 1952) as well as the lives of these immigrants and their second-generation (nisei) descendants. Unlike other historical studies on this subject, the book also examines the contemporary ethnic status of Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and their recent "return" migration to Japan, which started in the mid1980s. Because it covers such a long time span, Diaspora and Identity looks at a broader range of Japanese Brazilians in terms of generation compared to other histories about this minority group. In addition to first-generation Japanese immigrants, Japanese Brazilians from the 1.5 generation (who immigrated to Brazil as adolescents) to the fourth generation (yonsei) are considered by Nishida, with a focus mainly on the second and third generations. The author discusses the ethnic and racial experiences of Japanese Brazilians and analyzes their gender and social class differences, which is somewhat neglected in other studies of this subject.

The other distinctive aspect of this book is the integration of history with interview materials. Nishida used historical, archival material in various languages and countries, and she also conducted numerous life history interviews with Japanese Brazilians in both Brazil and Japan about their historical and contemporary experiences. There are even illuminating, anthropological discussions of Nishida's own ethnic positionality vis-à-vis her interviewees and their sometimes strong reactions to her as a Japan-born, U.S.-based researcher. Materials from these interviews are constantly employed in the historical narrative as illustrations and examples, which give a personal face to the history being told. They also serve as the bulk of the empirical material in the second half of the book about contemporary Japanese Brazilian experiences. As a result, the book is relevant to historians and to anthropologists and sociologists interested in Japanese Brazilians as well.

In short, I found this to be one of the best books I have read about Japanese Brazilians. It will be an important future resource for scholars like myself who have conducted research on this ethnic group. Although much of the material presented here is familiar to specialists, I found a number of topics that Nishida raises to be interesting and not explicitly dealt with in previous research. In terms of history, I liked the inclusion of the prewar 1.5 generation who identified as "quasi-nisei" because they had not assimilated into Brazilian society (unlike the Brazilian-born second-generation nisei) and maintained the Japanese language and their longing for Japan. Nishida's discussion of conflicts and tensions between prewar and postwar Japanese immigrants in Brazil is also quite revealing. The history of Japanese Brazilian return migration as unskilled foreign workers to Japan includes details about the impact of the global recession and the decline of the Japanese Brazilian immigrant population starting in 2008, which is missing from earlier books on this subject.

In my view, one of the book's most important contributions is the analysis of the diversity of and internal differences in the Japanese Brazilian community that are based on social class, gender, race, and generation. These are important themes that I wish Nishida had emphasized to a greater extent and analyzed more effectively throughout the book. They are raised in a somewhat scattered and disjointed manner, and the discussion sometimes seems unclear or incomplete.

Nishida's focus on social class is an important contribution that I believe has not been sufficiently discussed in previous works. In contrast to prevailing images of contemporary Japanese Brazilians as a well-educated, socioeconomically successful, middle-class minority, Nishida examines the class differences that existed and continue to exist among Japanese Brazilians. After starting out as lowly contract workers who fled Brazilian plantations because of the miserable...