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Reviewed by:
  • Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and the Ryukyu Islands by Pedro Iacobelli
  • Michael O. Sharpe (bio)
Postwar Emigration to South America from Japan and the Ryukyu Islands. By Pedro Iacobelli. Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2017. xviii, 262 pages. $120.00, cloth; $39.95, paper; $35.95, E-book.

Pedro Iacobelli's book is a contribution to the scholarly literature on statesponsored emigration from Japan to Latin America. It builds on Toake Endoh's argument that state-sponsored emigration from mainland Japan and its Malthusian-inspired rationale about overpopulation and poverty were part of a "strategic national policy." Emigration served as a "political safety valve" or "decompressor" "to peacefully remove the economically and politically unwanted" such as "poor and landless farmers" and "Burakumin outcasts" mostly in southwestern Japan and to advance foreign policy interests.1 Similarly, Iacobelli argues that these policies were established on the basis of a Malthusian-influenced "sense of crisis" around "overpopulation, political instability, economic depression" (p. 23) that served multiple interests but were unique in emphasizing local government's role in emigration from the U.S.-military-occupied Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) to South America during the cold war. Emigration was a remedy to "reduce demographic pressure, unemployment, or political pressure" and a means "to improve human capital, to increase balance of payment though migrants' remittances, or as a contribution to international trade" (p. 24). Notwithstanding socioeconomic and political considerations, Iacobelli calls for an alternative "political migration history" approach centered "on the states" and how "[s]tates and migration policies" impact "the nature and organization of emigration flows" (p. 23).

The introduction frames the analysis and distinguishes three governments: the postoccupation mainland Japanese government, the U.S. Civil Administration of the Ryukyu islands (USCAR; U.S. military government), and the local government of the Ryukyu Islands (GRI) (pp. 2–3). Iacobelli [End Page 389] argues that "emigration movements were profoundly shaped by political calculations, which involved the creation and spreading of a specific discourse on the migrants and the establishment (or empowerment of) migration institutions" (p. 4). He contends that, despite the United States having ultimate power up until Okinawa's return to Japan in 1972, both USCAR and GRI supported emigration (p. 11).

Chapter 1 provides key concepts and an "overview" of Japanese emigration to South America (the book centers on Bolivia) (p. 14). Endoh defined the state as "the multilayered and multifaceted apparatus and personnel who bolstered this national enterprise."2 But while the "political migration history" proposed here is compelling, how it differs from other state-centered approaches is unclear (pp. 2, 23). Iacobelli's examination of "the relationship between the state and the society in terms of the structure of power" and "where different levels of statehood coexisted" (p. 6) is problematic in its lack of attempt to define the state. The terms "state in a mode of latency" and "quasi-state" are employed to characterize GRI's status, but it is difficult to think of it as a "state authority that exerted influence over emigration" when it did not have "formal state power or functions" (p. 116). GRI may be better described as a nonsovereign territory. This discussion might have benefited from recent works on nonsovereign entities' negotiation of autonomy and integration.3

Chapter 2 compares state ideology and "sense of crisis" in pre- and postwar emigration. In imperial Japan, overpopulation was viewed as a risk to economic expansion and as a problem to be solved by redistributing Japanese migrants as "brokers of empire" facilitated by private companies (pp. 36, 37, 38, 44, 31, 56). Emigration was a part of industrialization, increasing capital though remittances and beneficial to government-connected Japanese corporations (pp. 37, 44). In the postwar period, the goal was to avoid overpopulation, which was perceived as a consequence of war and a hindrance to Japan's recovery evidenced in poor postwar socioeconomic conditions (pp. 38, 43, 44). This period was characterized by a more active state and the decreasing role of the private sector (p. 44) as policymakers employed neo-Malthusian thinking in promoting birth control and family planning policies (p. 38). Emigration was portrayed as improving the overall well-being of the population, allowing the "New...

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