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Chapter 9 Do Japanese Brazilians Exist? In this final chapter I look at the significance ofselfand place for Moacir Aoki and Cesar Kawada, two Brazilians of Japanese descent living in Japan. Their stories suggest that it is misleading to refer toJapanese Brazilians collectively as "a diaspora." I further question whether people such as Moacir and Cesar should be regarded as 'Japanese Brazilians" at all. The chapter thus raises explicitly an uneasy, controversial question that threads through this entire book. How should an anthropologist conceive of and describe another human being? I interviewed Moacir and Cesar during my mid-1990s field research on Japanese Brazilians living in and near Toyota City, Japan. Like Eduardo Mori, Moacir Aoki and Cesar Kawada are legal migrants who work in Japanese factories. Moacir is searching for home abroad. He tells us that he has come home-to his own essential Japaneseness-in Japan. Moacir fits the model of a diasporic returnee. But it would be a mistake to assume that other Japanese Brazilians have likewise "returned," for their notions of and attitudes toward "home" often differ markedly from Moacir's. Cesar, for example, seems little concerned with home and altogether less invested in roots. Cesar is as much at home, or notat -home, in Japan as he would be anywhere else. In Brazil or abroad, Cesar is more or less at home within himself. How then can he be considered a member of a diaspora? I begin with excerpts from a conversation I held with Cesar and Moacir in the late spring of 1996.1 Following a discussion of this interview , I draw out some implications of Cesar's and Moacir's differing senses ofselffor studies ofJapanese Brazilian migrants and, more generally , for studies of so-called diasporas. Finally, I argue for caution in the unreflective use ofgroup labels (including 'Japanese Brazilian"). "Japanese Brazilians" exist insofar as one draws a boundary around a set of persons, ascribing to them a common origin and linking them through putative bloodlines. Such boundary drawing, which rests on common- 184 Chapter 9 sense assumptions and commonplace ethnic designations, is an inherently ideological act. Cesar Kawada and Moacir Aoki In Toyota City, foreigners could attend Sunday morning Japanese lessons sponsored by the Toyota International Association. There I met Cesar and Moacir, classmates in the small advanced section. The two are friends and appear to have much in common. Both hail from the state of Sao Paulo, both are college-educated, both had white-collar jobs in Brazil, and both think of themselves as, in Brazilian terms, privileged. Moreover, the two came toJapan at roughly the same time (in the early 1990s) and since then have labored in low-level manufacturingjobs. But however much Cesar's and Moacir's life histories and "positionalities" may superficially resemble one another, their senses ofwho they are and how they are connected to Japan and to Brazil differ strikingly. Cesar, forty-two, is a nissei, the son ofJapanese immigrants. His wife (who has also worked in Japan) currently lives in Brazil, as does a nineteen -year-old daughter by a previous marriage. Cesar holds an undergraduate degree in accounting and has done graduate study in financial administration. Before coming to Japan in 1991, he spent twelve years as an executive in a large chemical firm, supervising a team of accountants . The position paid relatively well but, given Brazil's eternal economic turmoil, was highly stressful and offered little long-term security. Cesar is thinking ahead to his retirement. His aim is to save enough to permit him to return to Brazil and live off the interest. That will take, he estimates, at least ten years. Cesar builds carburetors for lawnmowers in a shop with old machines, poor quality control, and an authoritarian hierarchy-the antithesis of his earlier image ofJapanese technological sophistication and workplace democracy. This is his fourth unskilledjob in Japan. Moacir, thirty-three, is a sansei, a third-generation Japanese Brazilian. He arrived in Japan in 1990. Moacir is unmarried, with no children. Trained in criminal law, he now does quality control at a Toyota autoparts factory-a job he says a child could master. An issue that emerges in the interview is Moacir's concern that his physical appearance is not stereotypicallyJapanese. He is upset that he is sometimes mistaken for a mesti~;o (a Brazilian of mixed blood) or a southeast Asian. Unlike Cesar, Moacir ardently wishes to become aJapanese citizen. Because unbroken residence is one of the many requirements for...

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