The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature

Chapter One. A Socio-historical Overview of the Japanese Presence in Peru

1 Chapter One A Socio-historical Overview of the Japanese Presence in Peru Fierce debate over immigration policy and the acceptance of rapidly growing minorities in mainstream society continues to inflame public opinion in the mass media throughout the world. Divergent attitudes toward newly arrived immigrants who must pass through a grueling process of assimilation are universal themes that serve as a wellspring of drama for writers and poets alike. This study focuses on Peru, the first Latin American country to have a major Japanese settlement and home to the second largest Japanese population in the region.1 Modern Peruvian writers without Japanese ancestry hold conflicting views of their country’s largest minority. Some delineate Japanese protagonists or secondary characters in an unmistakably negative light or make them the object of sharp satire as they struggle to gain acceptance in mainstream Peruvian society. Others depict them as noble victims of Peruvian nationalism in the years surrounding World War II. The key to this largely unexplored territory linking these two cultures that lie at the antipodes of the cultural spectrum can be found in the Japanese protagonists and secondary characters created by six masters of Peruvian narrative published between 1966 and 2006. To underscore what is missing from this outsider perspective of non-Japanese Peruvian authors, I have also included works by two Nisei poets whose insider perceptions of their immigrant families and their own personal experiences provide a more complex, sensitive picture of the Japanese in Peru. Before analyzing the images of the Japanese portrayed in modern Peruvian literature and poetry, a socio-historical overview of Japanese emigration and of the Japanese immigrant experience in Peru is essential to understanding what brought them together at the end of the nineteenth century and how Peruvians and Japanese view each other. Following the overview in this chapter, which establishes the causes of the first major wave of emigration from Japan to Latin 2 Chapter One America and the specific conditions in Peru that led that country to welcome Japanese immigrants as manual laborers, in Chapter 2, I will trace the evolution of Oriental images throughout the history of Latin American literature. This material is a prelude to the heart of the study that follows in Chapters 3–9. To put the Japanese immigrant experience in Peru in perspective, we must examine the powerful forces at work in both countries that first brought them together and answer the following questions : What led the government of the Meiji Restoration to reverse the centuries-old policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate and actively encourage the emigration of Japanese workers to Peru at the end of the nineteenth century?2 What occurred simultaneously in Peru to compel Peruvian President Nicolás de Piérola to authorize the immigration of Japanese contract workers in his decree on September 19, 1898 (Morimoto, Japoneses 50)? How did these two countries, become partners in this joint venture? In my references to Japanese individuals in this book, I follow the Japanese custom of putting Japanese family names before Japanese given (first) names. The Meiji Restoration Designs a Plan for a Modern Japan Two major processes, the domestic crisis in feudal Japan and coercion from the West, were key factors that accelerated Japan’s transition from a feudal to a modern industrial society (Norman 118). In 1858–59, after more than 220 years of Japanese isolation, the US, Britain, France, Russia, and Holland negotiated “unequal” treaties with Japan to force open her ports.3 With foreign powers at her shores, eager to enter her ports that had been pried open to foreign trade, Japan felt vulnerable to the dangers of colonial control and Western “advanced industrial technology and modern political and economic systems” (Yamaguchi 151). The government of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912) recognized that it had inherited the deficiencies of the Tokugawa regime, particularly its “military and economic weakness, political fragmentation and a social hierarchy that failed to recognize men of talent” (Gordon 62). Anxious to safeguard an independent Japan, the Meiji government set its sights on creating a modern centralized state and modern industrial economy with a prime minister, a European-style cabinet system, and bureaucratic agencies to run the government and direct the economy (Gordon 64). 3 Overview of the Japanese in Peru After observing European modernization first-hand during their travels or as students,4 the Meiji leaders tried to implement economic reformsandotherprogramstorealizetheirgoalofcreatinga“richcountry , strong army” (fukoku...