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Liberdade, a central Sao Paulo neighborhood, feels more like
Tokyo due to 600,000 Japanese descendants who live there.
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The identities that make up
a person are the differences that put them apart from people with different
identities. Given the social environment and influences of their surroundings,
the culture that they live in can be heavily altered by the members of the
culture or by outside sources. When the definition of your identity changed due
to special circumstances, you become more and more aware that these identities
are actually social constructions. In Asian
Diasporas, there is a specific section titled “When Minorities Migrate: The
Racialization of the Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan” by Takeyuki
(Gaku) Tsuda, which focuses on the shift of identity based on “awareness of
cultural and/or racial characteristics… [which have been] constructed in response
to varying social contexts” (Tsuda 225). Due to socio-economic factors and lack
of opportunity in the homeland for a certain class, Japanese farmers migrated
to Brazil, and for the same factors and difficulties, Japanese Brazilians
migrated to Japan. While living in Brazil with also a Japanese ethnic identity,
it is interesting that there is a positive cultural meaning to “japones” and
differentiating Japanese Brazilians from Brazilians was merely an act of
recognizing difference, rather than ridicule. From this observation, it is
clear to me how minorities are treated racially, ethnically, socially, and on
many other levels not in Brazil, but rather in the United States.
Question:
What are the factors for
Japanese Brazilians to choose one aspect of their ethnic identity over another
when they go back and forth from being “more” Japanese or “more” Brazilian?
Works Cited:
"When Minorities Migrate: The
Racialization of the Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan." Asian
Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions. Ed. Rhacel S. Parrenas and Lok
C.D. Siu. Stanford UP, 2007. Print.
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