Jennifer Nguyen Bernal
Professor Valverde
ASA 114
In the reading “When Minorities Migrate: The Racialization of the Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan” by Takeyuki Tsuda covers how the Japanese migrate to Brazil due to economic issues in Japan and how Japanese Brazilians migrate to Japan in the late 1980s due to financial problems in Brazil. It is interesting how there is a push and pulls factor between Japan and Brazil since some Japanese Brazilian migrate to Japan. Takeyuki explains how the Japanese in Brazil claim ethnicity based on physical traits. I didn’t realize how racial ideologies affect ethnic identities presenting the conflict Brazilian Japanese faces. The ethnic identity for Japanese Brazilian immigrants was Japanese since they were view at their Japanese racial features. In the late 1980s, some Japanese Brazilians migrated to Japan; they dealt with a change in the cultural environment and negotiated changes like social context. I am surprised that the Japanese government assumes that the Japanese Brazilians will assimilate into Japanese culture when they grew up in a different cultural environment. The open Japanese policy allows “nikkeijin( Japanese descent born and raised abroad)”(Tsuda 226) to migrate back to Japan and become the new ethnic minority in Japan. In Brazil, they have embraced their Japanese cultural identity with the enforcement of positive stereotypes towards Japanese. However, in Japan, they felt that they need to embrace their Brazilian culture. When Japanese Brazilian in Japan felt that they had to assimilate, they challenged and redefined themselves. They show how there is a visible of multiple ethnic identities for people like Japanese Brazilain in the group of diaspora. Many people in the diaspora continue to dispute and change their identities since they are figuring out how to represent themselves to the world.
How did Brazilian Japanese were able to resist not assimilate into Japanese dominant culture?
Did Japan become tolerant to a different culture like Brazailain culture or look down upon them since they are not culturally Japanese and ethnically Japanese?
Parreñas Rhacel Salazar., and Lok C. D. Siu. Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New
Conceptions. Stanford University Press, 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment