New Media and Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants in Japan
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“PARTIALLY CONNECTED, PARTIALLY PROTECTED”: NEW MEDIA AND JAPANESE-BRAZILIAN RETURN MIGRANTS IN JAPAN BY RYUTA KOMAKI DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communications in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Lisa Nakamura, Chair Professor John Nerone Associate Professor Fernando Elichirigoity Associate Professor Rayvon Fouché ii Abstract This dissertation explores the use of the internet, mobile phones and other types of new and old media by Japanese-Brazilian return migrants in Japan, who are Brazilian nationals of Japanese ancestry that migrate transnationally from Brazil to Japan to work. The study first discusses the history of Japanese-Brazilian return migration, situating it in a larger history of labor migration to Japan and the development of “flexible capitalism” in the “network society” in the contemporary world. It also examines the current state of Japanese-Brazilian and Brazilian ethnic media in Japan, and discusses the relationship between the Japanese government’s policies regarding immigration and multilingual media services and the ways in which Portuguese-language media products and services are provided to the return migrants. I argue that the government’s indifference towards social and cultural life of non-Japanese residents and its reluctance to serve informational and communicational needs of the nation’s diversifying population put the provision of multilingual and multicultural media in the hands of the private sector, which had an undesirable consequences on Japanese-Brazilian return migrants as the end users of the media as a global financial crisis damaged Japan’s economy in 2008. Second, this study looks at the actual scenes of new and old media adoption by Japanese- Brazilian return migrants through content analyses of online materials and ethnographic interviews I conducted with Japanese-Brazilian residents in Kobe, Japan. My findings show the potentials new digital media has for developing transnational networks and fostering social actions, but they also show limitations and obstacles Japanese-Brazilian return migrants face to attain full access to those technologies and benefit fully from the use of new media. They indicate that while living in well-connected Japan, the Japanese-Brazilian return migrants in my iii study remain partially connected to digital media and to the World Wide Web. Combined, the two parts of this study document Japanese-Brazilian return migrants in Japan as “partially connected, partially protected” working class, the presence of which has been indispensable for slowing down the collapse of the Japanese economy. At the same time, however, the study also suggests that the potentials and social impacts of new media technologies are “made” as technologies, society and end users interact, and those can be “remade” to better serve Japanese-Brazilian return migrants and other non-Japanese residents of Japan in the local setting and transnational migrants and members of diaspora in the global context. iv Acknowledgements I owe the completion of this dissertation to many people, who have supported me, encouraged me and inspired me throughout the course of my postgraduate study. I would particularly like to publicly acknowledge the contribution of the following individuals. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Lisa Nakamura, who, as an advisor and the chair of my committee, always gave me timely and invaluable comments, suggestions, reminders and encouragement from the beginning of this research project to the end. I am greatly indebted to her sharp and open mind and patience. I also would like to thank the members of my committee – Professor John Nerone, Professor Rayvon Fouché and Professor Fernando Elichirigoity. Not only have they offered me incredible intellectual support, but also they all have kindly stepped in at every crucial fork in my academic career to help me find the right path. I would not have been able to get to this milestone without their guidance. I began my postgraduate training in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, I met professors and colleagues who taught me, and continues to teach me, never to stop learning, improving and producing top-notch social scientific research. I am especially fortunate to know Cheng-Heng Chang, Hyomin Kim, Adrian Cruz, Kazuyo Kubo, Hiromi Ishizawa and Douglas Grbic, whose hard work (and hard play) I highly respect. I also owe a special debt to Professor Andrew Pickering, who introduced the rich world of science and technology studies to me, which has been one of the key sources of inspiration for me as I worked on this project. After I transferred to the Institute of Communications Research, the program’s interdisciplinary atmosphere, its faculty and fellow graduate students, and scholars and students I v met outside of the department through classes, lectures, reading groups and workshops have been tremendously supportive as I formulated my research project, and later, turned it into this dissertation. I especially would like to thank Professor Kent Ono, Professor Dan Schiller, Robert Mejia, Jungmin Kwon, Wenrui Chen, Ergin Bulut, Eileen Lagman and other organizers, speakers and participants of the two Focal Point programs I was fortunately able to attend, and from which I learned many new things and ideas. My field research in Japan would not have been possible without the help of Professor Haruo Soeda and Professor Takashi Yamazaki at Osaka City University, who generously allowed me to stay at the school’s guesthouse and access the university’s academic resources while I was there. Many thanks also go to Professor Mugiko Nishikawa (Konan University), Professor Rika Tsujino (then at Tsuda College) and Ms. Marina Matsubara of Comunidade Brasileira de Kansai, whose support has been instrumental in making my fieldwork fruitful. Then, in the final few years of writing this dissertation, the moral and intellectual support I received from going to weekly “lab” meetings has been essential. I would like to thank Safiya Noble, Miriam Sweeney, Sarah Roberts and, again, Professor Lisa Nakamura, for sharing their insights and positive attitude with me while I was going through what could have been a very solitary stage. I am also thankful to my family. I cannot thank enough to my mother and my father, who quietly, and at times vocally, encouraged me to stay on course and keep moving forward. And I am most grateful to my partner, Yukako Komaki, for her love, care and sacrifice, and for never failing to inspire me, both intellectually and in everyday life. vi Table of Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The History of Labor Migration, the Rise of Network Society in Japan, and Japanese- Brazilian Return Migration............................................................................................................12 Chapter 2: Japanese-Brazilian and Brazilian Media in Japan .......................................................51 Chapter 3: A Broken Sonho Lindo (Beautiful Dream): Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants’ Voice on YouTube and Brasil Net.................................................................................................79 Chapter 4: The (Im)possibility of Transnationalism and Reflexive Identity Formation: New Media and Old Media, and Transnational Practices and Identities of Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants in Japan.........................................................................................................................118 Conclusion: “Underrepresentation” and New Media ..................................................................165 References....................................................................................................................................174 1 Introduction It was the summer of 2005. I was flying to Japan to see my parents and friends after completing my first year of graduate study in the U.S. On the flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to the newly opened Chubu International Airport in Nagoya, I sat in the backmost row of the economy class. Crammed at the end of the fuselage, the row had only two seats. Sitting next to me on the window side was a woman in her early middle age, seemingly traveling by herself, just as I was. When I settled into my aisle seat, she asked me one question – if I spoke Spanish. Unfortunately, I had to answer “no” to that question. We sat quiet for most of the rest of the long international flight. Except for one time. A little before we landed in Nagoya, she indicated to me she needed help with filling out her immigration and customs forms she was to present to Japanese boarder officials. I might be able to answer a few of her questions if she asked me now, after having spent more than five years in the U.S. seeing and hearing bilingual signs and instructions, and having learned a little Portuguese to do my dissertation research. Brazilian Portuguese share some linguistic features with Spanish spoken in Latin America. But back then, I was not able to offer her any help at all. I just watched her struggle with and slowly fill out her forms. Later, overhearing some short conversations she had with the flight attendants and passengers in other rows, I learned she was coming