Volume 13 | Issue 14 | Number 3 | Article ID 4304 | Apr 14, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Repatriation But Not “Return”: A Japanese Brazilian Dekasegi Goes Back to Brazil 帰郷」ならざる帰還 ブラジルに戻ったある日 系ブラジル人出稼ぎ労働者 Miriam Kingsberg Kadia Précis nearly two hundred thousand emigrants had settled there (Tsuchida 1998, 78). World War II severed Japan’s diplomatic and economic The predicted impending end of relations with Brazil and its neighbors and dekasegi marks an opportune created a new domestic need for labor. moment to explore the almost Together, these factors temporarily interrupted unstudied repatriation of migrants Japanese settlement in the New World. from their country of ethnic origin However, in the early 1950s migration from (Japan) to their country of Japan to the Americas resumed, and over the citizenship (primarily Brazil). I next two decades more than fifty thousand consider issues of adjustment and Japanese nationals came to join earlier arrivals identity upon “return” through a in Brazil (Lesser 1999; Lone 2004; Masterson case study of “Diogo Pacheco 2004; Maruyama 2010). Moriyama,” a mestiço Japanese Brazilian who has lived and worked By the mid-1970s, the expansion of the in Brazil, Japan, and the United Japanese economy had eliminated the primary States. rationale for expatriation (Endoh 2009). A decade later, Japan confronted a labor scarcity, brought on not only by development but also by Keywords: Japan, Brazil, Japanese Brazilian, demographic changes including a falling ethnic return migration,dekasegi , returnee birthrate and an aging population. Shortages syndrome particularly affected the manufacturing and Introduction low-wage service sectors. Viewing Japan’s much vaunted alleged ethnic homogeneity as a In the late nineteenth and early twentieth source of its postwar prosperity and strength, centuries, Japan dispatched well over one government, the media and many social leaders million citizens beyond its archipelago in an opposed liberalizing foreign immigration effort to relieve perceived problems of scarce policies by offering citizenship and stable resources, overpopulation, and social unrest. working conditions to recent migrants, while The majority of emigrants who relocated to making citizenship rights available to a Japan’s Asian empire were repatriated after growing number of zaiichi Koreans. Basically, 1945.1 However, approximately half a million descent-based migration was reaffirmed even remained more or less permanently in the as the nation sought to fill the worker gap. In Americas, giving rise to Japan’s most1990, the government revised the Immigration significant contemporary diaspora. Within the Control and Refugee Recognition Act Western Hemisphere, Brazil received the (Shutsuyunyū kanri oyobi nanmin nintei hō 出 largest number of Japanese: by the early 1940s, 輸入管理および難民認定法) to offer long-term, 1 13 | 14 | 3 APJ | JF renewable visas to the non-citizen children and subsequently amended to three years). Nearly grandchildren of Japanese emigrants.20,000 South American nationals took Bureaucrats insisted that these legislative advantage of the offer (Tsuda 2010, 630; Sasaki changes were intended to strengthen cultural 2013a, 43). By 2011, the population of Japanese and affective ties between diaspora and the Brazilians in Japan had fallen by about a third, Japanese nation-state, rather than to overturn and repatriations to Brazil came to exceed long-standing taboos against importing foreign arrivals in Japan (Sasaki 2013b, 7).4 labor. Most visa applicants, however, were drawn to Japan by the possibility of earning Scholars have often represented Japanese higher wages than their home countries Brazilian workers in Japan as ethnic return offered.2 Accordingly, few persons of Japanese migrants, defined as “later-generation descent from wealthy nations such as Canada descendants of diasporic peoples who ‘return’ and the United States sought work in Japan. to their countries of ancestral origin after living Rather, labor migration tended to attract the outside their ethnic homelands for generations” children and grandchildren of Japanese(Tsuda 2009a, 1).5 Motives for ethnic return emigrants to South America. migration policies range from a fraternal sensibility to humanitarianism to economic Brazil, home to the world’s largest Japanese interests. Nations with ethnic return policies diaspora and in the throes of an economic include Israel, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, catastrophe, furnished the overwhelming South Korea, and various states in Eastern majority of dekasegi (出稼ぎ; literally, “to go Europe. The legal treatment of diaspora differs out and earn money”) (Yamanaka 1996, 65-97; by country, reflecting varying levels of Kawamura 2000; Kajita, Tanno, and Higuchi enthusiasm for repatriation on the part of the 2005). Between 1985 and 1999, Japanese state and its putative co-ethnics. By some Brazilian dekasegi remitted an annual average estimates, in the past three decades nearly 5 of more than $2 billion—approximately the million people worldwide have taken advantage value of Brazil’s imports from Japan. Measured of such opportunities afforded by their heritage in terms of income earned abroad, during these (Tsuda 2009a, 3). For most receiving countries, years labor migrants constituted Brazil’s third however, “return” has engendered economic most lucrative export “item” behind coffee and competition, exclusion, and the creation of new iron ore (Mori 2002, 237). At peak strength in minorities rather than the social integration 2007, over three hundred thousand Brazilian anticipated by policymakers. By the late 2000s, 3 citizens of Japanese ancestry worked in Japan. many nations had come to view repatriating However, their encounter with Japanese diasporas as a threat to stability, and had society, frequently marked by tension and adopted measures to reduce or curtail inflow disappointment on both sides, belied the altogether (Tsuda 2009b). Japanese government’s assumption that common descent would facilitate not only The concept of “return,” which looms large in harmony but integration. When the Japanese the literature on diaspora, is naturally of economy entered a period of recession in 2008, particular interest to scholars of ethnic return dekasegi were among the first to lose their migration. In the words of one social scientist, jobs. As the labor market contracted, the state return is “an idea, or, more precisely…an even actively attempted to deport theseimaginary that defines the directionality of migrants. In 2009-2010, one program offered one’s physical movement, gives particular cash payments of nearly $4,000 to defray meanings to mobility, and shapes the mobile departure expenses on condition that recipients subjects’ self-positioning in the world” (Sasaki leave Japan permanently (this proviso was 2013a, 32). Yet whereas most case studies 2 13 | 14 | 3 APJ | JF acknowledge the ambiguous and socially Diogo is now forty-six years old, with fair skin constructed nature of “return,” they typically and black hair that bespeak his half-Japanese focus on only one destination: the country of ancestry. Diogo’s father emigrated from Japan ethnic origin. Consequently, they overlook to Brazil as a child in the early 1930s. Three reverse journeys to the country of citizenship decades later, he fell in love with and wed or “host country” (Xiang, Yeoh, and Toyota Diogo’s mother, a woman of Italian heritage. 2013). In the case of Japanese Brazilians, an Such a union would have been almost abundance of works have addressed the unthinkable in earlier times. Prior to 1945, “return” to Japan, whereas few studies have most Japanese who emigrated to the New examined the challenges faced uponWorld viewed their sojourn abroad as repatriation to Brazil (for exceptions, see Urano temporary. They generally hoped to accumulate and Yamamoto 2008; Ueno 2008; andsavings to improve their children’s prospects Sawaguchi 2013). and return to their natal village for a comfortable retirement. Although few in fact Today, the predicted end of dekasegi in Japan, achieved this ideal, endogamy helped to and the retrenchment of ethnic returnreinforce collective allegiance to the ethnic migration policies in many states worldwide, homeland. Well over 90 percent of Japanese provide an opportune moment to consider the emigrant marriages in the prewar period meaning of “return” to the country ofinvolved two Japanese partners (Lesser 2002, citizenship. Neither the Japanese nor Brazilian 50). However, with Japan’s defeat in World War government has collected statistics on dekasegi II, the diaspora were forced to abandon the repatriates to Brazil. As scholars of migration dream of “returning” in triumph. Unions have demonstrated, however, individual-between Japanese (particularly males) and non- centered ethnographies offer a promising Japanese Brazilians increased rapidly. Families method of gaining insight into the challenges of formed by Japanese and Italian Brazilians were “returnees” (e.g., Sussman 2010). Through a particularly numerous, reflecting their mutual life history of repatriated dekasegi Diogo outsider status vis-à-vis Lusophone society Pacheco Moriyama, I suggest some of the (Tsuda 2003, 99; Green 2008, 420). Over time, obstacles facing former ethnic return migrants however, intermarriage served to facilitate the as they attempt to situate lives and identities assimilation of both Japanese and Italian fundamentally impacted by long-term mobility diasporas into mainstream Brazilian culture. and residence