KJ
Encounters
Origami
by Momotani Yoshihide
Forgetting, Remembering: Japan & Brazil
Terry Caesar
FEW COUNTRIES APPEAR TO HAVE LESS IN COMMON with each
other than Japan and Brazil. Consider only the woman in which each country
is personified. The geisha is a figure of culture: exquisitely robed,
accomplished in several arts, hushed in manner, and refined in behavior.
The samba dancer is a figure of nature: gloriously unrobed, accomplished
in only one art, exultant, and exuberant. The geisha is the consummate
product of the highly inward culture of teahouses. There are no tea
houses in Brazil. The samba dancer is the consummate product
of the highly public culture of Carnival. There is no carnival in Japan.
So it goes. If ever two countries would seem to be destined not to know
each other, it would appear to be Japan and Brazil, and not only because
they are thousands of miles apart and share virtually no common political,
religious, or cultural history. The one country is an island; the other
comprises half a continent. The most celebrated Japanese writer wrote
haiku; the most celebrated Brazilian one wrote an epic. Japan
comprehends itself as having been a distinct civilization for thousands
of years; Brazil recently celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary
of its independence from Portugal. In hundreds of other ways, from temples
to churches, Japan and Brazil are as different as sumo and
soccer.
And yet, on a recent trip to Brazil from Japan with my wife, Eva, who
is Brazilian, I noticed that the annual world sumo championships were
scheduled to be held in Sao Paulo. What? Sumo? In Brazil? Why not? Immigration
began at the turn of the last century. There are now at least 1,300,000
Japanese living in Brazil, not counting the uncountable Japanese who
have intermarried with Brazilians, and whose children who would not
be counted as “Japanese” in the Brazilian census. Take Ricardo,
one of Eva’s relatives.
Ricardo‘s grandfather came to Brazil without a penny to his name.
He had owned a mine in Japan, but the government confiscated it during
the First World War, and told him to fight or emigrate. Ricardo‘s
father was two when the family emigrated. They saved enough money to
buy their own land, build their own farm, and prosper. Ricardo‘s
father, Americo, still remembers his grandfather, who till the end of
his days, put on a white linen suit each Sunday to attend church.
Americo, a lawyer, appears to have continued the refinement of his father,
from his love of cooking to his extensive experience of travel. He’s
never been to Japan, though, and has no desire to go; Eva opines that
Americo is the most thoroughly Brazilian Japanese she‘s ever met.
Recently the Japanese government got in touch with him, in connection
with the mine. It seems the land could be returned. “Keep it,”
Americo responded. “I don’t want it. Imagine going back
to be slaves to those Japanese.”
To an American, Ricardo doesn’t even look Japanese (although Eva
tells me that he does to Brazilians, who, however, don‘t care
about it as much as Americans would). When does one country cease in
another? To Japanese, Ricardo might be an example of a Nikkeijin (Japanese
emigrants and their descendents born abroad). To himself, though, he’s
an example of a Brazilian, period, who reinstitutes — albeit in
his own way — the difference between the two countries.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JAPAN AND BRAZIL IS TYPICAL of a great number
of countries today, which continue to have something to do with each
other only because of what appear to be economic reasons. The relation
is one-way. Japan needs Brazilian labor, with 222,217 workers registered,
according to the last census, making Brazilians the third largest number
(after Koreans and Chinese) of foreign nationals in Japan. Brazil, on
the other hand, has no comparable need of anything to do with Japan.
And yet the large number of Brazilians with a Japanese background means
that Japan exists in Brazil (or in the state of Parana, at least) in
all sorts of fugitive, unspoken ways. In effect, the two countries continue
to abide inside each other with an unusual degree of intimacy but without
sharing any comparable degree of understanding; Brazil simply has no
resonance in Japan comparable to the scale or the depth of Japan‘s
resonance in Brazil.
We return to the economic fact: Japan needs Brazil, albeit in a quite
restricted, circumscribed way, while Brazil has no more comparable need
of Japanese labor, much less emigration. The economic fact, however,
can be transposed into the realm of political economy in order to understand
something important about the nature of global interactions in the world
today: some countries can effectively continue to forget others. Much
has to be forgotten anyway in order to make a nation. Japan can still
afford to forget the social and cultural existence of Brazil in order
to construct its own self-imagining, while Brazil still hasn’t
forgotten Japan.
WHAT A JOY IT WAS FOR EVA to discover the magazine, Made in Brazil,
some time after we arrived in Japan. That’s the title, in English,
although the magazine is written in Portuguese, and jointly published
both in Brazil and Japan. Intelligent journalism, at best, but very
informative about a wide variety of subjects relating to Brazilians
in Japan, ranging from items on the latest available technology to longer
features on Buddhist monks. Plus, each issue is full of imaginative
layout and glossy photos. Although we’ve never been able to figure
out how most Brazilians who live in Japan can possibly afford to buy
this monthly, we do. Of course, we‘re not — in the Japanese
valuation — Brazilians.
Now what a shock to come upon the current issue in Brazil! It‘s
as if we‘d taken one step in downtown Londrina, and the next in
Osaka. How can Made in Brazil be on sale here? If Brazilians
in Japan can at least be reasonably expected to be interested in the
subject of Brazilians in Japan, why should Brazilians in Brazil be?
Brazilians may care more about Brazilians in Japan than Japanese care
about Nikkeijin in Brazil. But not much. To see a copy of Made in
Brazil on sale in Brazil is to be plunged all over again into the
mystery of the strange relationship between the two countries.
The oddest realization, though, is something more personal. The world
of Brazilians in Japan — such as it is — is in fact more
remote to us than Brazil itself; alas, most Brazilians in Japan live
in a couple of prefectures near Tokyo. Perhaps that‘s why it‘s
so disturbing to see Made in Brazil in Brazil! Finding the
magazine here exposes a sort of emotional logic that we had gradually
come to unconsciously accept. It couldn‘t have been articulated.
Perhaps it couldn‘t even have been known until now. The logic
is as follows: Made in Brazil no more belongs in Brazil than,
well, Brazilians belong in Japan.
THE 11TH ANNUAL “NIPO-BRASILEIRO” FESTIVAL, August 12th
to 20th, at Acema, one of Maringa’s largest private clubs, illuminates
this paradox. Eva and I hurry over early one evening with the fervor
of first-generation immigrants from Gumma Prefecture. Before the dancing
begins, we gain the cavernous food court, where, sure enough, there
is sushi available right alongside the barbecued beef. Too
bad we already had dinner.
Eventually the dancing begins. Eva takes a picture of some traditionally-clad
women underneath a sign in Portuguese. The dancers are awful, out-of-synch
even in a slow, stately bon-odori number. Another group is
slightly better. The crowd, mostly Japanese, looks on politely. What
exactly is the meaning of this spectacle? Is it as inert as the comparable
samba staged by Brazilians in the Tokyo area, regularly reported by
Brazilian newspapers available in Japan?
Far more enchanting is the commemoration of Japanese immigration to
Brazil, in the form of nearly thirty display cases of various origami
figures. Subjects include living in original homes on coffee plantations,
raising chickens, staging sumo matches, displaying ikebana,
and singing karaoke. The Japanese genius for the miniature! The scale
of these displays is remarkably intricate and detailed. The sushi is
fresh. The dancing is live. So how to explain why this origami display
seems, well, not so much more authentically Japanese, but more expressive?
Expressive of what? Of a culture that almost requires a moment of alienation
— provided by the historical perspective itself — before
it can be re-presented so imaginatively a mere spectator easily forgets
that these tiny pieces of paper represent a real life once suffered
and lived.
WHEN, FINALLY, DOES A COUNTRY come to take possession of itself? One
Sunday morning Eva, her mother, her youngest sister, her nephew Marcelo
and I are all transfixed by a television program about a family that
left Parana twenty years ago for the Amazon, specifically the state
of Rondonia. To me, as an American, the family resembled the Joads in
their old truck, piled high with furniture, children, and dreams. Perhaps
the major reason that Brazilians don‘t emigrate to other countries
is the presence of the Amazon — as distant to most Brazilians
as, say, Hokkaido to most Japanese and yet with an enormous difference:
the Amazon is a Hokkaido that still offers land for the settling and
natural resources for the farming.
This particular family established a coffee plantation. It flourished.
The soil is much better here than in Parana, explained the head of the
family. Everybody worked hard. The house where the family originally
lived is now a chicken coop! An old picture of the father throwing coffee
beans in the air appears on the checkbook of the area farm cooperative!
The program has the family gather in its living room to see the video
of themselves starting out from Parana. Several members weep. Had they
become so successful that they had forgotten their origins?
We viewers, in any case, must not forget that Brazil is — once
again — a country in the making; the Amazon remains the most obvious
place in which the process is taking place (and no matter that it‘s
been going on this way for a hundred years — something the program
doesn‘t mention because its sense of history is restricted to
the present). As recently as twenty years ago this family experienced
in Rondonia the same moment that Japanese immigrants to Brazil experienced
at the turn of the 20th century. This program captures that moment.
After they get to where they‘re going, and unpack the truck, the
father turns to his son as they gaze at the jungle growth on all sides
and declares: “This is ours.”
When
this was written, Terry Caesar was teaching at Mukogawa Women's University.
His most recent book, a study of academic life, is entitled Traveling
through the Boondocks
Copyright
held by the author
Back to Encounters
Subscriptions
