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The Japanese in Latin America

Book · January 2004

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http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/23tgr5yq9780252028694.html

The Japanese in Latin America

Author: Daniel M. Masterson with Sayaka Funada-Classen

Pub Date: December 2004
Pages: 368 pages
Series: The Asian American Experience

Awards and Recognition: CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2005.

This book chronicles the experience of the first Japanese immigrants and their descendents in Latin

America during the past century particularly emphasizing their struggle to adapt to their new homelands

while retaining strong ties to their cultural heritage.

Japanese migration to Latin America began in the late nineteenth century, and today the continent is

home to 1.5 million persons of Japanese descent. Combining detailed scholarship with rich personal

histories, The Japanese in Latin America is the first comprehensive study of the patterns of Japanese

migration on the continent as a whole.

When the United States and Canada tightened their immigration restrictions in 1907, Japanese contract

laborers began to arrive in mines and plantations in Latin America. Daniel M. Masterson, with the

assistance of Sayaka Funada-Classen, examines Japanese agricultural colonies in Latin America, as well

as the subsequent cultural networks that sprang up within and among them, and the changes that occurred

as the Japanese moved from wage labor to ownership of farms and small businesses. Masterson also

explores recent economic crises in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, which combined with a strong Japanese

economy to cause at least a quarter million Latin American Japanese to migrate back to Japan.

Illuminating authoritative research with extensive interviews with migrants and their families, The

Japanese in Latin America examines the dilemma of immigrants who maintained strong allegiances to

their Japanese roots, even while they struggled to build lives in their new countries.

"This highly readable and solidly researched book is a welcome addition to the Asian American

Experience series. . . . Its global dimension and emphasis on ethnic adaptation make it an important
 contribution to all disciplines concerned with comparative immigration."--American Historical Review

"The Japanese in Latin America . . . provide[s] a fine overview of the story of Japanese migration and the

creation of Nikkei ethnicity in Latin America. Working with secondary sources based on national

experiences, as well as primary sources and oral histories, Masterson and Funada-Classen navigate

between temporal and regional specificities and broad patterns."--The Americas

"The Japanese in Latin America provides a wealth of information, in addition to an articulate analysis and

systematic comparisons, on a subject that has received scant attention in migration scholarship. But what

also makes this scholarly publication especially valuable is that it presents historical comparisons at

distinct points with the Japanese immigration to the United States."--Latin American Politics and Society

"A first-rate piece of scholarship. It provides an invaluable overview of the history of the Japanese on the

continent, with extraordinary richness of detail throughout."--Samuel L. Baily, author of Immigrants in

the Lands of Promise

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