Study On Japanese Immigrants In Brazil (1908-1945)

In the late1980s, Japan’s economy developed rapidly, and was short of labor, theeconomy of Brazil was facing difficulties at the time. The Japanese governmentintroduced policies to attract overseas migrants to return home. A large number ofJapanese-Brazilian returned to Japan. Brazil and Japan immigration problem causedwidespread concern. My paper, focuses on the years from1908to1945, talking aboutthe Japanese emigrating to Brazil and their descendants, analyzing the historicalbackground and motivation of the immigrants, carding process of immigrants,exploring assimilation status in Brazilian society of the immigrants, exploring theirrelationships combined with the anti-Japanese movement in Brazil. The motivationfor Japanese immigrating to Brazil lies in that the Japanese society was still intransition at the turn of the century. The dramatic changes of the society made thelower classes of society perform a hard life, while in North America the anti-Japanesemovements were surging. The Japanese government adopted a supportive attitudetoward the immigration to Brazil, and gradually made it a national policy. Brazil,Fortunately, able to can provide a favorable conditions for migrants at this time,which attracted immigrants to leave their homes in order to improve the economiccondition. In short, the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil during this periodcan be divided into two phases: the private immigration phase and the governmentimmigration Phase. In which the government immigration stage was around the yearsthe Japanese government introduced incentives to encourage immigration to Brazilafter1924. At that time, those immigrants were under the sunshine of the nationalpolicy. The assimilation process of Japanese immigrants in Brazil was slow, mainlybecause that those immigrants show a strong identification with the mother country’sculture on the living environment and lifestyle, which impeded the integration to theBrazilian society. The difficulty of hard to assimilate become an important reason ofthe formation of anti-Japanese phenomenon in Brazil. The ups and downs of theanti-Japanese movements in turn hindered their assimilation process. From the termsof Brazil, the anti-Japanese movements were affected by the albino ingrained racialattitudes, and it continuously inherited the racial discrimination in anti-Chinesemovements. And it was also influenced by Japan-Brazil relations. The Japaneseexpansion in East Asia and its incentive policies for immigrants made the Braziliansociety have a strong preventive psychology toward Japan and its immigrants. Afterthe outbreak of the Pacific War, on January28,1942, the Brazilian governmentannounced the severance of diplomatic relations with Japan. In1945, Brazil declaredwar on Japan, the Japanese completely made immigration to Brazil a halt.