Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland

by Takeyuki Tsuda

Since the late 1980s, Brazilians of Japanese descent have been "return" migrating to Japan as unskilled foreign workers. With an immigrant population currently estimated at roughly 280,000, Japanese Brazilians are now the second largest group of foreigners in Japan. Although they are of Japanese descent, most were born in Brazil and are culturally Brazilian. As a result, they have become Japan's newest ethnic minority.

Drawing upon close to two years of multisite fieldwork in Brazil and Japan, Takeyuki Tsuda has written a comprehensive ethnography that examines the ethnic experiences and reactions of both Japanese Brazilian immigrants and their native Japanese hosts. In response to their socioeconomic marginalization in their ethnic homeland, Japanese Brazilians have strengthened their Brazilian nationalist sentiments despite becoming members of an increasingly well-integrated transnational migrant community. Although such migrant nationalism enables them to resist assimilationist Japanese cultural pressures, its challenge to Japanese ethnic attitudes and ethnonational identity remains inherently contradictory. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland illuminates how cultural encounters caused by transnational migration can reinforce local ethnic identities and nationalist discourses.

Genres: Japan, Anthropology, Japanese Literature

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2003

Reviews

[Beatrice]

Interesting snapshot of the early 2000s nikkeijin community in Japan. Good discussion of the limitations of transnationalism and the interactions between diaspora nationalism and hegemonic nationalism.

[Graziela · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author really knew how to express his anthropological journey with the Japanese-Brazilians working in Japan. I cannot say it's the best book in the genre that I have read, since it's the only one, but I sure do recommend it. His writing made me feel as if I was with him and I felt connected with what he was experiencing (although I have never been to Japan for labour purposes).