Concluding Commentary: On Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism in Asian American History

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Concluding Commentary:On Migration, Diasporas, and Transnationalism in Asian American History Evelyn Hu-Dehart I am reading and reflecting on these provocative essays in Tokyo, where I have been living since June, gaining first-hand contact with two diasporic communities: the Chinese in Japan, and the descendants of Japanese Brazilians, Peruvians, and other Latin Americans returning to the proverbial "ancestral homeland." One group, the Chinese, is a very old diasporic community in Japan, having established a small trading presence in Nagasaki in the seventeenth century even as the new Tokugawa shogunate decided to close Japan off from contact with almost all foreigners. Over the centuries, this small but old Chinese community has been sporadically replenished by new arrivals, among them Japanese-speaking and acculturated Chinese from the then Japanese colony of Taiwan. Today, Chinese from the PRC rank very high among newcomers to Japan, often using relatively lax student visas to enter the country but with intention to work rather than study. They readily learn Japanese; may join thriving existing Chinese communities in Yokohama or Kobe; easily find work in the service and restaurant sectors, or as professionals; work in a co-ethnic business or start one themselves; and marry Japanese spouses. Although gaining Japanese citizenship is extremely difficult, they can acquire long-term work visas and permanent residencies. Of course, they use cell phones and email, and fly home regularly to visit. This is a history that enriches and reinforces what we already know about the Chinese diaspora, about which a good deal has been written. [End Page 309] Latin Americans are another prominent group of newcomers to Japan, having been granted a privileged migration status if they have at least one Japanese grandparent who had settled in a Portuguese or Spanish-speaking country in the Americas. Known commonly as degaseki, these Latin Americans in Japan present an unusual twist on the diaspora paradigm, because now fifteen years into this migration, it is not at all certain whether the degaseki constitute the Japanese diaspora coming home, or should be more properly considered extensions of the Brazilian, Peruvian, Bolivian, and Argentinian diasporas to Asia. While given the right to return to Japan to work and help alleviate the country's labor shortage, they do not automatically re-naturalize as Japanese. To both Japanese and degaseki alike, Asian heritage and faces juxtaposed with Latino cultures create complex identities that defy expectations on both sides. Many degaseki are already of mixed Japanese-Latin American heritage, have spouses with no trace of Japanese heritage, and hence children with little connection and practically no memory of things Japanese. Many migrants do not speak Japanese and have difficulty and little incentive to learn, given the predominance of factory jobs into which they are hired. In school, the children are taught in Portuguese or Spanish, their primary language, and only secondarily and often poorly in Japanese. They may prefer the Latin American meat-laden churrasco to the delicate bite-size sushis, and they don't forget to celebrate major Latin American fiestas, such as the Brazilian carnaval, and read Portuguese and Spanish newspapers published in Japan to stay abreast of political and, most importantly, sports news from "home." So what is home, what is their core identity, what culture do they mostly identify with? Given their original incentive to "return home" to find work, they find themselves pining for another "home," to which they vow to return, no matter how long they have been away in Japan. Just like the subjects in the four essays gathered for this special issue, the histories of the Chinese and the degaseki in Japan begin with migration, that is, moving out of home and relocating to another place, voluntarily or under duress, as labor migrants, as exiles or political migrants seeking refuge from war and its aftermath, in desperation or in protest. Historians have discovered and largely agree, however, that the old push-pull immigration model is inadequate to fully apprehend and appreciate [End Page 310] the experiences and mind-set—subjectivities in post-modern parlance—of people on the move who relocate and settle elsewhere, forging new relationships out of necessity and desire without having to abandon old networks...