Japanese-Brazilians Seen at First Hand: Ethnographic Studies of a New Minority in Japan

Abstract

In 1985, the Plaza Agreement caused the yen to strengthen, and the Japanese economy began to attract large numbers of manual workers from foreign countries. The Japanese economy, in a highgrowth period and suffering from a labour shortage, soaked up these foreign migrant workers, mainly from other Asian countries, without making any major legal or social adjustments. Faced with the consequent increase in problems over illegal foreign residents, the Government responded by amending the Immigration Law in 1990. The new law made it easier for foreigners of Japanese ancestry, as 'compatriots' with an assumed closer cultural background and fewer linguistic barriers, to enter Japan and work there. At the same time the law tightened regulations against illegal workers by establishing penalties for those who hired them, recognizing that employers shared responsibility for illegal employment. This change in the law encouraged Japanese companies to hire foreigners of Japanese descent as a safe way to alleviate the labour-force shortage, and the mass immigration of Japanese descendants, mainly from Latin American countries, was under way. On the 'push' side of the international labour market, serious troubles in the Brazilian economy made migrant labour in Japan look increasingly attractive to the many ethnic Japanese living in Brazil, themselves descendants of migrant workers of a previous generation. Since the 1980s, Brazil had suffered from low economic growth, extraordinarily high rates of inflation, and a debt crisis. When President Fernando Collor de Mello came to power in 1990, he froze the prices of basic foods, including the prices of vegetables and fruits, often planted by Japanese farmers, at rockbottom prices. He also abolished the low-interest loans for farmers that had enabled many Japanese farmers to manage intensive agriculture. Without these privileged loans, many farmers found their livelihoods threatened. Rather than continuing to invest in the uncertain Brazilian economy, many first-generation Japanese, and second-generation Japanese-Brazilians with dual citizenship, chose to try their fortunes in the booming Japanese economy.