Made in Brazil? Sexuality, Intimacy, and Identity Formation among Japanese Brazilian Queer Immigrants in Japan

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the return migration of Japanese Brazilians has attracted the interest of researchers. The Japanese economic growth—known as the “bubble economy” at that time—required large amounts of workers to supply labor to small- and medium-sized factories, usually between 30 and 50 employees. The growing presence of undocumented immigrants from Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries motivated the Japanese Parliament to amend the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act on December 8, 1989 (Sassen 1998, 60).1 Parliamentarians and lawmakers thought this to be the best way to control the impact of migration in Japanese society. However, limiting Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern migration also decreased the pool of workers that sustained the industrial sector. The amendment of the law thus included provisions to accept a new population: Japanese descendants who were born and raised mainly in the Americas, offsprings of thousands of Japanese immigrants who established colonies in the Americas, from Canada to Argentina at the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. They carried different stories as Japanese immigrant communities had to deal with situations specific to their adopted countries. In the case of Brazil, Japanese immigrants were allowed to migrate in order to work in coffee plantations. They slowly ascended the social ladder until they not only reached the middle or upper-middle classes but also became a “model minority.”