How do returning migrants relate do their ancestral culture? What are the cross-cultural and interreligious negotiations that occur? How do they make meaning of their in-between state in a new land? What happens when global Pentecostalism encounters a predominantly Buddhist and Shinto society? What role does religion, or more specifically Christianity, play in meaning-making and generating purpose in the lives of these returnees in a seemingly “foreign” and hostile land?In her seminal work, Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora, Suma Ikeuchi (University of California, Santa Barbara) attempts to answer similar questions by looking at the day-to-day experience of a Brazilian Pentecostal community in Japan. This work is an ethnographic tour de force but also comprises a beautiful narrative of Nikkei (second-generation) Pentecostal resilience, hope, and integration in a familiar yet strange land.As a result of her personal encounter with world Pentecostalism, Ikeuchi takes us along her own journey of self-discovery, introducing readers to her experience living among Nikkei Brazilian immigrants navigating the two Js—Jesus and Japan—in the Brazilian Pentecostal Church of Missão Apoio Toyota (182). Her ethnographic and phenomenological study investigates their daily lives through such experiences as coffees, dinners, baby showers, birthday parties, soccer viewing gatherings, and funerals (28).The results are quietly impressive. Her overarching thesis is that Pentecostalism’s language of spiritual conversion embodied in the “born again” experience gives believers a sense of “transnational transcendence” in which they are now “members of ‘the culture of love’ which ostensibly overcomes narrow ethnonational affiliations” (183).In the first part, Ikeuchi describes the experience of Brazilian return migrants suspending their erstwhile Japanese identity. Returning to their ancestral homeland of Japan on the Nikkei-jin visa, these return migrants, or Nikkei, experience the phenomenon of “afastamento,” a “distancing” or feeling of disenchantment with the “ethnic aura” or “great pride of the Japanese race” (38). Ikeuchi masterfully shows how this plays out in the Nikkei encounter with typical Japanese customs such as Obentō and Shūdan Tōkō, and even the menial task of garbage disposal (66, 73).The second part shows how the church functions as a means of renewal for the Nikkei sense of meaning and identity in a foreign land. Ikeuchi shows how prayer, sermons, testimonies, and Bible studies allow believers to experience a “break” from the “temporal suffocation” of Japanese work life (91). This helps them produce a “culture of love” and “create a new sense of citizenship” in a land that formerly appeared hostile but now has more potential to be Christian “than their former land (Brazil)” (108). Ikeuchi introduces the valuable category of love, which goes beyond simplistic reductionist attempts to reduce conversion experience to mere causal materialist processes.The third section explores how this renewed sense of identity in Christ offered by Pentecostalism affects the intercultural exchanges between Nikkei and Pentecostal identities. Ikeuchi argues that even though Nikkeis occupy a contested space in Japanese society, their view of Christian “kinship” enables them to overcome the sense of inferiority and distancing they experience in a society grounded on notions of “Japanese blood” (122).In her conclusion, Ikeuchi notes that this renewed sense of identity allows Nikkeis to reconceptualize the meaning of return migration. Nikkei Pentecostals see themselves as pilgrims hoping for their true “spiritual” homeland. Nostalgia for Brazil is replaced with spiritual vocation for Japan. The tensions of transnational mobility and contested citizenship give way to the hope that they have a special calling. After all, “Jesus ama o Japão” (186).In sum, Jesus Loves Japan is a heartwarming but nevertheless rigorous scientific study that captures the struggles, pains, faith, hopes, desires, and love of Nikkei Pentecostals. It also serves as an excellent companion to others like Christina Moreira da Rocha’s Zen Buddhism in Brazil: Japanese or Brazilian? It contributes to Pentecostal studies by showing the diffusion of Pentecostalism in a predominantly Buddhist and Shinto culture. For East Asian studies, it sheds light on minority and unrepresented voices. Suma Ikeuchi introduces readers to a world where faith, hope, and love help migrant community members reimagine their identities in order to survive in a difficult environment.
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May 28, 2023
Brenda Morton + 1
Open Access