Settlement of the Japanese in Brazil

This paper will discuss an aspect of the history of Brazil, the settlement of the Japanese in Brazil. The paper will discuss some of the earliest Brazilian settlement patterns, focusing on the settlements of Japanese immigrants. The discussion will continue into more recent history, particularly the problems related to Japanese settlements during World War II.

Most Japanese came to Brazil sometime after 1899 and settled in agricultural regions like Sao Paulo, Parana and Mato Grosso. The Japanese colonies in Brazil are known as cysts, though they are also called quistos by Brazilians. These Japanese colonies tended to be close knit, with the Japanese preserving their cultural traits and resisting assimilation. During World War II, these Japanese colonies tended to be very nationalistic in favor of Japan. When it became apparent that Japan was losing World War II, secret societies were formed in Brazil's Japanese settlements. They practiced violence against other Japanese in Brazil who publicly admitted that Japan was losing the war (Worcester, 1973:196).

The violence of the Japanese secret societies in Brazil continued after World War II, when other Japanese who admitted Japan's defeat in World War II were murdered. It took several years for the Brazilian government to convince these diehard Japanese nationalists that Japan had actually lost World War II. Despite these problems with the Japanese in Brazil, the Brazilian government admitted more Japanese to Brazil

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azil, and 1908, the records document Japanese immigration to Brazil. It is clearly a twentieth century phenomenon, and represents the only major immigration to Brazil for a Far East country (Poppino, 1968:190-195). The earliest Japanese immigrants to Brazil were subsidized. They were recruited to work in coffee plantations in Sao Paulo. The recruiters were Japanese emigration companies that had contracts with the government of Brazil. Most of these early Japanese workers were peasants from Okinawa and the main islands. Spontaneous movement of Japanese to Brazil was virtually unknown prior to the conclusion of World War II. By 1963, Brazil had twice as many Japanese immigrants as Russian immigrants, and Japanese migration equaled total German migration going back to 1822 (Poppino, 1968:190-195). Estimates of the numbers of Japanese immigrating to Brazil vary. As many as 230,000 Japanese may have come in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly workers recruited for the plantations in Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Parana, Goias and Amazonas. Japanese were not the only nationality recruited for plantation labor, Italians were also among those recruited for the work. In any case, the large Japanese influx resulted in Brazil having the larg

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