The Kasato Maru carrying 790 Japanese migrants arrives in Brazil from Kobe in 1908. Most of them were poor peasants, primarily from Okinawa, who had come to work on the large coffee plantations here.

9 comments

1. now japan is a country that is completely superior to brazil, and with a culture superior to brazil!!!

2. What does “follow Shintoism” actually mean? Those populations did leave Japan in the height of State Shinto, so they might be a little frozen in time, but I’ve never heard a modern Japanese person say that they “follow Shinto”.

   The US had a big influx, but I’ve only ever heard of Buddhism being brought over. The big sects even sent monks over to service the communities. There were Christians too, but I’m not sure when they converted. It’s possible the US migration happened earlier, before State Shinto really kicked into gear.

   I have heard about a surprising number of Shrines built in the Empire (Korea, Taiwan etc), but I think those were projections of State power more than serving the spiritual needs of migrants.

3. My family is one of those.

4. Is there any more stories like this for other countries? This is genuinely interesting

5. A tiny number of these families became powerful business owners, coffee producers of their own.
   To this day, still in “Sao Paulo” region.

6. What was cool to see in São Paulo was men and women who looked Japanese but had that sensual smooth movements and mannerisms of Brazilians. It guess it’s the same here with Americans of Japanese decent, it’s just that the dichotomy there seemed more obvious.

7. After all this history of immigration and Japanese-Brazilian living here, I still can not understand why Fejoada is not popular in Japan. In my opinion it is better than japanized Curry.

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrD9DIsZ_gY

9. I do wonder how they were looked at with the whitening Brazil plan.

   As yeah. Not white. But they are pale and would be a pull that way.