Japan Anthropology Workshop Series. New York: Routledge, 2022. 292 pp. (B&W photos.) US$170.00, cloth; US$44.05, ebook. ISBN 9781003228295.
Scholars have written much on the experiences of the Japanese diaspora—the Nikkei—in the Latin American countries of Brazil and Peru. Japanese Diaspora and Migration Reconsidered sheds new light on Nikkei experiences in Bolivia, with a focus on their ethnic identity. Yvonne Siemann ethnographically demonstrates how Nikkei identity is recreated, narrated, and negotiated across a wide range of sites and practices, including in their marriage practices, Japanese schools, workplaces, language practices, festivals, Nikkei ethnic associations, and even transnational sports events.
According to Siemann, Bolivian Nikkei belong to the middle class and possess symbolic and economic capital, being well respected in society; the Nikkei Siemann interviews show that ethnic minorities are not always disadvantaged. Nikkei Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians alike participate in perpetuating a narrative that portrays so-called “Japanese values”—honesty, industry, discipline, modesty, loyalty, punctuality, and cleanness—as being transmitted quasi-genetically to Nikkei anywhere.
Siemann argues that such narratives play a vital role in marking their ethnic identity. For instance, postwar Japanese migrants, mainly from Okinawa, arrived in Bolivia and were each granted 50 hectares of land. Eventually, they expanded their farms and proved successful with the cultivation of soybeans. Crucially, Siemann reveals that Nikkei Bolivians’ success was also due to the presence of external support, such as the assistance of the Japanese state through the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s investment in Nikkei in Latin America, as well as the opportunities the Japanese government provided them to work in Japan in the 1990s. These played an important role in producing the prosperity they enjoyed in Bolivia. However, regardless of such external assistance, their success has been narrated as stemming from their “Japanese values.”
Practices of boundary marking are central to Siemann’s analysis. The most significant boundary drawn and redrawn is that between Nikkei Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians using a discourse of “Japanese values.” Interestingly, non-Nikkei Bolivians also perpetuate such narratives and use Japanese values to criticize their own society as unreliable, lazy, and uncivilized. The boundary-marking practices between prewar and postwar Nikkei Bolivians constitute another significant way in which postwar Nikkei recreate their identity. Most postwar descendants benefitted from the support of the Japanese state (noted above). In contrast, prewar Nikkei Bolivians often did not maintain Japanese nationality as this would have put them at risk during the Pacific War, and thus were seen as having not sustained authentic Japanese-ness.
Notably, Nikkei ethnic identity is also recreated differently generationally and geographically. Such Japanese values manifest their authenticity more in Issei (the first generation) than in Nisei (the second generation), more in rural environments than in urban ones, and so on. Siemann argues that Japanese-ness is not simply something that enjoys biological transmission; Japanese values must be worked on and cultivated to be maintained. In this analysis, the degree of Japanese-ness can be negotiated, although prewar Nikkei and those mixed with Japanese and non-Japanese ancestry also can experience its limits.
The author’s chapter on ethnic associations is an excellent contribution to the corpus of work on the Nikkei experience. Without a strong emphasis on religious affiliations or business networks (in contrast to Koreans or Chinese), ethnic associations are where Nikkei found solidarity and mutual help to ease hardship. Siemann uncovers how within these Nikkei associations (nihonjinkai), membership is a complex way to mark, legitimate, and destabilize their Japanese-ness. She also points out that in these ethnic associations, gender roles and class status are reinforced. Moreover, these associations are often based on a traditional model of female gender roles, wherein women’s primary duties are seen to be cooking. Nonetheless, the function of the associations is, according to Siemann, transforming due to urbanization, and different expectations, especially for younger Nikkei.
The chapter on the Nikkei network in Latin America offers a new perspective on Nikkei studies, as Siemann shows that a new Pan-American Nikkei identity is emerging. Many Nikkei maintained relationships with fellow Nikkei who migrated to other parts of Latin America. They started to organize meetings and events among themselves in the 1960s and 1970s. The creation of COPANI and Confra in the 1980s strengthened such networking. The significance of their emerging identity, as Siemann shows, is that these transnational organizations provide a new Pan-American or cosmopolitan ethnic identity. Instead of legitimizing being “more or less” Japanese, the young Nikkei try to find and express interrelatedness among Nikkei in Latin America, who are also different from Japanese from Japan; “they hope to create an overarching Nikkei identity with a central place for Latin America, instead of a ‘deficient’ Japanese identity” (182). These transnational activities also provide opportunities for those who disagree with the traditional values espoused in the ethnic associations discussed earlier and find a new ideal and new identity.
All in all, Siemann’s ethnographic research offers rich narratives and gives voice to Nikkei Bolivians. Siemann’s arguments about the dynamic (re)creation of ethnic identity are extraordinarily convincing, supported with multiple ethnographic examples. Yet, I was surprised to see how much these ethnic identity negotiations were framed as dichotomous. Much of Siemann’s analysis focuses on Nikkei or non-Nikkei, being more or less Japanese, acting based on Japanese or non-Japanese values. For Nikkei Bolivians, their ethnic identity appears to be a fundamental and inescapable one caught within a framework of dichotomous labels. Against the background of such a dichotomy, the Nikkei Bolivians’ other identities, such as their gender, sexuality, or otherwise, appear to play minor roles in their everyday life.
Moreover, the dichotomy that is portrayed between Nikkei and non-Nikkei also gives the impression that non-Nikkei Bolivians belong to a uniform group. Are most of the Nikkei Bolivians always occupied with such a dichotomous degree of Japanese-ness? It would have been interesting to see what the lives of Nikkei Bolivians outside of this Nikkei framework look like, if such a thing exists.
Regardless of such unanswered questions, Japanese Diaspora and Migration Reconsidered is an excellent book that makes a major contribution to the field of Japanese studies, migration and ethnic studies, and anthropology.
University of Oxford, Oxford