New Studies in Modern Japan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. xii, 243 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$95.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-8036-6.
Japan’s major revision of its immigration law in 1990 brought about a rapid influx of Nikkei (descendants of the Japanese) Latin Americans, as well as trainees and technical interns, to the country. Although the immigration law revision attracted considerable scholarly attention, resulting in books such as Roth’s Brokered Homeland (2002) and Tsuda’s Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland (2003), only a handful of research has been conducted on Nikkei Latin Americans after their massive repatriation following the Lehman shock of 2008 and its effects. In this context, Living Transnationally between Japan and Brazil has appeared like a meteor, not only as an update on the scant research but also to prompt paradigmatic change to grasp the nature of migration from Brazil to Japan.
The most salient feature of this book is summarized in its subtitle, “routes beyond roots.” It is true that Nikkei are granted privileged visa status, but author Sarah A. LeBaron von Baeyer suggests that their roots as ethnic Japanese is much less important to them than previously considered. According to von Baeyer, the general focus of early studies on ethnicity obfuscates other important elements of migrant lifeways such as gender, family, education, generation, and social class (207). Instead, she introduces “middle-class subjectivity” as the key term to understanding Brazilian migration to Japan: Nikkei go to Japan looking for significant advances in terms of social freedom, material comfort, and financial self-reliance (201), rather than just returning to be in their ethnic homeland. Although Nikkei from Brazil are incorporated into the periphery of Japan’s secondary labour market, wherein available jobs are demanding and unstable, they are still capable of enjoying a comfortable middle-class lifestyle through easy access to consumer goods, which is more difficult in Brazil. Although the author hesitantly criticizes the “over-ethnicized” model of previous studies on migration from Latin America to Japan, her argument can be a harsh criticism of them by showing a more pragmatic view of Brazilians in Japan.
The second strength of this book is its research design, which is aptly suited for comprehending the transnational lives of these Brazilian families. Unlike most multi-sited ethnographical works, which tend to end up with a superficial description of several places, the author systematically integrates the transnationally dispersed family lives of Brazilians in both countries. This strategy is especially effective in describing the bifurcated migration trajectories of three families: life between Japan and Brazil (chapter 1), settlement in Japan (chapter 3), and return to Brazil (chapter 5). Rather than being caught between the two countries, von Baeyer concludes that these families are in and of both Japan and Brazil (207). As a scholar who has conducted research in this field for more than two decades, I find her conclusion rather optimistic, yet von Baeyer has certainly presented an alternative (or more positive) picture of Brazilian lives across continents.
The third key feature of this book is its elaborate structure. Of the six chapters besides the introduction and conclusion, three odd-numbered chapters provide detailed descriptions of various patterns of migration by the three families, followed by even-numbered chapters analyzing contextual factors such as the labour market (chapter 2), education (chapter 4), and religion (chapter 6). This structure provides a comprehensive picture of Brazilian migration to Japan through a thick description of individual migrants and analyses of the institutional opportunities and constraints surrounding them.
However, there are at least two major points to be elaborated on in future research. First, the author’s life course approach fails to link odd- and even-numbered chapters; the migration histories of the three families are described somewhat independently of contextual factors. For example, the Lehman shock had devastating effects on the entire Brazilian community in Japan because approximately half of the Brazilian Nikkei were unemployed by early 2009, while their working conditions worsened and have yet to recover. Nevertheless, it is difficult to determine how the three families were influenced by the global financial crisis, which should have been the main topic of the author’s fieldwork conducted from 2009 to 2013, immediately after the economic crisis.
Likewise, the author failed to consider changes in the education of Brazilian Nikkei. On one hand, the number of Brazilian schools in Japan dramatically fluctuated during this time; while such schools steadily increased until 2008, more than half were closed due to the repatriation of students and the economic difficulties facing parents after the Lehman shock. On the other hand, higher education accessibility for Brazilian Nikkei in Japan has been increasing, even though they remain one of the least-educated groups among various national origins. If the author had incorporated these shifting conditions into her analysis, she could have illustrated the educational paths of migrant youth more dynamically. While the author has carefully traced the migration histories of the three families, she has failed to situate their life courses in structural contexts.
The second shortcoming of this book arises from inadequate references to Japanese scholarship on the topic, which also contributes to its first weakness. While Japanese scholars might be poor at communicating in Portuguese or Spanish, and thus weak in analyzing the life world of Latin American migrants, they have a niche in examining structural and institutional aspects that provide structures of opportunities and constraints for their life courses. In addition, Japanese researchers have been updating their knowledge by conducting empirical research on Brazilians’ predicaments during and after the Lehman shock. Unfortunately, the author refers to none of these works and thus fails to access updated research findings since the Lehman shock (she cites only nine Japanese articles and books about Brazilian migration to Japan).
Despite the aforementioned limitations, this book provides readers with a fresh perspective on Brazilian Nikkei migration to Japan. It provides a non-biased view on how “ethnic migrants” perceive what has been labeled as “ethnic migration.”
Naoto Higuchi
Waseda University, Shinjuku