The Japanese Empire And Latin America

"The Japanese Empire and Latin America provides a comprehensive analysis of the complicated relationship between Japanese migration and capital exportation to Latin America and the rise and fall of the empire in the Asia-Pacific region. It explains how Japan's presence influenced the cultures and societies of Latin American countries and also explores the role of Latin America in the evolution of Japanese expansion. Together, this collection of essays presents a new narrative of the Japanese experience in Latin America by excavating trans-Pacific perspectives that shed new light on the global significance of Japan's colonialism and expansionism. The chapters cover a variety of topics, such as economic expansion, migration management, cross-border community making, the surge of pro-Japan propaganda in the Americas, the circulation of knowledge, and the representation of the "other" in Japanese and Latin American fictions. By focusing on both government action and individual experiences, the viewpoints examined create a complete analysis, including the roles the empire played in the process of settler identity formation in Latin America. While the colonialist and expansionist discourses in Japan set a stage for the beginning of Japanese migration to Latin America, it was the vibrant circulation of information between East Asia and the Americas that allowed the empire to stay at the center of the cultural life of communities on the other side of the globe. The empire left an enduring mark on Latin America that is hard to ignore. This volume explores long-neglected aspects of the Japanese global expansion; and thus, moves our understanding of the empire's significance beyond Asia and rethinks its legacy in global history"--

Japanese migration to Latin America began in the late nineteenth century, and today the continent is home to 1.5 million persons of Japanese descent. Combining detailed scholarship with rich personal histories, The Japanese in Latin America is the first comprehensive study of the patterns of Japanese migration on the continent as a whole. When the United States and Canada tightened their immigration restrictions in 1907, Japanese contract laborers began to arrive in mines and plantations in Latin America. Daniel M. Masterson, with the assistance of Sayaka Funada-Classen, examines Japanese agricultural colonies in Latin America, as well as the subsequent cultural networks that sprang up within and among them, and the changes that occurred as the Japanese moved from wage labor to ownership of farms and small businesses. Masterson also explores recent economic crises in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, which combined with a strong Japanese economy to cause at least a quarter million Latin American Japanese to migrate back to Japan. Illuminating authoritative research with extensive interviews with migrants and their families, The Japanese in Latin America examines the dilemma of immigrants who maintained strong allegiances to their Japanese roots, even while they struggled to build lives in their new countries.

The Japanese Empire and Latin America provides a comprehensive analysis of the complicated relationship between Japanese migration and capital exportation to Latin America and the rise and fall of the empire in the Asia-Pacific region. It explains how Japan’s presence influenced the cultures and societies of Latin American countries and also explores the role of Latin America in the evolution of Japanese expansion. Together, this collection of essays presents a new narrative of the Japanese experience in Latin America by excavating transpacific perspectives that shed new light on the global significance of Japan’s colonialism and expansionism. The chapters cover a variety of topics, such as economic expansion, migration management, cross-border community making, the surge of pro-Japan propaganda in the Americas, the circulation of knowledge, and the representation of the “other" in Japanese and Latin American fictions. By focusing on both government action and individual experiences, the viewpoints examined create a complete analysis, including the roles the empire played in the process of settler identity formation in Latin America. While the colonialist and expansionist discourses in Japan set a stage for the beginning of Japanese migration to Latin America, it was the vibrant circulation of information between East Asia and the Americas that allowed the empire to stay at the center of the cultural life of communities on the other side of the globe. The empire left an enduring mark on Latin America that is hard to ignore. This volume explores long-neglected aspects of the Japanese global expansion; and thus, moves our understanding of the empire’s significance beyond Asia and rethinks its legacy in global history.

In Search of Our Frontier explores the complex transnational history of Japanese immigrant settler colonialism, which linked Japanese America with Japan’s colonial empire through the exchange of migrant bodies, expansionist ideas, colonial expertise, and capital in the Asia-Pacific basin before World War II. The trajectories of Japanese transpacific migrants exemplified a prevalent national structure of thought and practice that not only functioned to shore up the backbone of Japan’s empire building but also promoted the borderless quest for Japanese overseas development. Eiichiro Azuma offers new interpretive perspectives that will allow readers to understand Japanese settler colonialism’s capacity to operate outside the aegis of the home empire.

These essays, by thirteen specialists from Japan and the United States, provide a comprehensive view of the Japanese empire from its establishment in 1895 to its liquidation in 1945. They offer a variety of perspectives on subjects previously neglected by historians: the origin and evolution of the formal empire (which comprised Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto. the Kwantung Leased Territory, and the South Seas Mandated Islands), the institutions and policies by which it was governed, and the economic dynamics that impelled it. Seeking neither to justify the empire nor to condemn it, the contributors place it in the framework of Japanese history and in the context of colonialism as a global phenomenon. Contributors are Ching-chih Chen. Edward I-te Chen, Bruce Cumings, Peter Duus, Lewis H. Gann, Samuel Pao-San Ho, Marius B. Jansen, Mizoguchi Toshiyuki, Ramon H. Myers, Mark R. Peattie, Michael E. Robinson, E. Patricia Tsurumi. Yamada Saburō, Yamamoto Yūzoō.

Exporting Japan examines the domestic origins of the Japanese government's policies to promote the emigration of approximately three hundred thousand native Japanese citizens to Latin America between the 1890s and the 1960s. This imperialist policy, spanning two world wars and encompassing both the pre-World War II authoritarian government and the postwar conservative regime, reveals strategic efforts by the Japanese state to control its populace while building an expansive nation beyond its territorial borders. Toake Endoh compellingly argues that Japan's emigration policy embodied the state's anxieties over domestic political stability and its intention to remove marginalized and radicalized social groups by relocating them abroad. Documenting the disproportionate focus of the southwest region of Japan as a source of emigrants, Endoh considers the state's motivations in formulating emigration policies that selected certain elements of the Japanese population for "export." She also recounts the situations migrants encountered once they reached Latin America, where they were often met with distrust and violence in the "yellow scare" of the pre-World War II period.

These essays, by thirteen specialists from Japan and the United States, provide a comprehensive view of the Japanese empire from its establishment in 1895 to its liquidation in 1945. They offer a variety of perspectives on subjects previously neglected by historians: the origin and evolution of the formal empire (which comprised Taiwan, Korea, Karafuto. the Kwantung Leased Territory, and the South Seas Mandated Islands), the institutions and policies by which it was governed, and the economic dynamics that impelled it. Seeking neither to justify the empire nor to condemn it, the contributors place it in the framework of Japanese history and in the context of colonialism as a global phenomenon. Contributors are Ching-chih Chen. Edward I-te Chen, Bruce Cumings, Peter Duus, Lewis H. Gann, Samuel Pao-San Ho, Marius B. Jansen, Mizoguchi Toshiyuki, Ramon H. Myers, Mark R. Peattie, Michael E. Robinson, E. Patricia Tsurumi. Yamada Saburō, Yamamoto Yūzoō.