Even though this article is dated in some ways, I always find it interesting and relevant when thinking about identity. Tsuda manages to explore and analyze identity without catching himself essentializing it as other authors do. At the same time, he managed to delve deep into a community through what I found to be a thorough description and analysis of what Japanese-Brazilians experience in their daily lives in Japan.
What I found very interesting was his ability to discuss identity without necessarily having to pinpoint it. He mentions the centering and decentering process that an individual goes through whenever they move from one country to another; but this could also take place from city to city and neighbourhood to neighbourhood. I think explaining this at the outset of the article provided good insight into not necessarily looking at Japanese-Brazilians looking for some for of identity, but realizing that it is a relative thing that depends as much on time as it does on space.
The author also moves from different spaces such as the workplace, city streets, and neighbourhoods trying to explain how is it that someone that looks Japanese actually is not really considered one. And at the same time, how a person that has their whole life considered himself or herself to be Japanese deals with the refusal of those co-ethnics, and become a foreigner in their ancestral home. This begs the question as to why governments would assume that just because one has ancestors in a specific land, that they would be able to assimilate better than others that do not.
What I found interesting also was how a number of Japanese-Brazilians came to terms with being Japanese in Brazil, but not so in Japan. Usually, in articles of this kind that I read, there is a focus on the negative effects of identity formation when migration takes place. This however, need not be so; as we see there are multiple ways to deal with rejection. Coming to terms with their Brazilian-ness can be seen as a positive aspect of migration and return.
What do you guys think?
Die
Am 27. January 2017 um 16:34 Uhr
In his article, Takeyuki Tsuda deals with the manner in which immigrants may strengthen and deepen their national (deterritorialized) sentiments and filiations when embedded in an alien social milieu, even if this collective scenario is the ‘ancestral homeland’ from where their great-grandparents emigrated decades ago. Regarding the particular case of Japanese Brazilians living in Japan, the author emphasizes the complex and conflictive process that the members of this particular immigrant cluster underwent when reassuring their ‘brazilianness’ in opposition to rejection by their ‘fellow’ Japanese due to their ethnic (i.e. cultural) differences, which clearly constituted an identity shock given that those ‘Brazilians’ used to highlight take pride in their ‘Japaneseness’ while living in Brazil.
I was positively surprise by the way in which the author approached to the issue of discrimination, specifically to the dichotomy subjective-objective discrimination. From my point of view, Tsuda analytically apprehended such a complicated matter from a critical and professional perspective. In this way, the author not only revealed a dynamic and intricate set of interactions in which prejudices on both parts are identified, but also yielded an interesting facet of discrimination in which the hegemonic actors –in this case the Japanese- are subjectively perceived as irremissibly incurring in discriminatory behaviors by their Brazilian counterpart in disregard of the former’s chosen line of procedure (active or passive) in their interactions with the latter.
Am 28. January 2017 um 16:33 Uhr
Tsuda’s essay is very interesting and informative. I really enjoyed reading it. I think that this phenomenon is quite amazing: Japanese Brazilians prided themselves of their Japanese descent while in Brazil. Upon return migrating to Japan, however, they suddently became aware of how “Brazilian” they actually were. I think it is remarkable how their own perception of their national identity changed after they went to Japan. The perceived discrimination might certainly play a major role, but their attribution of specific characteristics to the Japanese (e.g. being cold) and to Brazilians (warmth), their disappointment at a First World Country not living up to the expectations they had had when they were in Brazil, also are important factors in priding themselves with being from Brazil, I think.
As Jesus already mentioned, Tsuda’s conveying of the dichotomy of subjective-objective discrimination, is impressive. Tsuda’s argumentation is underpinned by his extensive use of quotations.
I think Tsuda is right in his conclusion when he says that “increasing international migration and the emergence of more cohesive transnational communities that supersede the confines of the nation-state do not make the traditional social science
concepts of nation and ethnic group obsolete as sources of identity and
belonging” (171). The example he chose for his analysis underpins this contention.
Am 4. February 2017 um 16:00 Uhr
Just like the article the week before deals with the theme of Japanese Brazilians returning to Japan and how they are treated there. First, I think this article makes really clear that everyone wants to be part of an ethnic group. By not being accepted as Japanese the Brazilian Japanese focus more on their Brazilianness than they did in Brazil. I really liked the article because it made clear that ethnic conscious is determinate not just by ourselves but also by the external community. I never really thought about this fact so it was really informative.
I also liked the description of the daily life situations of the Japanese and the Japanese Brazilians in Japan. It pointed out the differences and why the Japanese Brazilian are not considered as Japanese.
Am 9. February 2017 um 06:38 Uhr
It looks like I am going against the grain on this one but I actually found the analysis in this article somewhat flat and pedestrian. The colliding of cultural stereotypes and the realisation that they are often inaccurate seems to me of relatively little analytical depth, for example “I thought Japan would be highly developed” (p155).
Though I agree with Jesus and Ivana that Tsuda’s conclusion regarding the continued salience of national and ethnic identities is poignant, I feel his category of subjective/objective discrimination is somewhat problematic. In terms of research for potential policy creation, they may seem useful but I can’t help feel they constitute a serious oversimplification. In this analysis, there exists a type of discrimination, which can be described objectively by the trained social scientist without any interference of their own linguistic interactions, prejudices, assumptions, approaches or background. Undoubtedly there are examples of discrimination which even the most postmodern of researchers would be at pains to put into doubt. The real difficulty, however, is the idea that there exists a subjective type of discrimination; a distortion of some real event instituted psychologically by the person (or ‘object’ of investigation in question). This discrimination can also be described objectively by the social scientist whose training qualifies them to diagnose the subjective misperception of an “oversensitive minority group” (p159). The implied hierarchy of valid scientific knowledge sits very uneasily with me. Perhaps it is owing to the date of the article but I was under the impression the idea of the “social scientist operating as an objective outsider” had all but lost legitimacy.
In the author’s defence, there is no doubt that it is plausible a group can exaggerate the degree to which they are being discriminated against. Indeed, conveying this phenomenon puts the researcher in a difficult position but I do feel the analysis is excessively binary.
Am 10. February 2017 um 18:36 Uhr
I have to say that I felt kind of torn reading the article. On the one hand I understand what Michael is saying about oversimplifying the subject. On the other hand, however, I think Tsuda’s conclusion that the nation state is/was far from becoming obsolete despite the prevalent declaration in social and cultural studies at the time deserves quite some credit.
Also, I think that the romantization of the home country in the face of discrimination or a feeling of not belonging in the host country is a very interesting issue. There seems to be a deep detachment from the reality of the left nation resulting in a completely different development of the migrants’ Japanese culture. Tsuda picks this up quite nicely I think. It made me wonder, however, if this has changed through increasingly easier ways to stay in contact with people in your home country or if it is more because migrants need their home country to be special and great in order to cope with difficulties in the immigration setting.
Am 18. February 2017 um 11:24 Uhr
I really appreciated reading this article and personally I think that it gives a really exhaustive gaze about return migration in general giving a lot of examples of interviewed migrants and also analyzing the importance of the transnational concept in sociology.
I liked especially the psychological point of view of the migration process, as Robert Lifton’s states when describing that migrating disrupts and decenters the ethnic identities of migrants and how this can cause a profound transformation in their ethnic self-consciuosness (P.147).
As I commented in the previous text, I also experienced this deterritorialization of national sentiments as the idealistic perception of my home country and also the re-appreciation of it as Tsuda argues: “This is a common experience of immigrants when they move to a different country. In the home country, individuals are not as aware of the nationally distinct nature of certain behaviors or activities because they are socially standardized and shared by those around them as part of the country’s culture” ( P.152).
It was also interesting reading about how ethnic identity depends on so many factors that goes from appearance, body comportment, to the way of thinking, dressing, walking etc. as written in the article: It could be funny, but I can also recognize Italians in Berlin only by their gesturing, watching their hands-moves or listening to their loud voices.
Small detail: moreover I also like the impact that these identities differences have also in the languages; in both languages there are neologisms for describing all sort of migrants; dekasegi (temporary migrant worker) or nikkeijin (descendants that born and live abroad) in Japanese, or japonés/gaijin in Portuguese.