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The Japanese Colony in Peru1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Mischa Titiev
Mischa Titiev
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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In 1941–42 Dr. Robert B. Hall, professor of geography at the University of Michigan, investigated Japanese settlements throughout Latin America. Since his survey was made in the months just before and after Pearl Harbor, when Japan was winning successive victories, Professor Hall found the Japanese at a high peak of morale which sometimes bordered on arrogance. Subsequently, as the Allies gained the upper hand, the total situation of the Japanese underwent a marked decline. Under these circumstances it seemed likely that a postwar study might provide a valuable insight into several aspects of sociocultural change. Plans for a follow-up of Dr. Hall's work by the writer were discussed in 1947, and a decision was made to concentrate on Peru.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , May 1951 , pp. 227 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1951

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References

2 The field work was sponsored and financed by the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan, to which grateful acknowledgment is made. The writer also wishes to thank the center's director, Professor Robert B. Hall, for having proposed this study, for his support of the project, and for the use of his manuscript report of the 1941–42 survey.

3 The author is deeply indebted to his Japanese informants and to the many government officers, professors, and businessmen who aided his project. In the light of recent political disturbances in Peru, however, it may be better not to mention these individuals by name.

4 Normano, J. F. and A., Gerbi, The Japanese in South America (New York, 1943), 66, 67.Google Scholar

5 R. B. Hall, The Japanese in Latin America (manuscript).

6 This distribution, based on the 1930 census, is published in Susumu Sakurai (ed.), Zaipe dōbō nenkan (Yearbook of Japanese in Peru) (Lima: Nipponsha Press, 1935), 2. All translations from the yearbook edited by’ Sakurai were made by Yōtarō Okuno, whose help and co-operation the author gratefully acknowledges. Professor Joseph K. Yamagiwa and Mr. Hiroshi Itō were also kind enough to check the use of Japanese terms.

7 Sakurai, 4 ff.

8 Hall's manuscript.

9 Ibid.

10 Censo nacional república del Peru 1940 (Lima, 1944), 1:532, table 169. Compare the occupational distribution for 1930 as given above. Note that the 1940 figures refer to all who lived by the pursuits indicated, not just to bread-earners.

11 Hall's manuscript.

12 Normano and Gcrbi, 94.

13 Ibid., 101.

14 Ibid., 111.

15 Hall's manuscript.

16 Sakurai, 62 ft.

17 Japanese who live overseas show a strong tendency to regard as kindred all immigrants who have come from the same place in Japan. On this point see Embree, J. F., “New and local kin groups among the Japanese farmers of Kona, Hawaii,” American anthropologist, 41 (1959), 406.Google Scholar

18 For the names of other clubs of this tvpe see Sakurai, 62–66, and Normano and Gerbi, 95.

19 Sakurai, 62–66.

20 Ibid.

21 Hall's manuscript.

22 Another device for circumventing the Benavides decree was to incorporate family businesses and, by giving small shares to employees, to classify them as owners. For further details, consult Normano and Gerbi, 94, 115, 116.

23 Normano and Gerbi, 76.

24 The pattern of organizations developed by the Peruvian-Japanese is typical of overseas Japanese settlements in general; compare the Brazilian situation described in Normano and Gerbi, 32, 33, and the Hawaiian system as reported in Embree, J. F. “Acculturation among the Japanese in Kona, Hawaii,” Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, no. 59 (1941), 88–97.Google Scholar

25 Families that made the greatest effort to educate their offspring were held in the highest esteem by their fellow colonists. In Brazil similar educational practices were found among Japanese settlers; see Willems, Emilio, “The Japanese in Brazil,” Far Eastern survey, 18 (1949), 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 For a list of schools, enrollments, etc., see Sakurai, 134.

27 Ibid.

28 This school was taken over by Peru during the war years and became the Instituto Peda-g6gico Nacional.

29 A great deal of fresh material on Japanese education has just been made available by the publication of Robert J. Hall's Shūshin: the ethics of a defeated nation (New York, 1949).

30 A widow could join the Fukeikai in place of her deceased husband.

31 Normano and Gerbi, 124, footnote 3, also indicate that fewer Japanese from Peru went to study in Japan than is popularly supposed. They point out that “only two or three very small fellowships [for study in Japan] were granted about 1937.”

32 Compare Normano and Gerbi, 123, footnote 2.

33 Sakurai, 118.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid. Mr. Sakurai also edited the Yearbook of Japanese in Peru, which is cited in this article.

36 Ibid.

37 A government regulation, passed on November 29, 1940, required all foreign-language periodicals in Peru to print Spanish translations of their texts. The expense necessitated by this decree practically forced the Japanese newspapers out of business, even before Pearl Harbor (Normano and Gerbi, 113, footnote 1).

38 There is no record of Japanese papers having been published in outlying provinces, but large organizations, such as The Central Japanese Association of [Lima] Peru, put out occasional bulletins that were widely circulated.

39 Sakurai, 121.

40 See p. 233 above.

41 Sakurai, 121.

42 Apparently, the Japanese in Peru did not conduct formal or elaborate rites of ancestor worship; compare Willems, 7.

43 A list of these clubs may be found in Sakurai, 153.

44 It is noteworthy that in 1935, during the celebration of the fourth centenary of the founding of Lima, the Japanese colony presented the city with a large municipal swimming pool (Normano and Gerbi, 123–24).

45 Sakurai, 153.

46 Ibid.

47 Normano and Gerbi, op. cit., 77.

48 Gerbi, A., “The Japanese in Peru,” Asia (January 1943), 43–44.Google Scholar

49 Hall's manuscript.

50 Taken from a news dispatch in El comercio, Dec. 9, 1941. Although Peru co-operated with the Allies, she did not declare war on Japan.

51 El comercio, Lima, December 10, 1941.

52 See law number 9592, June 26, 1942. All anti-Axis measures passed in Peru may be found in an official publication of the Superintendencia de Economia, dated January 1944, entitled Recopilacion concorda de leyes, decretos, [etc.]…en ejecucion de los acuerdos de Rio de Janeiro. A typewritten supplement was furnished to the writer through the courtesy of the Direccidn nacional de estadistica. Both documents may be consulted in the files of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan.

53 La tribuna, Lima, December 8, 1945. At the official rate of exchange (6.5), this amounts to roughly 61/2 million dollars. The value of the sole fluctuated widely in the decade preceding 1941. Beginning in 1931 the official exchange rate in terms of an American dollar changed annually as follows: 3.58, 4.68, 5.30, 4.34, 4.18, 4.01, 3.95, 4.46, 5.33, 6.17. Since 1941 the rate has heen pegged at 6.50. These figures represent official rates only. For example, while the official exchange stood at 6.50 throughout 1948, the rate on the free market fluctuated between 13 and 15.

54 This figure is taken from a memorandum dated September 10, 1948, which was supplied to the author by Police Headquarters in Lima. This memorandum is filed at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.

55 When Peru and Japan severed diplomatic relations, the Spanish, and later the Swedish, Legation undertook to look after Japanese interests in Peru.

56 This figure is taken from the September 10, 1948, memorandum which was prepared for the author at police headquarters in Lima.

57 An indirect but highly revealing example of Japanese hoarding was brought to light in accounts of a lurid murder case, in which seven Japanese were brutally slain in Lima on the night of November 2,1944. In reporting the case the Peruvian times, November 10, 1944, stated that over 40,000 soles in cash were found among the belongings of one of the victims. Two of his brothers were known to have been deported, and he had probably been left in charge of the family's money.

58 See Willems, 8.

59 The material on this topic was abstracted from the files of the Ministerio de Educatión Público, Sección d'Estadistica y Sección Inspección de Colegios Particulares.

60 La Tribuna carried an article about the Escuela Zamudio on December 22, 1945. Among other things the writer accused the school o£ violating Law 6562, which stipulated that teachers had to be Peruvians and that instruction had to be in Spanish. He also complained that its directors were Axis subjects and pointed out that the school had been founded in 1938 with the help of the Japanese Consulate.

61 Sakurai, 122.

62 Publication was authorized by ministerial resolution no. 107, passed in Lima on July 1, 1948; see El peruano, July 3, 1948.

63 These lists were obtained through the courtesy of the Direccidn National de Estadistica. They are headed, Relation de establecimientos commerciales de ciudadanos japoneses en el cercado de Lima y los distritos de la provincia. The author's copy may be consulted in the files of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan. The figures summarized in this paper apply only to Lima.

64 SCIPA refers to the Servicio Cooperativo Interamericano de Producciin de Alimentos. As the name implies, it is an inter-American agency with United States and Peruvian representatives, which is trying to increase food production in Peru.

65 While this article was in preparation, the North American Newspaper Alliance published a release in the New Haven register, August 8, 1949, which announced that a trade agreement had been signed between Japan and Peru. “Under the agreement Japan will send to Peru,” the dispatch said, “chemicals, machinery and manufactured steel goods... in exchange for Peruvian cotton, coal, sugar, and minerals.”

66 Japanese indifference toward obtaining Peruvian citizenship provides a measure of their aloofness. According to the Annario estadistica del Peru (1946), 84, only fifty-one Japanese were nationalized prior to 1940.

67 Normano and Gerbi, 122.

68 The Manco Capac statue may well have been intended to point up a kind of link between Japanese and Peruvians. A popular, but unscientific, theory maintains that the founder of the great Inca empire in Peru was a Japanese. For further details of this discussion see Normano and Gerbi, 62–65.