Researcher, Image Research Laboratory, Daikoro Corporation
There are said to be about 150,000 foreigners of Japanese ancestry living and working here in Japan, and a large majority of them are from the South American country of Brazil. They are citizens of the Federative Republic of Brazil, and are of the same generation as the Japanese-Brazilian Rotarians who hosted us during our GSE study tour (or their children).
When the average Japanese person thinks of Brazil, he probably thinks of the Amazon, the Carnival, coffee, soccer, and samba. Those who have a relatively high degree of knowledge about Brazil will mention its terrible inflation and the fact that it is one of the world's leading debtor nations. However, probably very few people are aware of the fact that, as a result of Japanese government policy just several decades ago, there are now 1,250,000 Japanese immigrants and their children living in Brazil.
These Japanese-Brazilians are still coming to Japan because of Japan's relatively good economy, and the trend will probably continue for some time.
Actually, there is a Japanese-Brazilian girl working at my company, and before I left for Brazil, she taught me some simple Portuguese greetings and explained some of the customs. She is a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, and when she first came to Japan, she was shocked to be in an environment where there were "only Japanese people." This is because for more than 180 years, Brazil has encouraged immigration, and there are people from all over the world--white, black and yellow living together without racial prejudice or discrimination. This is a fundamental difference between the government of Brazil and the government of Japan, which is still far behind the times in the area of accepting foreign labor into the country.
At first glance, this Japanese-Brazilian girl looks "Japanese," and she speaks fluent Japanese. She can also write Chinese characters. She has a bright personality, and was able to quickly open up and make friends. She has a gentle manner of speaking, and comes across as a very traditional Japanese woman.
Moreover, there was a 21-year-old second generation Japanese-Brazilian girl in my homestay family in Sao Paulo. When she spoke in Portuguese, she would stand very close and speak very excitedly. But when she began to speak in Japanese, her manner of speaking immediately became gentle, and she made me feel at ease many times in this way. On a shelf in her home, her family displayed Hakata dolls, and at breakfast time, they had umeboshi (Japanese pickled plums) and Japanese pickles on the table.
She and the girl in my office were born in Brazil, have Brazilian citizenship, speak Portuguese, received the exact same education as other Brazilians, and were raised in a free and relaxed manner in a huge country 23 times the size of Japan. Another thing both of them have in common is the large-hearted, magnanimous Brazilian temperament. And yet, within them both resides a deep sense of Japanese culture, and at times I wonder if they don't have a split personality!
I would now like to share some of the things I experienced during my recent trip to Brazil, and the things I learned about the Brazilian value system of these two girls and their lifestyle in Brazil as Japanese-Brazilians.
Living in the vast continent of South America with the eternally flowing Amazon River, Brazilians live their daily lives calmly and at ease. The whole country of Brazil is unfettered by strict time schedules, and the people do not have the custom of doing things strictly by the clock. The father at one of my homestays, who happens to be of Russian ancestry, said, "Time has its own natural flow, and it is unnatural when people divide it up as they please, and force their lifestyles into it." All the Brazilians we met, at least, seemed to be of the same opinion as this man, caring little about the time.
One day, the host father turned on the TV to watch a live soccer game. According to the newspaper, the game was to start at 8:00, but by 8:10 it still hadn't started. But the father showed no signs that something was amiss. That's just the way things are in Brazil, and TV programs rarely go according to the scheduled time. When you want to record a TV program while you are out of the house, you need to set the video timer about 5 minutes before the scheduled time and set it to turn off about 30 minutes after it is scheduled to end. If you don't, you will often end up missing part of the program.
Even when making plans to meet someone, people often arrive 30 minutes late, so in some ways it is easy to make last minute adjustments to one's schedule before leaving home. At first, during my first vocational study trip, I thought to myself, "They shouldn't keep people waiting like this." But as I spent more time in Brazil, I began to think nothing of people being 30 minutes late. In Japan, with the lifestyles that we have, if someone doesn't strictly keep to the schedule, it can be awful. In Brazil, I came to feel that it's a good thing not to have a schedule that is packed full with things to do, and instead to enjoy a more carefree and relaxed life.
It also seems that people go to work at the same carefree pace. In Japan, workers must get everything ready before work actually begins so that they can begin working as soon as work time starts. In Brazil, however, people feel that if they can get through the company gate by the time work time starts, it's good enough. Then they spend a good deal of time talking with their colleagues and drinking some coffee. During our study trip to a meal distribution center in Guarulhos City, there were young female workers standing around drinking coffee and laughing the whole time we were there. And the man who appeared to be their boss wasn't upset by this at all. A manager of a large Japanese firm, who is a member of the Sao Paulo Rotary Club, lamented, "I'm dumfounded how little a desire the Brazilians have to work." Despite this attitude toward work, however, I was told that Brazilian workers are often demanding higher wages and better working conditions.
In Japan, we have the proverb "Time is money," but it does not apply in Brazil. Wherever you go, whether it is a government office or a bank, there are long lines of people waiting to be served. Even so, no one was complaining about having to wait, and they didn't appear to be making any special efforts get things moving faster. Whether it is laziness or large-heartedness, I don't know, but Brazilians do not go against the natural flow of time.
Well, what about the Brazilian view of possessions? Brazilians do not have the custom of giving importance to things. The nation is overflowing with natural resources, and blessed agriculturally as well. When I visited a bank, an analyst said, when talking about the price of agricultural produce, "We lose from 25% to 30% of the crop between the fields and delivery to the consumer, but no one is doing anything to improve things. The loss is great due to a variety of factors, such as poor handling at harvest time, carelessness during transport, and losses due to rotting from inadequate warehousing and refrigeration." Because of these huge losses, the extra costs are passed on to the consumer. This means that the price paid by consumers is two times higher than the price received by the farmer, when it comes to grains. For vegetables, the average prices are 3 to 4 times higher for the consumer.
The Rotary Club or our host families took us to eat at Churrasco restaurants three times a week. There we found abundant supplies of meat, vegetables and fruit served buffet style. Everyone would grab a plate and fill it up with food, but before they had finished eating everything, they would go and get a new plate of food. A large amount of meat and vegetables were left uneaten.
In Brazil, such a thing seems to be taken for granted, and waiters even take the customer's plates away before they are done eating. In the construction field as well, waste is common, with about 30% of the building materials being scrapped. Such a thing is unthinkable in a country like Japan that lacks natural resources, and it does result in higher prices for consumers in Brazil. Whether it is laziness or large-heartedness, I don't know, but Brazilians view their abundant natural resources as something to eat, use and discard as they wish.
Well, what about the Brazilian view of work? I touched on it a bit when writing about "time," but Brazilian workers are always demanding higher wages even though they are not hard workers. In the same way, a person working in the Nanbei Bank told me that even though employed, Brazilians always have applications out at several job placement centers in hopes of finding a better job. They do this because they are always looking for a job that pays better than their present job and is easier, and if they find one, they change jobs immediately. Because this is the way things are in Brazil, it seems that the more times a person has changed jobs, the greater that laborer's prestige.
A worker who does not leave the company is a very important asset to society, but one wonders whether he is staying because he has been offered high wages to keep him there, or if he is the type of worker that has absolutely no hope of advancement. Anyway, with a working system that allows workers to change jobs so easily, there is also responsibility on the part of the workers who take advantage of the system.
Because Brazilian companies engage in heated competition at the end of the year, factories hire a large number of workers in the latter half of the year and stock up on a huge amount of materials. Business activity picks up from about August. This increased business activity gives an overall boost to the economy, but once Christmas passes, and everyone has spent all their extra money, business slumps. As a result, materials orders cease, factories layoff workers, and the companies enter a time of decreased productivity. Since workers are laid off at the whim of the factories, Brazilian salaried workers (even full-time employees) have no guarantee of a job tomorrow, making them similar to seasonal day-laborers in Japan.
Moreover, when a company's finances begin to get tight, it is customary for the company to lay off its senior, high-wage workers and hire new low-wage workers to replace them, so there are not many companies that offer their workers job security for a lifetime. Therefore, if workers do not want to be laid off, they have to show their company that they are hardworking and skilled, and if companies do not want to lose their workers, they must pay good wages to those they want to keep.
At present, the unemployment rate and potential unemployment rate among unskilled laborers is quite high, and it is easy for employers to replace their general laborers. For this reason, general laborers are at a disadvantage now, and wages have dropped.
Looking at the Brazilian sense of value regarding time, possessions and work as I've written about to this point, Brazilians do not go against the natural flow of things, and live a life based upon the thinking that "what will be will be." They don't force themselves or their plans into the allotted time, and they always take things easy and don't get all worked up over little things. Their national traits are sometimes their strong points, and at times are their weak points, and both of these will be recognized and understood by the international community. But, for the Brazilians themselves, it is a nationality that isn't constrained at all by the idea of strong points and weak points.
Next, I would like to discuss a little bit about the lifestyle and culture of Japanese Brazilians. If you were to gather all the races of the world in one place, what would it be like and what race would stand out the most among them all? I was able to answer this question by visiting Brazil, because Brazil is a country that already has the races of the world gathered there.
The most prominent races in Brazil are blacks, Asians and blond-haired Caucasians. Even among Caucasians, there are a variety of different racial groups, and in Brazil, apart from Latin American Caucasians, it was hard for me to tell what country's people most of the Caucasians are descended from. Also, I found during my time in Brazil that among the people I met, no one care at all what country their ancestors had come from. In Brazil, there is no custom of distinguishing between people on the basis of their race.
The Japanese-Brazilians have kept the Japanese habit of calling those who are not Japanese gaijin (foreigners, or outsiders), and even though they are actually the gaijin in Brazil, they call non-Japanese Brazilians gaijin.. When I heard this, it seemed a bit humorous to me. Also, it was interesting that Japanese-Brazilians do not call Korean- or Chinese-Brazilians gaijin..
Japanese-Brazilians call anyone who is not of Japanese, Korean or Chinese origin gaijin, and they are not concerned in the least what country the Brazilians are from. However, conversely, Brazilians generally call all Japanese-Brazilians, regardless of whether they are first-, second- or third-generation, by the name Japones. This term in no way implies that the Brazilians are looking down on the Japanese-Brazilians. Rather, it appears that it is a term familiarity. A Nanbei Bank employee said to me, "Japanese-Brazilians are the most respected group of people in Brazil. They are deemed absolutely trustworthy in regard to borrowing and repaying money." The Nanbei Bank was founded by a Japanese, and it is probably the reason that this bank is one of the major banks in Brazil today.
However, the general impression Brazilians have of Koreans is not good, and they seem to have a completely different attitude toward dealing with them (cautious, prudent) than with Japanese-Brazilians. Despite the fact that Japanese-Brazilians don't call Korean-Brazilians gaijin, and to some degree view them as compatriots, the average Brazilian makes a sharp distinction between the two relationally.
Also, in Brazil, blond-haired Caucasians are called "Alemao" (which means "German") and blacks are called Bahiano. But not all blond-haired Caucasians are German. Anglo-Saxons, Jews, and Russians are also blond, but Brazilians don't care about this at all. And it appears that Israeli- and Russian-Brazilians don't mind being called "Alemao". The reason blacks are referred to as "Bahiano" is that when African slaves were first brought into Brazil to work in the colonial days, the majority were concentrated in Bahia State. Those born in Bahia were called Bahiano, but today, despite the fact that blacks live all over Brazil, all blacks are collectively referred to as Bahiano.
This was also obvious from the way in which a Japanese-Brazilian druggist in Guarulhos would always say "Bahiano, Bahiano" repeatedly every time he saw a black person. Such ways of referring to the different races have no root in discrimination in Brazil. Everyone realizes and understands that they are all Brazilians and compatriots, and they are merely calling people by these names to distinguish between one another based upon physical appearance.
The Brazilians have the term Japones-garantino. I touched on it earlier. It implies that "Japanese can be trusted." The Brazilian evaluation of Japanese-Brazilians can be summed up in this expression. The first immigrants from Japan were proud of their Japanese ancestry, and this is nothing more than the trust Brazilians have in those who helped to make Brazil what it is today. Even today, Japanese-Brazilians are viewed very highly by the average Brazilian, regardless of their generation, as hard-working and sincere people. As a result of this attitude and the fact that Japan has grown into an economic superpower, Japanese-Brazilians have been able to take pride in this and play an active role in Brazilian society. This is obvious from how active Japanese-Brazilians are in the Rotary Club, and by the way in which the average Brazilian treats Japanese-Brazilians or Japanese tourists and visitors like ourselves.
However, there was a time in the 1940's when Japanese-Brazilians were ashamed of their heritage in a way that is unimaginable today. That was during World War II, when Japan fought against Brazil, and afterwards when the Japanese-Brazilians hung their heads in shame. Perhaps there was a world of difference between the meaning behind their being called Japones then and now. I heard that many second generation Japanese-Brazilians said, "Even though we are Brazilians, because we are Japanese-Brazilians, we are blamed unreasonably and persecuted, and I hate the fact that I was born with Japanese blood." Also, in order to wipe away that shame, it is said that they felt the only way was "to excel in education." And from these second generation Japanese-Brazilians, who steeled themselves against outside pressures and devoted themselves wholeheartedly to their studies, came a large number of judges, lawyers, doctors, and other scholars. Among the Japanese-Brazilian Rotarians were many excellent scholars, particularly doctors.
The average Brazilian is said to express no shock at Japan's economic growth. It seems that it is quite easy for them to understand how it happened simply by looking around them and seeing how earnest the Japanese-Brazilians are in their studies, how hard-working they are at their companies, and how active they are in every walk of life. At the displays at the Japanese-Brazilian Immigrant Museum, you can see that 100% of the original immigrants were farmers, while today less than 10% of the Japanese-Brazilians are involved in farming. One can see how in just a short time, Japanese-Brazilians expanded their activities in a wide variety of areas. I think the reason for this is not racial, but rather that these original immigrants were able to live their lives and pursue their dreams under the same conditions as other Brazilians. At present, there are over 1 million foreigners living in Japan, and their presence here is cause for public discussion about them. Contrast this attitude with the situation in Brazil, where more than 1.2 million Japanese-Brazilians are viewed as compatriots, and Brazil seems like it is in a completely different dimension. There is absolutely no comparison between the good feeling Brazilians have toward Japanese-Brazilians and the way Japanese feel about Brazil.
During my time in Brazil, one of the most common topics of conversation was that of the "assimilation of Japanese and other races." This was often a topic at the Rotary Clubs I visited, and at homestays and museum, and considering how Japanese Brazilians and Brazilians have harmonized their two cultures, it is an important theme.
Brazil is said to be the country with the least amount of racial discrimination in the world, and, as a matter of fact, it is against the law in Brazil. Just a generation ago, first-generation Japanese immigrants were strictly opposed to their children dating Brazilians, and, in particular, if his daughter had a gaijin boyfriend, most fathers were vehemently opposed to it. Racial prejudice was found among the Japanese, not the Brazilians. As a result, only 6% of the second generation Japanese-Brazilians married Brazilians, but among the next generation the figure climbed to 42%, with more than 60% of the fourth-generation now marrying non-Japanese Brazilians. The sense of opposition that once existed toward such marriages has almost completely disappeared now. (These statistics come from the book Patricio "The Japanese Born in Brazil".) This isn't to say that Japanese-Brazilian young people are hoping to marry non-Japanese Brazilians, but they have no hesitancy to do so. The son at one of my homestays said to me, "At school and at the workplace, the Japanese-Brazilians' hard work and excellence is obvious to all, and Brazilians consider Japanese Brazilians to be good spouses for their children." Regarding the marriage of their children to Japanese-Brazilians, probably no Brazilian parent is opposed to having someone with a good head on his/her shoulders becoming a part of the family.
I have discussed Brazilian values, lifestyle and culture to some extent. To summarize what I've said, average Brazilians aren't so concerned about time and detailed matters, they live their lives rather elegantly by going along with the natural flow of things, and they have large-hearted, magnanimous personalities. However, one could possibly say that such characteristics display laziness and self-centeredness. On the other hand, the hardworking attitude of the Japanese-Brazilians and the level of trust they have in regard to money and things is something the average Brazilian does not have. Still, this is compensated for by the fact that Brazilians have almost no racial discrimination, and this is a deep-rooted quality. Like other Brazilians, Japanese-Brazilians are large-hearted and have little racial discrimination. Still, they are a combination of Brazilians (with their characteristic laziness) and Japanese (who are characteristically hardworking and trustworthy but have racial discrimination).
Thinking about the meetings I had with Japanese-Brazilians, it seems to me that they are not so much a combination of the two nationalities, but rather the characteristics of these two nationalities are perfectly separate and being used properly. Sometimes they are large-hearted, and other times they are hardworking and discriminatory. I wonder if these two sides are a kind of split personality that Japanese-Brazilians have in common, or is this a single "nationality" that has transcended these two different sides? Will the children of such Japanese Brazilians and non-Japanese Brazilians still maintain these two distinct sides to their personality? I can't say, since I have only begun to take an interest in Brazil, and know little about it yet. But, what I can say as a result of this GSE study tour is that, in some form, "Japanese culture is certainly visible and alive in Brazil."
