Spanish-American Subculture Analysis: Nipo-Brazilians

Subculture Analysis: Nipo-Brazilians According to IBGE, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics there are approximately 1.4 million people descendent of Japanese living in Brazil. One of the largest concentration of Japanese immigrants these days are located in Bairro da Liberdade, Sao Paulo, Even though a couple hundred Japanese started to immigrate to Brazil in 1908, to work in coffee agriculture, before and after World War II is when 164,000 Japanese arrived in Brazil. Which would result a couple decades later in a new subculture, the Nipo-Brasileiro or Mestizos (Brazilian and Japanese mixed races). In this paper, I will write about some characteristics of a subculture
that I am part of called “Nipo-Brasileiro (a)” in Brazil and “Nikkei-Burajiru-jin” in Japan. Basically it is a Japanese decedent who was born in Brazilian land and may carry on some of Japanese culture. As far as boundary rigidity, I only recall my father telling me how my fraternal Japanese grandparents were against him to marry my mother, who was a Brazilian native. Since my father was full Japanese, his parents told him that he should marry a Japanese woman only, this way keeping the Japanese bloodline pure. I wasn’t surprise because that’s the same history that I heard from other mestizos children. Years later, after moving to Japan, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter where they live, Japanese people are against mixing races whatsoever. I personally understand the fear of the Japanese tradition becoming lost in the mixed with other cultures. For example, the new generation in Japan are less traditional compared to their parents. Instead singing Japanese music in karaoke’s for fun, the young Japanese’s are more open to listen to hip hop and eat at the golden arches (Mc Donald’s) while wearing Gap and Old Navy clothes. Not to mention how much they love to stroll at Tokyo Disneyland, which means American culture nowadays plays big influence among the new Japanese generation. However, the technology, TV and internet is to blame, the influence of other cultures that is resulting in the loss of some of their traditions is nothing to do with interracial marriage. The majority of Nipo-Brazileiros speak Portuguese and Japanese languages.
However, among other mestizos is more like starting a sentence in Portuguese with some words in Japanese or vice-versa. I can relate to what Americans call “Spanglish” for Mexican speaking Spanish-American. On the other hand, with my Brazilian maternal relatives I only speak Portuguese. Which overall, the way Brazilian people communicate in terms of body language can be a little bit intense for other cultures. Contrary of my Japanese relatives, with my Brazilian cousins and aunties, we have a lot touching and steady eye contact, during conversation we touch hands shoulders and do a lot of hand gests. When greeting is normal man and woman kiss other people in the cheeks. If a man is greeting a woman he usually give only one kiss on the cheek. Woman also upon meeting someone give a hand shake. Usually woman touch much more than man during a conversation. Just like in Spanish, in Portuguese, we have feminine and masculine words to name things. For example, table is mesa in Portuguese so if he word finish with “a” is feminine, if finish with “o” like “sapato” which mean shoes is
masculine. The values we hold are similar to most cultures, but we keep strong ties to our Japanese culture and people.
We usually use Japanese stores in our community and we try to keep the money there also because we are a big minority. We also have the option to work in japan. Due to Japans strict immigration laws it’s hard for foreigners to move and work over there. Illegal migration in almost unseen in Japan, since we are part Japanese we are allowed to work in Japan were the minimum wage is extremely higher than in Brazil. After working in Japan most of us send part of our pay back to our families in Brazil. Another unique value we have also comes from the Japanese side where the oldest male is responsible for taking care of the parents. We don’t really have old people homes or retirement communities in Brazil so the parents will live with the oldest son and his wife will look after them while he goes to work. Sometimes the merge of two entirely different cultures can get confusing, Brazilians are very warm, open and informal, contrary of Japanese culture which are very formal. However, Nipo-Brazilians have to find our balance will living with one foot in each
community. As far as identifying signs, we have something better, we have a whole community of Japanese inside of Sao Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil. Our signs are still in traditional Japanese Kanji letters, although everyone is welcomed, these stores cater more to our needs and wants of mixed Brazilians Japanese. We can’t really go anywhere else to find cooking ingredients or even home décor that is familiar to use then these shops. An easy way to notice a Nipo-Brazilian owned shops from all the other million stores on the street is that they will have a few identifying Japanese characters painted somewhere on the store front. That makes it easy for use to identify that they will most likely be selling some kind of Japanese products as well as speak Japanese. An even more obvious symbol is just a Japanese flag hanging from the store. Mostly in Brazil the only way to notice us from native Brazilians is that we have farrier skin and Asian type almond shaped eyes and straighter hair. However after generations mixed in Brazil we do not look like Japanese from Japan. In the degree of attachment comes from our parents holding on to traditional Japanese values while living in Brazil. This doesn’t really make much a difference until we decide to move to Japan to work. While all of us are born in Brazil and raised Brazilin if we move to Japan it’s a big culture shock, Brazil is a melting pot of mixed races and ancestry, from Portuguese, African, Spanish, German and Italian. When you move to Japan, well you have Japanese and that’s it. Older Japanese are not so opened minded to the mixing of races and can be off stand offish or even rude. So when Nipo-Brazilian move back to the ‘’motherland’’ it’s not always welcomed open arms. Japan is night and day compared to Brazil so most of use suffer from extreme culture shock and choose to hang out more with other Nipo-Brazilians and stick to ourselves. Even though most of use speak Japanese or learn it while working there we speak more in our native tongue of Portuguese. This keeps us close together because we are still kind of outsiders because we were not born and raised in Japan. Our language is a little off and the way we dress and act is a little different so it takes time to adjust. This forces us to be attached and help each other out along the way. As far as initiation rituals, there are none that I can recall. For the fact that we born in the Nipo-Brazilian subculture, we don’t really get a choice besides learn how to balance both completely opposite cultures. Even though there is no initiation ritual, there is an exit one which is an optional Japanese death ritual for the decease. For example, when my grandparents passed away in Brazil, my Japanese relatives had their bodies sent back to their hometown in Japan. Moreover, they were given Japanese Buddhist death ceremony rights. My grandparents were cremated in Japan. After that, there is a bone picking ritual, in which basically two relatives picked up their bones with chopsticks. I would like to mention that’s the only time that two people hold the same item with chopsticks, because besides the bone picking ritual sharing or passing something from chopsticks to chopsticks is considered non acceptable by Japanese norms. So the bone picking ritual start from two close relatives picking first the feat bones heading to the head. This because they want to make sure that the body won’t be upside-down in the urn. Following, part of their ashes were sent to the family grave and other part kept in urn in an altar at Japanese relative’s house.