The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature

By Rebecca Riger Tsurumi

In her book, The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature, Rebecca Riger Tsurumi captures the remarkable story behind the changing human landscape in Peru at the end of the nineteenth century when Japanese immigrants established what would become the second largest Japanese community in South America. She analyzes how non-Japanese Peruvian narrators unlock the unspoken attitudes and beliefs about the Japanese held by mainstream Peruvian society, as reflected in works written between 1966 and 2006. Tsurumi explores how these Peruvian literary giants, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Miguel Gutiérrez, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Carmen Ollé, Pilar Dughi, and Mario Bellatin, invented Japanese characters whose cultural differences fascinated and confounded their creators. She compares the outsider views of these Peruvian narrators with the insider perceptions of two Japanese Peruvian poets, José Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, who tap personal experiences and memories to create images that define their identities. The book begins with a brief sociohistorical overview of Japan and Peru, describing the conditions in both nations that resulted in Japanese immigration to Peru and concluding in contemporary times. Tsurumi traces the evolution of the terms "Orient" and "Japanese/Oriental" and the depiction of Asians in Modernista poetry and in later works by Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges. She analyzes the images of the Japanese portrayed in individual works of modern Peruvian narrative, comparing them with those created in Japanese Peruvian poetry. The book concludes with an appendix containing excerpts from Tsurumi's interviews and correspondence in Spanish with writers and poets in Lima and Mexico City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Jun 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781612492124

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THE CLOSED HAND

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Editorial Board

Patricia Hart, Series Editor

Thomas Broden

Elena Coda

Paul B. Dixon

Íñigo Sánchez-Llama

Marcia Stephenson

Allen G. Wood

Howard Mancing, Consulting Editor

Floyd Merrell, Consulting Editor

Susan Y. Clawson, Production Editor

Associate Editors

French

Jeanette Beer

Paul Benhamou

Willard Bohn

Gerard J. Brault

Mary Ann Caws

Glyn P. Norton

Allan H. Pasco

Gerald Prince

Roseann Runte

Ursula Tidd

Italian

Fiora A. Bassanese

Peter Carravetta

Benjamin Lawton

Franco Masciandaro

Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian

Fred M. Clark

Marta Peixoto

Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

Spanish and Spanish American

Maryellen Bieder

Catherine Connor

Ivy A. Corfis

Frederick A. de Armas

Edward Friedman

Charles Ganelin

David T. Gies

Roberto González Echevarría

David K. Herzberger

Emily Hicks

Djelal Kadir

Amy Kaminsky

Lucille Kerr

Howard Mancing

Floyd Merrell

Alberto Moreiras

Randolph D. Pope

Francisco Ruiz Ramón

Elżbieta Skl-odowska

Mario Valdés

Howard Young

   volume 54

THE CLOSED HAND

Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature

Rebecca Riger Tsurumi

Purdue University Press

West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright ©2012 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.

The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Anita Noble

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tsurumi, Rebecca Riger.

    The closed hand : images of the Japanese in modern Peruvian literature / Rebecca Riger Tsurumi.

        p. cm. — (Purdue studies in romance literatures; 54)

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-1-55753-607-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) —ISBN 978-1-61249-213-1 (epdf)— ISBN 978-1-61249-212-4 (epub) 1. Peruvian literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Peruvian literature—21th century—History and criticism. 3. Japanese in literature. I. Title.

    PQ8355.T78 2012

    860.9’985—dc23

2012000419

For Evan, who honors us with his service, and Andrea, who enriches us with her imagination and her artwork

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

A Socio-historical Overview of the Japanese Presence in Peru

Chapter Two

Images of the Orient/Japan in Spanish American Literature from the Modernistas and Beyond

Chapter Three

A Japanese Swashbuckler in La casa verde and a Japanese Gangster in Travesuras de la niña mala

Chapter Four

Images of the Japanese in Peruvian Short Fiction: Matavilela and Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid

Chapter Five

Las dos caras del deseo: A Female Nikkei Character in a Pivotal Role

Chapter Six

Postwar Japanese Literature as a Catalyst for Change in Puñales escondidos

Chapter Seven

Images of the Japanese in El jardín de la señora Murakami and Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción

Chapter Eight

Reflections of the Japanese in the Poetry of José Watanabe

Chapter Nine

Representations of the Okinawan/Japanese in the Poetry of Doris Moromisato

Chapter Ten

Conclusions

Appendix

Interviews with Six Authors

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

Years ago when I was a newlywed, my growing curiosity about the differences between my own American and my husband’s Japanese culture led me to take a Japanese classical dance course in Kabuki given by Ito Sachiyo to find out what the Japanese approach could teach me. What I discovered was that the Japanese and Western philosophies of dance movement and style were very different. In Western dance, the goal is to extend the body outward to an imaginary point furthest away with one’s fingers held loosely open. In Japanese classical dance, the dancers hold their bodies erect with their hands setting the boundaries of the inner space with their fingers firmly pressed together. It was this contrast between the tightly closed hands of the Japanese dancer, sealing the boundaries within, and the Western emphasis on extending the body outward to its farthest point, that I recalled when I began to study this theme.

I first learned about the Japanese minority in Peru in a doctoral seminar on the Spanish-American novel and was surprised to discover that little had been written about the image of Peru’s sizeable Japanese minority as it was reflected in modern works of Peruvian literature and poetry. It was Mario Vargas Llosa’s compelling character Fushía, the epitome of the Japanese outsider in La casa verde, that led me to investigate this topic. Through the years, the challenging experience of raising two bicultural children in the US made me wonder how Peruvians perceive minority cultures like the Japanese, and how the Japanese, in turn, see themselves in Peru. While there are many sociological and historical books about the Japanese in Latin America, few literary studies examine the way the Japanese are represented by non-Japanese Peruvian writers as compared to Japanese Peruvian poets.

This book focuses on images of the Japanese created by six non-Japanese Peruvian writers of modern Peruvian literature (novels and short stories) written between 1966 and 2006 that reflect unspoken attitudes toward the Japanese minority. To highlight a critical dimension that is missing from this outsider perspective, I also included works by the two Nisei poets José Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, whose sensitive portraits of their immigrant parents and intense revelations about their own search for identity and struggles to assimilate evoke a more nuanced depiction of the Japanese in Peru. In my references to Japanese authors in this book, I will follow the Japanese custom of using last names first. All references to my personal interviews with the authors under discussion are to the interviews transcribed in the Appendix in the back of this book.

In preparation for the in-depth evaluations of individual works in the chapters that follow, Chapter 1 establishes the socio-historical context in Japan at the close of the nineteenth century when some of its inhabitants emigrated to Peru in pursuit of an economic dream. It goes on to investigate the reception they received in Peru where they initially found work as contract laborers in the coastal cotton and sugar plantations, guano fields, and, later, when they set up businesses and entered the professions in Peru’s major cities. The chapter follows the fate of the Japanese community during the pre–World War II and postwar eras and concludes with conditions in the contemporary period. Chapter 2 traces the evolution of the term Orient throughout history, examines the images of the Japanese/Oriental and Japan in Modernista prose and poetry and later in the works of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges.

Chapter 3 begins the analysis of the individual works of modern Peruvian literature with one of the finest examples of a Japanese protagonist in Peruvian narrative, the character named Fushía, who is the ultimate outsider in Mario Vargas Llosa’s masterpiece, La casa verde. It also examines a Japanese villain named Fukuda and a young female Japanese lawyer named Mitsuko in minor roles in the novelist’s more recent work Travesuras de la niña mala (2006) (The Bad Girl). In contrast to Fushía, Fukuda is a one-dimensional Japanese character whose monstrous treatment of Kuriko, the Japanese persona of the bad girl, has the effect of creating sympathy for this fickle Peruvian anti-heroine. Mitsuko represents the most modern of the Japanese female characters in the selected Peruvian narrative. A skilled, ambitious lawyer, she discovers that her plan to avoid all relationships that involve emotional attachments in order to pursue a life of pure enjoyment, is not as easy as it appears.

Chapter 4 probes the development of secondary Japanese characters in short fiction in Miguel Gutiérrez Correa’s fragment of a novel Matavilela and in Alfredo Bryce Echenique’s short story Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid. With Matavilela, Gutiérrez began his writing career developing the theme of injustice that would become the linchpin of his work throughout his life. In this short narrative, the novelist re-creates a violent episode from Peruvian history—the 1940 sacking of a Japanese family business in Lima by their Peruvian neighbors, and the arrest of the Japanese immigrants by the local police. The second part of the chapter analyzes Bryce Echenique’s short story Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid, in which a Japanese character named Achikawa adopts bizarre anti-social behavior to mask his inability to adapt as an Asian outsider in Madrid where he struggles to communicate with the other members of his group. He strikes up an uneasy friendship with another misfit named Sevilla, the Peruvian protagonist, but is helpless to prevent the final tragedy.

In Chapter 5, poet Carmen Ollé breaks new ground in her first novel Las dos caras del deseo when she introduces Eiko, a young Nikkei female character in a crucial role. Eiko uses her exotic sensuality to manipulate the other female characters but her fierce dedication to poetry has the unintended effect of inspiring the heroine, Ada, to make a serious commitment to her own writing.

In Chapter 6, Pilar Dughi takes a different tack in her novel Puñales escondidos by exploring images of the Japanese through her protagonist’s exposure to four examples of outstanding Japanese literature she reads in a literary seminar. By choosing works of Japanese fiction rather than shaping her own Japanese character, Dughi reaffirms her belief in the power of literature to provide insight and to effect change.

In Chapter 7, Mario Bellatin, the Mexican-born novelist who was raised in Peru, sets two of his short novels—El jardín de la señora Murakami and Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción—on an unnamed island where the names, customs of the characters, and culture are unmistakably Japanese. Although he infuses his writing with rich allusions to Japanese culture and language, some are authentic but many are drawn from his imagination.

Chapters 8 and 9 examine the highly autobiographical works of two Nisei Peruvian poets, José Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, who reveal hidden aspects of the Japanese character from a lifetime of personal experience. Each poet creates a sensitive portrait of one parent who played an intrinsic role in his/her creative development. The chapters show the commonality of their expression and the divergence of their poetic voices, reflecting differences in gender, age, and sexual orientation. Chapter 10 presents conclusions about the images of the Japanese reflected in selected works of modern Peruvian fiction and poetry.

Following Chapter 10 is an appendix of excerpts in Spanish from my interviews and subsequent correspondence with six of the authors and poets whose works are examined in this study. Five of the interviews were conducted in Lima, Peru in June–July 2005 and one took place in Mexico City in December 2005. The interviews have been edited and abridged for inclusion in this book. An ellipsis indicates a spot where material has been omitted.

Acknowledgments

While exploring the images of the Japanese in modern Peruvian literature and poetry, I met many remarkable individuals, including six of the eight authors whose works I explored in this book. The completion of the manuscript, however, would not have been possible without the intellectual and emotional support of my professors at the CUNY Graduate Center, my family, gifted friends as well as the editors at Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures whose patience, hard work, and generosity have proven invaluable.

It was CUNY Professor Malva Filer who first stimulated my interest in the Japanese as a minority voice in Peru during her doctoral seminar on the Spanish-American novel and who suggested that I read Mario Vargas Llosa’s masterpiece La casa verde. Filer’s high standards of scholarship, critical eye, and support have been vital resources throughout the writing process.

During the research and elaboration of my doctoral thesis on which this book was based, CUNY Professor Susana Reisz deserves my gratitude for her encouragement and wise counsel during my research, and for her dedication, scholarly insight, and critical feedback during the conclusion of the study. I am thankful for her friendship, intellectual curiosity, enthusiasm, and willingness to share her good friends in the Peruvian literary world. Her rich background in the classics, literary theory, women’s writing, and contemporary Latin American literature make her an invaluable resource.

Distinguished Professor (CUNY) Lía Schwartz, whose depth of expertise in Spanish and Latin American literature and background in comparative literature give her a far-reaching and profound perspective, generously dedicated her time throughout the writing process. A consummate scholar, Professor Schwartz shared discerning comments and suggestions on how to improve the book manuscript.

Through the years, I have had the good fortune to have studied with CUNY Professor Óscar Montero, whose stimulating courses in Latin American literature and poetry and his rare talents as a literary critic, playwright, and translator have been a great source of inspiration. I am especially grateful for his discerning comments and suggestions about the chapter on the images of the Orient/Japan in the works of the Modernista authors and poets and for his encouragement and friendship.

I am deeply indebted to the six writers whom I interviewed for this book including Carmen Ollé, Doris Moromisato, Mario Bellatin, and Miguel Gutiérrez. To my deep sorrow, two other authors I interviewed, Pilar Dughi and José Watanabe, have since passed away. All of these gifted individuals generously shared their life stories and aspirations and discussed their books in lengthy interviews in Lima and Mexico City and in extensive personal correspondence.

In the area of modern Japanese history, the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund History Professor at Harvard University, Dr. Andrew Gordon, offered insightful comments about my socio-historical overview of Japan. My friend Keiko Uesawa Chevray, senior lecturer emerita and former director of Columbia University’s Japanese Language Program, was an extraordinary source of scholarly expertise on the intricacies of the Japanese language and culture. I am also grateful to my friends Nancy Milstein, Laurie Norris, Johanie Hernández, and Shigeko Kobayashi for their time, expertise, and support.

During the research stage of my doctoral dissertation and the writing of this book, the Columbia University reference librarians were particularly helpful. I would especially like to acknowledge the expert assistance of Dr. Pamela M. Graham, Columbia University’s Director of Area Studies, and Sean Knowlton, Columbia University’s Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian.

At Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, I would like to thank Marcia Stephenson, editor for Spanish, and Susan Y. Clawson, production editor, for their talent, skill, and dedication in shepherding the book from start to finish, and the anonymous readers of my manuscript for their excellent insights and suggestions.

Parts of this manuscript have appeared before in a different form. I have reused some material from the chapter Shadows in the Wind: Images of the Japanese in the Works of Nisei Peruvian Poets José Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, which was published in One World Periphery Reads the Other: Knowing the Oriental in the Americas and the Iberian Peninsula, ed. Ignacio López-Calvo (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 114–29. I am grateful to Cambridge Scholars for permission to reuse it. I have also reused material from the chapter Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Narrative, which appeared in Orientalismos: Oriente y Occidente en la Literatura y las Artes de España e Hispanoamérica, ed. Joan Torres-Pou, Dept. of Modern Languages Series Vol. 2 (Barcelona: PPU for Florida International U, 2010), 103–17. I appreciate the editor’s permission to reuse the material here.

On a personal basis, I am grateful to my husband, Yoshi, who first took me to Japan and introduced me to Japanese culture. We have been blessed with two children: Evan and his wife, Alyse, and our daughter, Andrea, and Alexander, who have given me purpose and have always been a great source of pride. And lastly, I must thank my mother, Jeanne, for her love and unbounded encouragement.

Chapter One

A Socio-historical Overview of the Japanese Presence in Peru

Fierce debate over immigration policy and the acceptance of rapidly growing minorities in mainstream society continues to inflame public opinion in the mass media throughout the world. Divergent attitudes toward newly arrived immigrants who must pass through a grueling process of assimilation are universal themes that serve as a wellspring of drama for writers and poets alike. This study focuses on Peru, the first Latin American country to have a major Japanese settlement and home to the second largest Japanese population in the region.¹ Modern Peruvian writers without Japanese ancestry hold conflicting views of their country’s largest minority. Some delineate Japanese protagonists or secondary characters in an unmistakably negative light or make them the object of sharp satire as they struggle to gain acceptance in mainstream Peruvian society. Others depict them as noble victims of Peruvian nationalism in the years surrounding World War II. The key to this largely unexplored territory linking these two cultures that lie at the antipodes of the cultural spectrum can be found in the Japanese protagonists and secondary characters created by six masters of Peruvian narrative published between 1966 and 2006. To underscore what is missing from this outsider perspective of non-Japanese Peruvian authors, I have also included works by two Nisei poets whose insider perceptions of their immigrant families and their own personal experiences provide a more complex, sensitive picture of the Japanese in Peru.

Before analyzing the images of the Japanese portrayed in modern Peruvian literature and poetry, a socio-historical overview of Japanese emigration and of the Japanese immigrant experience in Peru is essential to understanding what brought them together at the end of the nineteenth century and how Peruvians and Japanese view each other. Following the overview in this chapter, which establishes the causes of the first major wave of emigration from Japan to Latin America and the specific conditions in Peru that led that country to welcome Japanese immigrants as manual laborers, in Chapter 2, I will trace the evolution of Oriental images throughout the history of Latin American literature. This material is a prelude to the heart of the study that follows in Chapters 3–9.

To put the Japanese immigrant experience in Peru in perspective, we must examine the powerful forces at work in both countries that first brought them together and answer the following questions: What led the government of the Meiji Restoration to reverse the centuries-old policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate and actively encourage the emigration of Japanese workers to Peru at the end of the nineteenth century?² What occurred simultaneously in Peru to compel Peruvian President Nicolás de Piérola to authorize the immigration of Japanese contract workers in his decree on September 19, 1898 (Morimoto, Japoneses 50)? How did these two countries, become partners in this joint venture? In my references to Japanese individuals in this book, I follow the Japanese custom of putting Japanese family names before Japanese given (first) names.

The Meiji Restoration Designs a Plan for a Modern Japan

Two major processes, the domestic crisis in feudal Japan and coercion from the West, were key factors that accelerated Japan’s transition from a feudal to a modern industrial society (Norman 118). In 1858–59, after more than 220 years of Japanese isolation, the US, Britain, France, Russia, and Holland negotiated unequal treaties with Japan to force open her ports.³ With foreign powers at her shores, eager to enter her ports that had been pried open to foreign trade, Japan felt vulnerable to the dangers of colonial control and Western advanced industrial technology and modern political and economic systems (Yamaguchi 151).

The government of the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912) recognized that it had inherited the deficiencies of the Tokugawa regime, particularly its military and economic weakness, political fragmentation and a social hierarchy that failed to recognize men of talent (Gordon 62). Anxious to safeguard an independent Japan, the Meiji government set its sights on creating a modern centralized state and modern industrial economy with a prime minister, a European-style cabinet system, and bureaucratic agencies to run the government and direct the economy (Gordon 64).

After observing European modernization first-hand during their travels or as students,⁴ the Meiji leaders tried to implement economic reforms and other programs to realize their goal of creating a rich country, strong army (fukoku kyōhei) (Gordon 70).⁵ In 1872, according to Janet Hunter, the government abolished the formal status system, and the population was classified into two main groups: shizoku (former samurai) and heimin (common people). As a result, the samurai status (class) was eliminated and a system of compulsory military conscription added along with civil and political equality (Hunter 324).

The most important economic reform of the 1870s, according to Andrew Gordon, was the new national land tax. Under the old Tokugawa system, the tax was paid in kind (usually rice). Thus the government, rather than the taxpayer, accepted the risk of loss (or gain) depending upon variable commodity prices (70). Since the new tax had to be paid in money, the amount of rice the taxpaying farmer had to set aside to pay the tax depended upon changes in the rice market. Therefore, the risk was passed along to the small landholding farmer who became vulnerable to all the unpredictable aspects of nature and of the commodity markets with seesawing rice prices. Regardless of these conditions, the farmer still had to pay a fixed amount of taxes in cash annually to the government (Norman 250). E.H. Norman concludes that the Land Tax Revision acted as a spur to the already inescapable trend toward the divestiture of the peasants and the simultaneous concentration of land ownership by the landlord classes (251). The new national land tax paid in currency was a major source of peasant unrest, forcing many farmers into bankruptcy. Indigence, especially among tenant farmers and small-scale silk cocoon producers who had fallen deeply in debt, caused them to rebel against government forces (Gordon 87).

Conditions in the early 1880s deteriorated even more, when Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi added to the overwhelming tax burden by instituting extreme fiscal and monetary policies that led to what was later called the Matsukata deflation of the early 1880s (Gordon 96). While prices of agricultural commodities plunged, land taxes remained high (Yamaguchi 152). For example, in 1884, the prices of rice and raw silk fell to about half the levels of 1880. Small landowners with loans for silk farming suddenly fell into debt to pay their taxes, with many defaulting and losing their fields to moneylending landlords. It was these farmers who joined political parties like the Debtor’s Party or Poor People’s Party to protest (Gordon 87). Another result was that surplus agricultural workers left the farms to join the industrial work force in factories during the depression of 1881–85. The young also left for jobs in stores, restaurants, factories, or as maids in wealthy homes.

Local and central governments did little to help the poor, and demonstrations and protests grew. In 1884 a ragtag army of six thousand men overpowered the local police, forcing the Meiji government to send its army and later state troops to the Chichibu region to quash the largest peasant revolt (Gordon 87). In 1885, newspapers carried many articles about starvation, and refugees fled to the cities to beg and steal. In response to the crisis, the government declared that the poor must work harder, be thrifty and save more (Hane, Peasants 41). Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, strikes reached Japanese industry when labor organizers learned from the example of American labor movements. Factory workers and miners went on strike to protest low wages and long hours (Hane, Peasants 201).

In addition to their tax burdens, peasants objected to the unpopular, universal military conscription called ketsuzei (blood tax) started in 1873, viewed as a kind of forced labor (Hane, Peasants 19). Mikiso Hane and Andrew Gordon agree that Japanese peasants particularly hated the draft because it removed them from their farms from the age of twenty for three years of active service and four in the reserve, to do a job formerly performed by the privileged samurai class. Although there were some exemptions from the draft, it was mainly the wealthy who were able to dodge military service by paying a fee of 270 yen, more than a common worker’s annual salary (Gordon 66). Not only land ownership and conscription, but also the right to vote and hold office had a price. Peasants engaged in draft resistance and anti-conscription riots until military service was seen as a patriotic duty.

Exploding Population and Migration to the Cities Bring Change

During the Meiji era (1868–1912), the Japanese population grew by almost 16 million, nearly a 50 percent increase (Dresner 1). From 1880 to 1900, Japan’s total population rose by 10 million from about 35 million to 45 million (Gordon 94). Simultaneously, Japan’s rural population working in agriculture began to decline because workers migrated to cities and towns where they found jobs in business and manufacturing (Gordon 94–95). Gary Allinson estimates that in 1890, agricultural workers amounted to 17 million or 70 percent of the work force (39). Over the next forty years, however, this number would fall, with the biggest decreases at the beginning of World War I, when farming families and poor tenants sent their children to find jobs in manufacturing and commerce in the cities (Allinson 39). To feed a burgeoning population with a smaller number of agricultural workers, Japanese farmers had to increase their annual output by an estimated 1 to 2 percent (40). Meanwhile, Allinson observes, only 15 to 20 percent of Japan’s population reaped a reward from Japan’s modernization programs (49). Tenant farmers earned the smallest income, since they rented their land and spent most of their earnings on necessities, mainly food, clothing, and shelter (49–50).

Four main factors—poverty, unemployment, high population density, and national conscription—contributed to the development of a new plan to encourage Japanese labor emigration. Japan had initiated its emigration plan gradually in the 1860s. It sent emigrants to Hawaii and Guam in 1868 and to northern California in 1872.⁶ Although organizational problems led to the demise of these programs, Jonathan Dresner explains, the Japanese government learned important lessons that would be useful in the future. At the onset of the deflation and depression of the 1880s, the Japanese government was compelled to design successful emigration programs that would solve its problems. At this time, Japanese commercial leaders and authors first recognized that emigration was the solution that would enable Japan’s poor to improve their lot and also aid their homeland by remitting their wages home (Gordon 120).⁷ The Meiji government further recognized that emigration would also contribute to its plan for commercial expansion to the West and aid in its search for sources of raw material to satisfy the needs of Japan’s growing modern industry (Morimoto, Japoneses 41).

Safeguards for Japanese Emigrant Laborers Abroad

The Japanese government began to formulate what would eventually become safeguards that protected all of its emigrant labor overseas, including Latin America, during its negotiations in 1884–85 for Japanese laborers working in the Hawaiian sugarcane fields. The government was careful to stipulate rules to ensure worker safety and protection and also instructed Japanese workers about what to expect in Hawaii and how to conduct themselves overseas⁸ (Dresner 35, 88; Westney 200). Both nations signed a formal convention in 1886 that specified the conditions for emigration, which included emigrant supervision, contract duration, and the salaries for doctors, inspectors, and interpreters (Dresner 22). In 1891, when the convention expired, Japan established the Emigration Bureau under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Before it relinquished its authority to private firms, the Japanese government passed strict, comprehensive regulations that were later enacted into law. Local governments were empowered to supervise these companies in Yokohama and Kobe (Dresner 36).

The Edict of 1894 that became the Emigrant Protection Act of 1896 made the Japanese government and its consulates overseas responsible for the protection of Japanese emigrants (Westney 200). Emigration companies that recruited and trained potential candidates had to register with the government. National government bureaus, recruiters, prefectural officials, and emigrant letters to their families were all vital sources of information about emigration (200). After 1890, many temporary workers in Hawaii left for the west coast of Canada and the US and in smaller numbers for Mexico, drawn by higher wages. Without opportunities in the newly acquired territories of Korea and Taiwan, Japan responded to requests for cheap manual labor in Peru and Brazil.

North American Exclusionary Laws Spur Japanese Emigration to South America

Economic struggles and racial prejudice toward Japanese immigrants in North America led to exclusionary policies in the early twentieth century, making South America, especially Peru and Brazil, more attractive, alternative destinations. The Japanese government improved its trade relations with South America and provided aid to its emigrants, whom it considered commercial pioneers (Hoerder 402). Canada’s Lemieux Accord of 1907 and Theodore Roosevelt’s Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1908 initiated the exclusionary policy that applied to Japanese immigrants in both countries. California’s Alien Land Laws of 1913 went even further by taking away profits earned by first-generation immigrants (Masterson and Funada, Japanese in Peru 114). Anti-Japanese discrimination in California and the real probability of exclusion pushed negotiations between the two nations, according to Hunter. The Japanese government protested North American anti-Asian racism, particularly California’s anti-alien legislation of 1913 and the US exclusionary act of 1924 (called The Immigration Act of 1924 or the Johnson-Reed Act) (Hoerder 376). The Mexican government under Porfirio Díaz followed the US lead and imposed its own prohibitions against Japanese immigrants by 1910 as did Canada after 1925.

Peru Seeks Manual Laborers from Japan

By the mid-nineteenth century, there was an acute shortage of manual labor for Peruvian coastal agriculture, especially in the extraction of guano, one of Peru’s major resources and exports, on cotton and sugar plantations, and for railroad construction. With the abolition of African slavery in 1854, the end of Chinese coolie trade twenty years later,⁹ Peru’s unsuccessful attempts to hire Indian or free-African labor, and to attract substantial European immigrant labor before 1890 because of its political and economic instability and limited landholding opportunities, new sources of manual labor had to be found (Masterson and Funada-Classen 20–21).

The First Arrival of the Japanese in Peru

The very first Japanese to reach Peru, according to José Antonio del Busto, set out from Acapulco, Mexico aboard the famous Manila-Acapulco galleons that traded with Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century.¹⁰ In the years between 1607 and 1612, about twenty Japanese, including salaried tailors and a bricklayer or mason, passed through the port of Callao but did not establish any roots (Vega 12).¹¹ During his reign as the first Tokugawa shogun in 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu promoted foreign trade, with Japanese ships transporting goods to China, the Philippines, and Mexico. Hoping to establish trade between Japan and Spanish America in 1610, Tokugawa Ieyasu made arrangements with the acting viceroy of the Spanish Philippines to take twenty-three Japanese tradesmen with him to New Spain (Mexico). These Japanese tradesmen, in addition to the eighty Japanese crewmen who worked on board the ship, were the first recorded Japanese to land in the Americas (Masterson and Funada-Classen 13–14). Unfortunately, Spain’s demands for substantial political concessions, and its reluctance to open the ports of its Spanish-American colonies to trade outside the Empire, impeded Ieyasu’s plan to make Spanish America one of Japan’s major trading partners.

Almost 250 years later, official relations between Peru and Japan were established after two incidents involving brutal conditions in the trafficking of Chinese coolies, forcibly transported by boat to Peru between 1849 and 1874. The first occurred on board the Cayaltí in 1868 and the second on the María Luz in 1872. As a result of the María Luz incident, in December 1872 Peru sent its first minister plenipotentiary Aurelio García y García to Japan and China to initiate relations with both countries. The case was eventually submitted to arbitration and decided in favor of Japan. On August 21, 1873, Peruvian Minister García y García and Japanese Chancellor Soyeshima Tane-Omi signed the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation, which was ratified in 1875 and broadened in 1885 (Morimoto, Japoneses 32–33).¹² The Peruvian government chose a wealthy German businessman and property owner named Oscar Heeren as Peruvian consul in Japan (Morimoto, Japoneses 32) The Japanese government did not send a diplomatic representative to Peru for many years.

Investment Plans Lead to Japanese Emigration to Peru

In 1889, Peruvian Consul Heeren and his friend Takahashi Korekiyo¹³ launched a plan for the first Japanese-Peruvian joint venture in mining, called the Japan-Peru Mining Company, to export Peruvian silver to Japan (Morimoto, Japoneses 34). According to Amelia Morimoto, the project fell through when it was discovered that the mine had already been in operation for 100 years and its silver was lacking in value (35). Irie Toraji disagrees with Morimoto’s conclusion and blames Peru’s political instability for the failure of the joint venture (Masterson and Funada-Classen 15n8).

In 1898, Augusto Bernardino Leguía (1863–1932) invited his friend Tanaka Teikichi, an agent for the Morioka Emigration Company (part of the Mitsui conglomerate), to come to Peru. At that time, Leguía (who would serve twice as Peruvian president), was the manager of the British Sugar Company of Peru and was seeking new sources of manual labor to replace Chinese coolies in the sugarcane fields. Leguía informed Tanaka Teikichi that Peruvian coastal enterprises were interested in employing Japanese immigrants to cultivate sugarcane. Tanaka reported this news to Morioka Makoto, head of Morioka Emigration Company. The Morioka Company authorized Murota Yoshibumi, Japanese diplomatic representative in Peru and Mexico in 1897, to come to Peru to study the proposal and discuss the plan with the government. After many negotiations, Japanese emigration to Peru was authorized by President Nicolás de Piérola in a presidential decree in 1898 (Morimoto, Japoneses 50). The Japanese government appointed a Peruvian named Guillermo Espantoso as honorary consul of Japan in Lima. Leguía and Tanaka became the champions of Japanese emigration to Peru. Leguía represented the coastal entrepreneurs, while Tanaka acted on behalf of the Japanese emigration companies. The Japanese emigration companies promoted these labor contracts to break into new markets, while the Japanese authorities sought access and expanded business relationships with interests along the West coast of South America (50).

Recruiting Japanese Emigrant Labor

To recruit Japanese laborers to work in Peru, Japanese emigration companies ran ads in the dailies of several Japanese prefectures. The four Japanese emigration companies that brought Japanese contract workers to Peru were: Morioka Emigration Company (1899–1920), Meiji Colonization Company (1907–09), Toyo Emigration Company (1910–17), and Overseas Development Company or KKKK (1917–23) (Morimoto, Japoneses 86). Those Japanese who were interested in emigrating to Peru to do manual labor went to the offices of the emigration companies, accompanied by two witnesses or guarantors, to enroll and sign their contracts. Morimoto explains that these first contracts, written in both English and Japanese, were granted for four years without extensions and specified the salary and responsibilities of the emigrant, the emigration company, and the hacienda (52). The contract described eligible Japanese workers as being between the ages of twenty and forty-five, in good mental and physical health, and morally sound. Later contracts varied in duration between one and two years or even for only six months (52). In Peru, the Japanese immigrants would be a free, voluntary work force, which distinguished them from previous groups of immigrant workers such as the Chinese coolies and the Polynesian canacas, who were kidnapped, sold, and brought to Peru as forced labor (Morimoto, Japoneses 52). According to Juan José Vega, the coastal Peruvian sugar haciendas hoped that the Japanese workers would provide better and more reliable labor than the Indians from the sierra, who did not like the coastal climate and rarely remained on the plantations (12).

First Japanese Contract Laborers Arrive in Peru

After months at sea since its departure from Yokohama, the Sakura Maru, launched by the Morioka Company, finally reached Peruvian shores on April 4, 1899. On board was the first wave of Japanese contract laborers, made up of 790 poor farmers and workers who disembarked in Callao and other coastal ports, to join different haciendas or plantations. About 93 percent or 735 Japanese immigrants came from three Japanese prefectures: Niigata, Yamaguchi, and Hiroshima, while the remaining 55 came from Okayama, Tokyo, and Ibaraki (Morimoto, Japoneses 54). Along with these Japanese immigrants were thirty inspectors, a doctor, a nurse, and ten Morioka Company employees as well as Tanaka Teikichi (Thorndike 30). Some Japanese from this first group of contract laborers who did not adjust well to the coastal plantations in Peru were sent to Amazonia, the jungle region in the Amazon, to work in the exploitation of rubber and coffee (Morimoto, Japoneses 84).

The Morioka Company brought a second wave of Japanese emigrants to Peru aboard The Duke of White in July 1903. According to Morimoto, of the total 1,270 Japanese, 1,076 had contracts (including 100 women) and 194 were free (10 women) (Japoneses 68). These immigrants came from Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Kanagawa, Ehime, and Fukui (68). Most Japanese immigrants who arrived in Peru before 1908 married picture brides from Japan or younger Nisei women. This was called the time of the "Yobiyose" or called immigrants, who