Embodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

(Continued from front flap) self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves — as the physical embodiment of a general...

Author: Taku Suzuki

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(Continued from front flap)

self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves — as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia. Racializing narratives and performances ideologically serve as both a cause and result of Okinawan-Bolivians’ social and economic status as successful large-scale farm owners in rural Bolivia and struggling manual laborers in urban Japan. As the most comprehensive work available on Okinawan immigrants in Latin America and ethnic Okinawan “return” migrants in Japan, Embodying Belonging is at once a critical examination of the contradictory class and cultural identity (trans)formations of transmigrants, a rich qualitative study of colonial and postcolonial subjects in diaspora, and a bold attempt to theorize racialization as a social process of belonging within local and global schemes. TAKU SUZUKI is assistant professor of international studies at Denison University, Granville, Ohio.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES/ANTHROPOLOGY

SUZUKI Embodying Belonging is the first full-length study of an Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Of related interest:

Okinawan Diaspora Edited by Ronald Y. Nakasone 2002, 216 pages Paper: ISBN 978-0-8248-2530-0

Okinawa, Japan

The first Okinawan immigrants arrived in Honolulu in January 1900 to work as contract laborers on Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations. Over time Okinawans would continue migrating east to the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia, and the islands of Micronesia. The essays in this volume commemorate these diasporic experiences within the geopolitical context of East Asia. Using primary sources and oral history, individual contributors examine how Okinawan identity was constructed in the various countries to which Okinawans migrated, and how their experiences were shaped by the Japanese nation-building project and by globalization. Essays explore the return to Okinawan sovereignty, or what Nobel Laureate Òe Kenzaburò called an “impossible possibility,” and the role of the Okinawan labor diaspora in Japan’s imperial expansion into the Philippines and Micronesia.

Okinawa City Cover art: “Monumento al Colono de Okinawa” sculpted by Germán Garcia Miranda Cover design: Wilson Angel

UNIVERSITY of HAWAI‘I PRESS Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888

ISBN 978-0-8248-3344-2

Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

90000

9 780824 833442 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu

TA K U S U Z U K I

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational OkinawanBolivians underwent the various racialization processes — in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and

(Continued on back flap)

Suzuki-Embodying_jktMech.indd 1

5/6/10 12:10:31 PM

Embodying Belonging

Embodying Belonging: R a c i a l i z i n g O k i n awa n D i a s por a in Bo l ivia a nd Japan

Taku Suzuki

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS HONOLULU

© 2010 university of hawai‘i press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

1 5 1 4 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 0 â•…â•… 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Suzuki, Taku, 1971– Embodying belonging : racializing Okinawan diaspora in Bolivia and Japan / Taku Suzuki. p.â•‡â•‡ cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN–13: 978–0–8248–3344–2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN–10: 0–8248–3344–9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1.â•‡ Ryukyuans—Race identity—Bolivia—Colonia Okinawa.â•‡â•‡ 2.â•‡ Bolivians—Race identity—Japan—Yokohama-shi. â•‡â•‡ 3.â•‡ Immigrants—Bolivia—Colonia Okinawa— Social conditions.â•‡â•‡ 4.â•‡ Children of immigrants—Bolivia—Colonia Okinawa—Social conditions.â•‡â•‡ 5.â•‡ Return migrants—Japan—Social conditions.â•‡â•‡ 6.â•‡ Okinawa-ken (Japan)— Emigration and immigration.â•‡â•‡ 7.â•‡ Colonia Okinawa (Bolivia)—Emigration and immigration.â•‡â•‡ 8.â•‡ Transnationalism—Case studies.â•‡â•‡ I.â•‡ Title. â•… F3359.R97S89 2010 â•… 305.800984—dc22

2009047053

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Designed by University of Hawai‘i Press production staff Printed by Edwards Brothers, Inc.

Contents vii Acknowledgments 1

INTRODUCTION :â•‡

Racializing Culture and Class in a

Transnational Field

22

[ 1 ]

Colonialism, Diaspora, and “Return”

54

[ 2 ]â•› The Making of Patrones Japonesas and Dekasegi

Migrants

83

[ 3 ]

Transformations

113

[ 4 ]

Subjects

146

[ 5 ]

and Dekasegi

183

CONCLUSION :â•‡

Modern Okinawan Transnationality:

From Patrón to Nikkei-jin Rōdōsha: Class Educating “Good” Nikkei and Okinawan Gendering Transnationality: Marriage, Family, Embodiment of Local Belonging

191 Notes 215 Glossary 219 References 245 Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like any other fieldwork and ethnography project, the research that has culminated in this book was a collaborative project in which numerous individuals made direct and indirect contributions. Without their generous support, I could not have written this book. I am most grateful to the residents of Colonia Okinawa and the Okinawan-Bolivian immigrants in Yokohama who participated in this study. They not only provided their time for conversation and shared their insights, but also kindly introduced me to many other individuals who they thought might help my research. I can list here only a handful of names among the dozens who have been helpful: Ikehara Masahide, Ikehara Herman and Ikehara Naoko, Shimabukuro Seiei, Yamashiro Yasunori, Kōchi Hiroshi, Asato Marcelo, Higa Satoshi and Higa Mariera, Sakurai Hiroaki, Asato Shikō, Terui Yutaka, Higa Eikichi, Oyakawa Hugo and Oyakawa Keiko, Toguchi Masanori and Toguchi Harumi, Kishimoto Aiko, Nakamura Yukifumi, Gushiken Kōtei, Uezu Masaru, Nagahama Masahiro, Kondō Mitsuyo, Baba Masaki, Tamashiro Hiroshi, Yamashiro Ukyō, Yamakawa Toshio, Gushiken Harold, Gushiken Kenji, Chinen Luis, Kamiya Akira, Yoshihira Hiroshi, and Arashiro Reiko. Special thanks to Asato Hidehiro and Asato Sanae, Hoshikawa Kazuo and Hoshikawa Setsuko, Higa Tomoko and Higa Hiroshi (who also provided me with accommodation, transportation, and access to the World Uchinanchu Festival 2001 in Ginowan, Okinawa), Higa Takeshi, and Tsuzaka Hideari and Tsuzaka Ryōko for providing accommodations during my research. I am grateful for assistance provided by Chovi Tours of Santa Cruz vii

viii

Acknowledgments

de la Sierra in securing the appropriate visa for the duration of my research. I also want to thank Okuma Reiko, the late Asato Nagako, Inoue Etsuko, Kurihara Aiko, Kuniyoshi Maria, Oshiro Yoshie, Itō Kiyokazu, Taira Izumi, Yonamine Akira, Eloy Duran Parada, Yamauchi Masaru, Ishigaki Tokio, the late Nagaoka Masashi, Yamashiro Tokuko, Kikuyama Mika, Shimabukuro Katsu, Itō Kyoko, and Kawauchi Misa for helping me perform the role of a Japaneselanguage teacher at schools in Colonia Okinawa. Also, my gratitude goes to the committee members of the centennial celebration of Japanese immigration to Bolivia and other affiliated individuals who shared valuable information with me, including Kunimoto Iyo, Takeda Kenji, Oshikawa Ayumu, Shioiri Yumi, Shimabukuro Masaru, and Satō Nobuhiro. I also want to thank those I met at Colonia San Juan, such as Ban’i Katsumi, Ikeda Tokuo, Nishizawa Atsumi and Nishizawa Yasue, and Mukai Suemi for helping me learn its unique circumstances.Â� This book began as a dissertation project in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. I benefited immensely from the guidance and wisdom provided by my advisor and mentor, the late Daphne Berdahl. Despite her declining health as I was completing the book manuscript, she continued to help with my writing and to exhibit faith in the project’s value. I only regret that I cannot show my gratitude by handing her a copy of the final product. I dedicate this book to Daphne for the unwavering intellectual and emotional support she provided. I also owe a great deal to Joshua Hotaka Roth, who read the entire manuscript of this book at various stages and provided me with valuable suggestions that helped me organize and clarify my thoughts. I am grateful to both of them for sharing their time and labor as well as their expertise and ideas with me. Other faculty at Minnesota, such as Karen Ho, Steve Gudeman, Pradeep Jeganathan, and Karen Till were also generous with their time and energy in helping me develop and improve the research and the book manuscript. My colleagues and friends at the University of Minnesota and Wesleyan University’s Center for the Americas read different parts of the manuscript at various stages of development and lent valuable criticism and suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Lisa Anderson-Levy, Hiromi Mizuno, Kazuyo Kubo, Yuichiro Onishi, Anita Mannur, Patricia Hill, Claire Potter, Ann Wightman, and Khachig Tölölyan. Discussions with many other individuals also helped me process ideas that became part of the book. They include Michael Molasky, Chika Shinohara, Hyang-jin Jung, Timothy Dunnigan, David Lipset, Gloria Goodwin-

Acknowledgments

ix

Raheja,Â� J. KehaulaniÂ� Kauanui, Stephen Angle, Bill Johnston, Su Zheng, Allan Isaac, Lok Siu, Ayumi Takenaka, Ed Thompson, Ann Marie Leshkowich, David Hummon, Susan Rodgers, Susan Diduk, Veve Lele, Gary Baker, Isis Nusair, and John Cort. I am grateful for support I received from different institutions at various stages of this project. I thank the University of Minnesota Department of Anthropology for its Research Block Grant, the MacArthur Interdisciplinary Program on Peace and International Cooperation for its Predissertation Field Research Grant, the University of Minnesota Seminar on Race, Ethnicity, and Migration for its Dissertation Research Fellowship, the Freeman Asian/Asian American Initiative at Wesleyan University for its Research Grant, and Denison University for the Michelle T. Myers Professional Development Fund. I could not be more thankful to Masako Ikeda at the University of Hawai‘i Press, whose commitment, support, and understanding got me through the manuscript revision process. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers of this manuscript for their helpful suggestions and enthusiastic recommendations. An anonymous copyeditor at Scribendi also refined and strengthened the manuscript. My family has not only lived with this project, but also grown in the process. My parents Suzuki Tadao and Suzuki Kiyoko, and my sisters Seki Shiori and Kojima Orie, have been among my greatest supporters. They always have kept their faith in me, even as my decision to pursue a competitive academic career in the United States worried them endlessly and kept me thousands of miles away from where they live. My wife, Beth Suzuki, who entered my life shortly before my long-term fieldwork in Bolivia and Japan began, is present in some way on every page of this book. Along with my stepson Sean Ekotto, she was an integral part of my field research, and she continued to provide me with intellectual and emotional support during the trying years of my early academic career. Without the love, encouragement, and assistance from Beth and from her mother Bonnie Davis, this book simply would not have come into existence. My daughter Ayame and my son Takashi have grown from newborns to preschoolers while I worked toward the completion of this book. Their immense talent for love, compassion, and learning has never failed to amaze me and to inspire me to grow intellectually and emotionally. This book marks both the culmination of a research project and the beginning of our life together with many adventures to come.

[ introduction ] Racializing Culture and Class in a Transnational Field

As I got out of a taxi with my dusty backpack and suitcase at the centro (village center) of Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement founded by Okinawan immigrants in the Santa Cruz Prefecture of eastern Bolivia, I immediately recognized two different types of gaze cast on me. The first was from taxi drivers who were congregating at the parada, or taxi stop, and street vendors who were selling snacks and drinks to those waiting for rides. Their stare with reserved curiosity seemed to have deciphered my nationality. Otro japonés ha llegado—another Japanese has arrived. The second was from those who were slowly driving their pickup trucks over the speed bumps on the road in the centro. After giving me a long and inquiring stare, they nodded at me as they passed me by. Nihonjin deshō—you are Japanese, aren’t you? They appeared to be acknowledging that I had come to their place, a village of Okinawans. Whenever and wherever I was in the village, I was always made aware that my appearance—physique, demeanor, outfit, and so on—were monitored by these two different types of scrutinizing gaze: one from Bolivians of nonOkinawan and non-Japanese descent (referred to as non-Nikkei Bolivians in this book) and the other from Okinawan immigrants and their descendants (Okinawan-Bolivians hereafter) in Colonia Okinawa. Among the memories from my field research in Colonia Okinawa, I remember most vividly the inquisitive looks that I received from the members of the two distinct groups and how my body instantly became an object of scrutiny in which cultural and socioeconomic differences between “Japanese” and “Bolivian” as well as 1

2

INTRODUCTION

“Naichi-jin” (Japanese mainlander) and “Okinawan” were articulated and objectified.1 The central question of this book arose from my memories of these inquiring and objectifying gazes as well as from numerous anecdotes I heard in Colonia Okinawa about physical, cultural, and psychological differences between “Bolivians,” “Japanese” (Naichi-jin), and “Okinawans.” How does an OkinawanBolivian person, for instance, appear, think, and behave—in short, become “Bolivian,” “Japanese,” or “Okinawan” (as opposed to Naichi-jin)—in his or her own eyes and in the eyes of others in different situations? What are the socioeconomic implications of these differing yet purportedly “natural” attributes of Okinawan-Bolivians within the particular local context? In this book, I examine how people’s bodies came to symbolize and represent their “true” cultural identity as it was formed and expressed in everyday practices, and how these embodied cultural “truths” came to symbolize various degrees and forms of belonging (and nonbelonging) of individual subjects in the places they resided. This is the social process I refer to as “racialized belonging,” through which, as I hope to demonstrate, embodied, performed, and narrated “cultural” differences between population groups become essentialized and naturalized as both a

Colonia Okinawa Uno Centro area

Racializing Culture and Class

3

reason for and a manifestation of discrepancies in socioeconomic statuses and senses of belonging. A multisited ethnography of transnational migrants that “follows the people” (Marcus 1995, 106) offers a useful case study to explore racialized belonging, as it comparatively examines the social processes in two or more locales, where daily practices and narratives differentially embody their “culture,” which comes to function as evidence of their class positions and social statuses in each locale. In this ethnography, I portray transnational ethnic Okinawan communities in two nation-states: Okinawan immigrants and their descendants in Colonia Okinawa, Bolivia, an agricultural settlement established in the mid1950s by Okinawan settlers, and Okinawan-Bolivian immigrants in the city of Yokohama, Japan, where hundreds of Okinawan-Bolivians have moved from Colonia Okinawa as dekasegi, or sojourning, migrants since the 1980s.2 Although the individual experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians in Bolivia and Japan undoubtedly varied with differences in age, generation, class, gender, and other individual attributes, the relatively small size of the Okinawan-Bolivian community in Colonia Okinawa (approximately 850 people currently reside there) and strong ties between those who reside in Colonia Okinawa and those in Japan allow me to consider the Okinawan-Bolivians in both locations as part of a single community that has created a “transnational social field” of action and meaning (Glick Schiller et al. 1992, 19) that spans the two nation-states. The differing experiences of various Okinawan-Bolivians in the two locales, therefore, are examined together as those of a group of “transmigrants,” individuals who have socioeconomic footholds in multiple nation-states (ibid.). To theorize the racialized belonging of transmigrants, this study examines multiple contradictions Okinawan-Bolivians (Okinawan settlers, or Issei, and their offspring in Colonia Okinawa, and Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in urban Japan) faced in Bolivia and Japan. First, how did Okinawan-Bolivians experience and make sense of paradoxical socioeconomic class positions they occupied in a transnational social field? In Colonia Okinawa, many Issei (first-generation settlers) were affluent large-scale farm owners, although their second-generation, or Nisei, children struggled to transform their economically privileged backgrounds into upward class mobility in a larger Bolivian society. In Yokohama, meanwhile, Nisei dekasegi migrants could earn more money by working in the construction and manufacturing industries, yet the migrants suffered from financial instability and personal humiliation as blue-collar laborers. Second, how did educational institutions, such as community schools in Colonia Okinawa, shape Nisei and Sansei (third-generation)

4

INTRODUCTION

OkinawanÂ�-Bolivian youth’s identities and behaviors? The schools believed that they were helping second- and third-generation Okinawan-Bolivians succeed in the larger Bolivian society as bilingual (Spanish and Japanese) and bicultural Nikkei (the descendants of Japanese immigrants) subjects, by teaching them the “standard” Japanese language and what they considered to be authentic Japanese culture. Yet, the schools appeared to have inadvertently encouraged the Okinawan-Bolivian youth to migrate to Japan as dekasegi laborers rather than pursue socioeconomic success in Bolivia. Finally, how did OkinawanBolivians interpret and negotiate their historical and cultural distinctiveness as Okinawans, whose past as the colonized subjects under imperial Japan still stirred ambivalent feelings toward Japan among Okinawans in Okinawa Prefecture and the Okinawan diaspora abroad? Okinawan identity among the Okinawan-Bolivians in Bolivia and Japan was subdued on certain occasions but strongly felt and expressed by them on others, especially when they had to deal with Japanese government officials. This study, then, is an attempt to understand the contradictory processes of class and cultural identity formation of transmigrants, an ethnography of postcolonial subjects in diaspora, and an effort to theorize race, class, and culture in a transnational context. There are two underlying assumptions in this study. First, I consider that individuals are not unified and autonomous beings, who exercise free will to position themselves within social relations, economic conditions, or cultural climates. Instead, I regard each individual as a subject, “a locus in which an incoherent (and often contradictory) plurality of such relational determinations interact” (Certeau 1984, xi) and believe that their “agency is created through situations and statuses conferred on them” (J. Scott 1992, 34). Because these subjects make themselves and are made at the same time, it is imperative to define them as an ongoing formative process, not a finished product. The individual subjects occupy a certain “subject position,” which Tim O’Sullivan defines as “a contradictory mix of confirming and contending ‘identities’â†œ” (O’Sullivan et al. 1994, 310; cited in Parreñas 2001, 31). Thus, individual identities are defined here as contested and shifting “positions” in which subjects are placed and place themselves in relation to other individuals and institutions. Second, in examining the changing subject positions of transmigrants and their embodied belongings in two different locales, I view these locales not as static and unified but as dynamic and heterogeneous domains that are constantly in flux socioeconomically, politically, and culturally. Spaces that transmigrants move across are neither “empty” (Lefebvre 1991, 15) nor “geometrical”Â�(Certeau 1984, 117) spaces that are filled with the homogeneous


5

national or regional “cultures” of politicoterritorially defined nation-states (see Malkki 1995). Instead, the space of each locality is a “social space” that is always “actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed” (Certeau 1984, 117) by institutional and individual actors who provide specific meanings and boundaries to the space (Appadurai 1995; Gupta and Ferguson 1997). My discussions of racialized belonging locate “social spaces” for transmigrants under differing circumstances shaped by particular political economic conditions at specific historical moments. The aim of this book is, therefore, neither to uncover the “true” or “core” identity of Okinawan-Bolivians living in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama nor to highlight “cultural clashes” Okinawan-Bolivians presumably experienced by encountering (monolithic) Bolivian or Japanese culture, but instead to elucidate the ways in which their subject positions have been defined within locally specific socioeconomic and cultural contexts of Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama in particular and of Bolivia and Japan in general, which have changed dramatically during the fifty years of the Colonia Okinawan community’s existence.

Theorizing Race, Class, and Culture in a Transnational Context In examining the racialized belongings of Okinawan-Bolivians in a transnational context, I rely on two key concepts in recent sociological and anthropological studies: racialization and citizenship. Racialization is defined here as a social process by which certain bodily features or assumed biological characteristics of a particular group come to represent the group members’ inherent psychological, behavioral, and/or moral characteristics (Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 33; Miles 1989), while citizenship is conceptualized as a social process of self-cultivation and being-cultivated, the Foucauldian process of “subject-making,” within the web of socioeconomic and cultural powers of state and capital (Ong 1996).

Racialization of Culture and Class After reviewing anthropological studies of Brazilian and Peruvian Nikkei-jin living in Japan (Lesser 2003; Linger 2001; Roth 2002; Tsuda 2003), I was struck by the fact that none of them addressed race as a key analytical concept in understanding the Nikkei-jin’s socioeconomic marginalization in Japan, although their situations frequently reminded me of the experiences that many other

6

INTRODUCTION

racialized immigrants from developing economies face in Europe or North America.3 These studies, such as Takeyuki Tsuda’s ethnography, tended to argue that the immigrants’ predicament was mainly due to the “cultural” exclusiveness of Japanese society, which alienates the Latin American Nikkei-jin, who may be “racial” insiders (by sharing the ancestral origin and physical characteristics) but nonetheless are “cultural” outsiders (Tsuda 2003, 131–135).4 The conspicuous absence of the race concept in these studies reflects a more general tendency among anthropologists. Anthropologists have been reluctant to engage the race concept in their analyses of societies where there are no obvious phenotypic differences—according to criteria set by the eugenicist “race sciences” a century ago—within the populations, even though anthropologists have adamantly argued that race is a sociocultural, not a biological, category.5 By having defined race as “what culture is not” (Visweswaran 1998, 72), anthropologists have been largely disengaged from what Etienne Balibar called “new racism,” an absolutionist discourse that relies on the notion of essentialized and naturalized culture in which culture “can also function like a nature” (Balibar 1991, 22, emphasis original). This new discourse of race and culture aligns race “closely with the idea of national belonging andâ•›.â•›.â•›.â•›stressed complex cultural difference rather than simple biological hierarchy” (Gilroy 1993, 10).6 Culturalist racism, or what Paul Gilroy calls “ethnic absolutism,” is a phenomenon certainly not limited to Western Europe. Anthropologist Takezawa Yasuko, for instance, refers to the governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, who stated in 2001 that several violent crimes committed by Chinese residents in Tokyo in recent years were indications of “the ethno-national (minzoku-teki) DNA” of the Chinese (Takezawa 2005, 10, 82). Given these emergent discourses of naturalized cultural differences, I do not wish to debate in this book whether or not Okinawan-Bolivians are a racially (i.e., quasi-scientifically) distinct group apart from non-Nikkei Bolivians or native-born Japanese, or to determine whether they underwent either “cultural” or “racial” transformations in Colonia OkinawaÂ�and Yokohama; instead, I conceptualize Okinawan-Bolivians’ shifting subject positioning in Bolivia and Japan as processes of “racialization” (Miles 1989), by which individual Okinawan-Bolivians came to be viewed and to view themselves as part of a “naturally” collective entity through narratives and practices of cultural absolutism by themselves and their Others in both locations. Â� Like the naturalization of “cultures” that Okinawan-Bolivians experienced through subject positioning in Bolivia and Japan, Okinawan-Bolivians’ changing class positions in the two locations underwent a similar essentialization process. Theorists of racial “whiteness” have argued that one’s racial belongingÂ�


7

is akin to possession or lack of financial “property” or “wage” (C. Harris 1993; Roediger 1991; Lipsitz 1998),7 by envisioning race as a kind of “symbolic” capital, which, similar to cultural and social capital (e.g., prestige, social connections, knowledge, or physical skills), help shape individuals’ socioeconomic statuses (Bourdieu 1977, 1986).8 Although this concept of “race-as-capital” (or, more precisely, “racialized category–as–symbolic capital”) originally derived from historical examinations of European immigrants’ experiences in the United States, more recent studies indicate that, regardless of locations and historical contexts, it is a potent tool to understand the dynamic interplay between a racialized category and a socioeconomic class within changing social, cultural, and political environments.9 Furthermore, by ethnographically portraying the appreciation and depreciation of race-as-capital (racialized category–as–symbolic capital) manifested by Okinawan-Bolivians’ shifting and contradictory class positions in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama, this study attempts to theorize the race-class nexus in a transnational context, where the local definitions and stratifications of races and classes in a particular society and the global politicoeconomic hierarchy within the capitalist world system (Wallerstein 1974) intersect.10

Body as a Surface and Vehicle of Racialization Where, then, should I observe and analyze the processes of cultural and class racialization of Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama? Following Michel Foucault’s propositions on the discursive production of sexual bodies (Foucault 1978), David Palumbo-Liu suggests that the discursively constructed human body functions as “a site of enormous symbolic work and symbolic production” and creates a “slippage” between multiple social categories, such as race, culture, and class (Palumbo-Liu 2001, 82; see also Omi and Winant 1994). I similarly envision human bodies not as “ahistorical, precultural, or natural objects” but as materials for “corporal inscription,” upon which cultural and class differences are “inscribed, marked, engraved” by various societal discourses (Grosz 1994, 53). Colonial discourses, for instance, relentlessly highlighted a certain bodily feature of the colonized people that appeared different from that of the colonizers as “a sign of inferiority or degeneracyâ†œ.â†œ.â†œ.â†œ[and of the] natural ‘identity’â†œ” of the colonized. In so doing, the colonial discourses turned cultural and racial differences between the two groups into “â†œ‘common knowledge’ in a range of cultural, political and historical discourses” (Bhabha 1994, 78, 80, emphasis original).11

8

INTRODUCTION

At the same time, human bodies are “vehicles” for individual subjects to perform these differences in their daily lives (Butler 1990; O’Connell 1999), and these daily performances “actively produce the body as a body of determinate type” (Grosz 1994, x). Individuals’ performative practices could transgress, subvert, or legitimate the socially constructed and corporally inscribed social categories to which they belong as they cultivate, in the Foucauldian sense, their bodies into a representation of a certain social identity through the “stylized repetition of acts” they consciously or unconsciously perform in daily lives (Butler 1990, 140). From this perspective, an individual neither turns from a blank “â†œ‘subject’ before the constitution of a subject” into someone inscribed with a particular social identity, nor is he or she merely a “puppet of sociocultural processes” (O’Connell 1999, 65). Instead, an individual is always and already becoming a socially defined subject through everyday performances.12 By refusing to presume the existence of “raw” (blank, natural, or abstract) bodies before their social constitutions, two forms of racialization of OkinawanBolivians, as “Japanese” farm owners in Colonia Okinawa and as South American Nikkei-jin laborers in Yokohama, are conceptualized here as processes in which societal influences inscribed and naturalized certain cultural and class identities upon their bodies (physiques and behaviors), while individual Okinawan-Bolivians conformed to or resisted these categories through daily practices.

Racialized Belonging in Transnational Context Examining Okinawan-Bolivians’ experiences in Bolivia and Japan provides an opportunity to pursue, as Takezawa (2005) and Kenan Malik (1996) encourage us to do, an integral, not merely comparative, theorization of the various processes of cultural and class racialization in a transnational-local nexus.13 Taking a cue from Bonnie Urciuoli, who has argued that racialized individuals are often “typified as human matter out of place” (Urciuoli 1996, 15, emphasis added), I argue that racialization, a social process that produces a human body as a “natural” manifestation of his or her culture and class, is also a process that turns an individual into “human matter [in or] out of place” in society, depending on his or her relationships with the powers of state and capital. To address these varying degrees and forms of belonging in society, various scholars have redefined the concept of “citizenship” not merely as a legal relationship between an individual and a state, but also as “a more total relationship,Â� inflected by identity, social positioning, cultural assumptions,


9

institutionalÂ� practices and a sense of belonging” (Werbner and Yuval-Davis 1999, 4).14 Even within a nation-state, then, the population is divided along the “impassable symbolic boundaries” between those who truly belong and those who do not, and individual citizens’ “belongingness and otherness” are constantly marked, fixed, and naturalized through a “typically binary system of representation” (Hall 1996, 445). From this viewpoint, even a legal citizen of a state may remain excluded from “universal citizen” status in a nation-state (Glenn 2002, 20–21) if he or she continues to be “located outside the cultural and racial boundaries of the nation” (Lowe 1996, 10).15 In my study, I take a slightly different tack on citizenship from these theorizations because I believe that individuals do not always desire “universal” (legal, economic, social, and cultural) belonging to a singular nation-state; some, including certain groups of transmigrants, may instead pursue flexibility in their national belonging (Ong 1999). Furthermore, the symbolic boundary making operates not only in the “system of representation,” but also in what Michael Herzfeld calls “etiquette,” a formalized and formalizing behavior in everyday life that distinguishes those who belong within the boundary from those who do not (Herzfeld 1996, 47–48, cited in Hartigan 1999, 291).16 I envision citizenship, therefore, as a two-way negotiation between individuals and their surroundings, or what Aihwa Ong calls a “dual process” of “subject-making and being-made,” which defines their particular modes and degrees of belonging in a local society through formalizing and formalized everyday practices (Ong 1996, 737–738).17 Okinawan-Bolivians’ changing and often contradictory subject positions and their different modes of belonging in the places they live are outcomes of this dual process of citizenship. The cultural and class racializations that Okinawan-Bolivians underwent in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama were, then, at the same time processes shaping both the forms and degrees of their belonging in each local society in which they lived. These simultaneous processes of racialization and citizenship, or racialized belonging, are what Okinawan-Bolivians experienced within a transnational social field that spans rural Bolivia and urban Japan. Through ethnographic portraits of Okinawan-Bolivians at their workplaces, in educational institutions, and within family relationships, this study will demonstrate how their culture and class positions were racialized through the discursive constructions and daily performances of themselves and their Others in each of the places they lived and how they, in turn, shaped and expressed the forms and degrees of their belonging in these places.

10

INTRODUCTION

Fieldwork Sites: Colonia Okinawa and Tsurumi, Yokohama My exploration of the racialized belonging of Okinawan-Bolivians required a mobile and multisited ethnographic approach to provide insight into the situational, complex, and shifting meanings of racialized national and regional identities, such as Japaneseness, Bolivianness, and Okinawanness. Like many anthropologists, I had to fulfill different roles required of me and to act in accordance with preexisting norms in each site of my fieldwork. I also needed to negotiate multiple dimensions of my own social identities, as a Japanese Naichi-jin, a student researcher, a Japanese citizen living overseas, and a United States resident, in my interactions with community members and interviewees (Kondo 1986; Lutz 1988; Tsuda 2003).18 Below, I outline the contexts of my fieldwork in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama, where I conducted most of the research for this book.

Colonia Okinawa Colonia Okinawa (Okinawa Ijūchi, literally “Okinawa immigrants’ land”), an agricultural settlement founded by Okinawan settlers from the Ryūkyū Islands of southwest Japan, is a small rural village located 30 miles northeast of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the capital of Santa Cruz Prefecture (Departamento de Santa Cruz), and 15 miles east of Montero, a small hub on the trans-Bolivian highway. Santa Cruz is the largest among the nine prefectures of Bolivia and constitutes approximately 34 percent of the land of the entire nation. A large portion of Santa Cruz Prefecture belongs to the eastern lowland, or llano, that shares its borders with Brazil and Paraguay. Unlike the Andean highland in western Bolivia, or altiplano, Santa Cruz Prefecture is known for its mild tropical climate, with an annual average temperature of 24°â†œC to 26°â†œC (75°â†œF to 79°â†œF), with distinct rainy seasons (November to April) and dry seasons (May to October). As the capital city of the agricultural- and oil-rich prefecture, Santa Cruz de la Sierra has recently become the largest city in Bolivia, with a population of more than one million, replacing La Paz as the country’s demographic and economic center.19 Seventeen groups of Okinawan immigrants arrived in this location between 1954 and 1963 as agricultural settlers, and more than 1,500 people have moved into its three subdistricts: the oldest and most populous, Colonia Uno, and smaller and newer Colonia Dos and Colonia Trés. The vast majority of these settlers, however, soon left the Colonia for Santa Cruz de la Sierra, São Paulo,Â� or Buenos Aires, or returned to Okinawa in the 1960s and 1970s. Around


11

Map of Bolivia

2000, some eight hundred Colonia residents were members of Okinawa Nihon Boribia Kyōkai, or Nichibo Kyōkai, the self-governing organization for the Okinawan-Bolivians in the village. The majority of Nichibo Kyōkai members were Issei Okinawan settlers and their children, but there were a small number of Naichi-jin Japanese from the major four islands of Japan, who had settled in Colonia Okinawa since the 1970s through Japanese government-sponsored settlement programs.

12

INTRODUCTION

Although the vast majority of Okinawan-Bolivians were cattle ranchers and farm owners whose main products were soybeans, wheat, and sunflowers, there were a small number of wage earners, such as administrative and technical staff at Nichibo Kyōkai and the Okinawan-Bolivians’ farming cooperative, Cooperativa Agropecuaria Integral Colonias Okinawa (CAICO), Japanese language teachers at the community’s schools, and nurses and clerical staff at the hospitals. The Okinawan population in the Colonia encompassed multiple generations: Issei, many of whom were in their sixties and seventies, younger Issei, who were born in Okinawa but migrated to Bolivia with their Issei parents when they were children, and the Colonia-born second-generation, Nisei, and the third-generation, or Sansei, most of whom were still school-age children.20 The Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa were among approximately 13,000 Nikkei Bolivians, the fourth largest ethnic Japanese population among Latin American countries. The two major centers of Japanese Bolivian population are Riberalta of Bení Prefecture and its surrounding areas and Santa Cruz Prefecture, particularly Santa Cruz de la Sierra and the two Colonias, Colonia Okinawa and Colonia San Juan de Yapacaní.21 While I recognize the importance of other ethnic Okinawan and Japanese communities, especially in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where there is a sizable population of Nikkei, including Okinawan-Bolivians, I did not include Santa Cruz de la Sierra extensively in my field research. It was not logistically feasible for my research to cover the experiences of both rural and urban Okinawan-Bolivians, not to mention their very different socioeconomic situations and labor relations, in a sufficiently ethnographic manner. Between December 1997 and May 2001, I conducted field research in Colonia Okinawa for approximately fourteen months, though the majority of my research took place from July 2000 to May 2001. From my previous research trips, I realized that I would not be able to interact closely with OkinawanBolivians without having a certain official position in the community. Moreover, because the Okinawan-Bolivians’ residences were spread throughout the Colonia and I did not have a car, it was difficult to get acquainted with people simply by living in one part of the community. My solution was to agree to a request from Nichibo Kyōkai to become a Japanese-language teacher at the community’s elementary-middle school, a typical assignment for an outsider from Japan (see Chapter 4). I taught Japanese language classes at two schools in the Colonia and taught English to Okinawan-Bolivian middle- and high-school students during their school break. As a staff member at the school, a key community institution of Colonia Okinawa, I was able not only to participateÂ� in


13

numerousÂ�formal and informal social gatherings, but also to create and develop connections with the students’ parents and grandparents. I attended weddings, a funeral, and numerous informal gatherings at private homes. I was at the schools’ inauguration and graduation ceremonies, field trips, and welcome and farewell parties for other volunteer Japanese teachers. I participated in local festivals and events such as the Harvest Festival (hōnen-sai), the Colonia Okinawa Track Meet (undō-kai), Respect for Elders Day (keirō no hi), New Year’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. Through these occasions, I came to know many, though not all, OkinawanBolivians, especially those who had school-age children. Although I identified myself as a graduate student at a United States university conducting field research for my doctoral dissertation, they viewed me primarily as a schoolteacher, which distinguished me from the community’s stereotype of an academic researcher as an intruder who stays in the Colonia only for a short period of time and demands their cooperation. I also joined a sanshin club, a group that gets together once a week to play sanshin, a traditional Okinawan string musical instrument, through which I befriended elderly Issei club members. I also regularly spent time at the Methodist Church kindergarten for OkinawanBolivian children and attended services at the Methodist Church, where I befriended several elderly Issei who were regulars at church functions. Although I managed to find housing for myself in Colonia Uno for most of the research, I also lived with an Okinawan-Bolivian family for about three months. During that period, I frequently went to the family’s farmland with the father of the family and dined, chatted, watched TV, and sometimes played board games with other members of the family. During the course of my research, I conducted approximately eighty formal interviews with Issei, Nisei Okinawan-Bolivians, and Naichi-jin Japanese settlers and non-Nikkei Bolivians. The formal interviews, lasting an average of two hours, were normally conducted at the interviewees’ homes. The individuals selected for formal interviews were mostly those who had returned from dekasegi in Japan, but I also conducted a number of interviews with elderly Issei, whose children had migrated to Japan. While the interviewees had diverse backgrounds in terms of age, generation, gender, and other social identities, I reiterate that the goal of my research was not to delineate generalized patterns found among the interviewees’ answers. I instead explored how my interviewees invested meanings in and interpreted Japaneseness, Okinawanness, and Bolivianness at specific sites and at specific moments, because these categories, like any axes of identity, are contested and shifting “open signifiers”

14

INTRODUCTION

(Louie 2004, 21) that become relevant only through individuals’ narrations and actions. Meanwhile, as an embodied “Japanese” subject, I faced more obstacles in socializing and conducting interviews with non-Nikkei Bolivians in the Colonia. As will be revealed in the following chapters, the social divide between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians was deep, and for a Japanese national, it was difficult to transgress social boundaries and establish close relationships with non-Nikkei Bolivians because they were suspicious of or utterly disinterested in Japanese outsiders. I managed to conduct several interviews with parents of non-Nikkei Bolivian students of the community school at their homes and had numerous casual conversations with those non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers and domestic workers who worked for Okinawan-Bolivians, but as they saw me as a friend of their employers, I often sensed their reluctance to be frank with me. The different forms and degrees of interactions I had with various subgroups in the community remind us, as feminist and “halfie” anthropologists have pointed out, that anthropologists cannot simply discard or change their social identities in the field and that these identities are always defined in relation to their research subjects within the larger power dynamics in society (Behar 1995; Kondo 1986, 1990; Narayan 1993). My social identities, which manifested in my name, speech, and general demeanor during interviews and other forms of interactions, were also invested with certain significances by the individuals I encountered, regardless of my intention as an ethnographer. For instance, I believe that my embodied Japaneseness influenced, to varying degrees and in different ways, my interactions with Okinawan-Bolivian interviewees. On the one hand, as one’s connection to Japan—perceived or real—served as valuable symbolic capital within the Okinawan-Bolivian community, my interviewees might have been tempted, if not compelled, to be overzealous in exhibiting their “Japanese” identity in front of me, a Naichi-jin Japanese; on the other hand, as longtime residents of Bolivia facing a Japanese student researcher, they eagerly shared their “native” knowledge of Bolivian society with me.22Â� My age, gender, and occupation as a young (late twenties) male graduate student with an urban, middle-class background as well as my residence in the United States also factored into my research and general interactions with Okinawan-Bolivians. Most significantly, the fact that Yokohama is my hometown facilitated my conversations with Issei and Nisei; all Okinawan-Bolivian interviewees asked me, at one point or another, where I was originally from, and once they found out that I used to live where their children, relatives,


15

friends, and/or themselves had lived, they became more eager to talk about the topic of dekasegi in general. My background as a doctoral student, in contrast, had a more ambiguous impact. It sometimes appeared to stir respect and/or a feeling of inferiority among some interviewees, as few Okinawan-Bolivians had postgraduate education; other times, it incited playful ridicule from them, for I was “still a student” in my late twenties, without a “real job” and “real income” (one Nichibo Kyōkai staff member asked me, with mocking seriousness, if I would like to come back and work for the organization after I finished graduate school, as he predicted that I would fail to find a decent job). Some female interviewees I tried to contact were hesitant to meet me at their homes for an interview, citing their numerous household chores and the absence of their husbands during the day. Many nevertheless were comfortable speaking in “standard” Japanese and were willing to speak about school affairs, about which they were well informed. Consequently, while it was true that in the Okinawan-Bolivian community, as anthropologist Takeyuki Tsuda discovered in his field research in Japanese factories, male researchers often have more difficulty accessing female informants than women do with male informants (2003, 22–23), the Okinawan-Bolivian women’s familiarity with the Japanese language and my role as a teacher at their children’s school—considered a “female” domain in the community—helped me to establish a rapport with many Issei and Nisei women over the period.23 The interplay of these preexisting social categories and roles in the community and my personal background presented advantages and disadvantages for my fieldwork, reminding me that, as Andrea Louie writes, I was “a subject of my own research, if only in the ways that others perceived and interacted with me” (2004, 9), whether I was willing or not. The majority of my interviews with Okinawan-Bolivian and Naichi-jin residents in the Colonia were conducted in “standard” Japanese rather than the Okinawan language (Uchināguchi) or Spanish, while the interviews with nonNikkei local Bolivians were conducted in Spanish.24 Overall, Issei were most comfortable in communicating in Uchināguchi and were very competent in Japanese but were not fluent in Spanish (Anbo et al. 1998, 246). My request for interviews was occasionally turned down by Issei, who cited their discomfort in communicating in “standard” Japanese, as I could not speak to them fluently in Uchināguchi. Nevertheless, a vast majority of Issei and Nisei women had no problem communicating in “standard” Japanese, and they spoke far more comfortably in “standard” Japanese than in Spanish. Meanwhile, some of the interviewsÂ� with Nisei, many of whom were more comfortable with SpanishÂ�

16

INTRODUCTION

than with either Japanese or Okinawan, were conducted in both Spanish and Japanese. Some Nisei, particularly men, were clearly not very comfortable speaking in Japanese, even though few seemed to have difficulty understanding me when I spoke Japanese. As a result, our conversations mixed Spanish and Japanese.25 Finally, my study involved archival research at the Nichibo Kyōkai headquarters. For three months, I worked for the association part time, cleaning and organizing the old documents in storage. In exchange for this service, I was allowed access to the official and unofficial documents in the archive, including the existing records of the Colonia’s population changes over the past two decades. Because of the poor preservation and organization of the documents, I was unable to conduct my archival research in a systematic manner. The information I obtained through archival research was, therefore, at best fragmented, although some of the documents, such as the copies of the association’s community notices and transcripts of board meetings, compensated for my lack of access to the formal board meetings at Nichibo Kyōkai.

Tsurumi, Yokohama In 1998, the number of Bolivian nationals in Japan was reported to be 3,461 by the Japanese government, but with those who have dual citizenship added, the population was estimated to be closer to 4,000 (Ikuno 2000, 294). Most Okinawan-Bolivians migrated to Kanagawa Prefecture or, more specifically, to the cities of Hiratsuka, Atsugi, Yokohama, and Kawasaki. The Tsurumi Ward of Yokohama became a major destination for dekasegi migrants from Colonia Okinawa, especially the Nakadōri and Ushioda neighborhoods. Although the total Okinawan-Bolivian population has never been recorded, one researcher counted twenty-one businesses in Tsurumi that were owned by OkinawanBolivians from Colonia Okinawa, and at least 102 Okinawan-Bolivians lived in the district in 1994 (Tsujimoto 1998c, 320, 326). I conducted my fieldwork in Yokohama from June to October 2000. Unlike in Colonia Okinawa, the Okinawan-Bolivian community in Yokohama, as in other Japanese cities, was neither geographically confined nor tightly knit. There was little daily contact and few community events that drew a large number of Okinawan-Bolivians. Instead, most socialization took place spontaneously and privately among families, relatives, and personal friends. I made several attempts to contact Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in the area to conduct interviews, but as they were preoccupied with work and family affairs,


17

I was able to conduct only a few formal interviews and had difficulty creating and expanding networks for my research. In addition, a formal organization among Okinawan-Bolivians in Tsurumi, Boribia Shinboku-kai, or the Bolivia Friendship Association, was defunct by the time I went to Japan. I conducted much of my research, consequently, at workplaces and through an informal social network. In addition to frequenting the Okinawan-Bolivian–owned restaurants in Tsurumi, where I often encountered, conversed, and had drinks with dekasegi migrants from Colonia Okinawa, I worked as an electrician at T Denki, a Nisei-owned electrical installation firm in Tsurumi, for three months. As one of the T Denki staff, I went to work at several construction sites in Kanagawa Prefecture and the Tokyo Metropolitan Area with Okinawan-Bolivians. I worked side by side with these T Denki electricians, who were mostly young Nisei men in their twenties, and observed their work and interactions with Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and coworkers, and among themselves, at various sites. I chatted with them while commuting from the meeting place in Tsurumi to the day’s work site, during the breaks, and on the trip back to Tsurumi. I often spent time at the company office, which was the T Denki president’s apartment, and drank beer and chatted with them. I did not conduct any formal interviews with my coworkers, but the informal conversations with these electricians turned out to be more revealing than the formal interviews I had with other Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in the area, for the electricians were more relaxed and willing to talk openly about their pasts, their current lives in Japan, and their future plans. Although I told most of them about my status as a graduate student at a United States university and my intention to write my tesis (dissertation) on Colonia Okinawa and dekasegi migrants in Japan, I was not always able to make a point of informing the Japanese Naichi-jin workers at the construction sites, where opportunities for prolonged conversation were severely limited. My Okinawan-Bolivian coworkers appeared less interested in my academic background and research objectives than in my experience as a Japanese-language teacher who had lived in Colonia Okinawa for an extended period of time. Even though my background gave me partial “insider” status among them, I was primarily regarded as a “Japanese” citizen who possessed cultural and symbolic capital in the larger Japanese society. My privilege as a “Japanese”—and Naichi-jin—became apparent in certain situations. For instance, while they talked mostly in Spanish among themselves, mixed with a number of “standard” Japanese terms and phrases and a few Okinawan ones, the electricians seemed to feel compelled to switch to “standard” Japanese, which they spoke fluently,

18

INTRODUCTION

even after they realized that I mostly understood their conversations in Spanish. They were also clearly uncomfortable reading and writing in Japanese, so they often asked me to help them read road signs while we were driving to the construction sites and to fill out the employment registration forms in Japanese at the job sites. My interactions and conversations with my coworkers were, therefore, inevitably affected by their ambivalent feelings toward me; they felt they were superior to me as more experienced and skilled technicians yet inferior to me as less privileged members of the Japanese society at large. Other than accounts of the particular conditions in which these electricians worked, my discussion of Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi experiences in Japan relies heavily on recollections by those living in Colonia Okinawa who had returned from dekasegi in Japan. Given the considerable diversity among Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi experiences, resulting from their differences in location of residence, workplace, gender, generation, age, and other factors involved, I do not claim that my participant-observation at construction sites along with T Denki electricians objectively and comprehensively captures the dekasegi migrants’ work and life experiences in general. Instead, in this book I try to present a glimpse of the migrants’ everyday work and lives in urban Japan that configured their subject positions.

Organization of the Book Chapter 1 outlines the modern history of the Okinawan diaspora in three sections: the history of Okinawan immigration to Bolivia in the prewar and postwar periods, the foundation and transformation of Colonia Okinawa in eastern Bolivia, and the factors and processes of Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration to urban Japan since the 1980s. In rendering the history, the chapter highlights the fact that Okinawan immigration and settlement in Colonia Okinawa and dekasegi migration to Yokohama are not merely population movements driven by local and global political economies but an illuminating case of the continuing displacement and struggle of colonial and postcolonial subjects. The chapter contextualizes the prewar and postwar waves of Okinawan emigration to Bolivia within this turbulent history of Okinawa and the Okinawan diaspora and describes in detail the postwar Okinawan migration to Bolivia, which was planned and sponsored by the United States military administration and the United States–backed Okinawan government during the occupation. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Okinawan settlers in Colonia Okinawa increasingly defined themselves as “Japanese,” rather than “Okinawan,” subjects, vis-à-


19

vis non-Nikkei “Bolivians,” as they asserted themselves as powerful upper-class patrones (large-scale farm owners). The chapter ends with a discussion of various contributing factors to the dekasegi migration since the 1980s, despite the Okinawan-Bolivians’ privileged class position in Colonia Okinawa, against the backdrop of changing socioeconomic conditions surrounding Colonia Okinawa, Bolivia in general, and Japan. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 provide ethnographic evidence to illustrate the processes of racialized belonging in key “critical sites” (Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 153): the workplace, educational institutions, and family and gender relationships. Chapters 2 and 3 contrast the class positions that Okinawan-Bolivians occupied in Colonia Okinawa with their positions in Yokohama and depict the ways in which their different class positions manifested in their interactions (or, in certain situations, lack thereof ) with their local Others—such as nonNikkei Bolivian laborers and native-born Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers and supervisors—at their respective workplaces. The ethnographic descriptions of and narratives provided by Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners in Colonia Okinawa and dekasegi migrant workers at construction sites in Yokohama not only exhibit the privileges that Okinawan-Bolivians enjoyed in rural Bolivia and the struggles they faced in urban Japan, but also show how both the OkinawanBolivians and their Others symbolically linked their class positions with their purportedly innate cultural (“Japanese,” “Bolivian/Latin American,” or “Okinawan”) characteristics. As a result, Okinawan-Bolivians’ class positions visà-vis their Others were primarily interpreted not as products of global and local political economies but as “natural” expressions of their different “cultural” backgrounds. Chapter 4 focuses on educational institutions that actively sought to foster Okinawan-Bolivians as culturally hybrid subjects by infusing them with objectified and naturalized cultures. Specifically, the chapter examines OkinawanBolivian schools in Colonia Okinawa, where most Nisei and Sansei children received Japanese language education and learned about the Japanese and Okinawan cultures. In portraying the various school events in Colonia Okinawa, such as the school track meet and Japanese-language speech contest, the chapter demonstrates the ways in which these educational institutions enabled, even encouraged, Okinawan-Bolivian youth to form, nurture, and embody their identities through the terms and images of essentialized and naturalized (Japanese, Okinawan, and Bolivian) cultures. These educational institutions in effect shaped Okinawan-Bolivian youth into transnational subjects who have developed an ambiguous sense of belonging in either Bolivia or Japan.

20

INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 5, my discussion turns to gender and family relationships among Okinawan-Bolivians, which often underwent drastic transformations during their migrations between Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan. The gender relationships among Okinawan-Bolivians were defined and practiced in the public, communal, and domestic spheres of the Okinawan-Bolivian community in Colonia Okinawa through subtly yet strictly defined male and female gender roles and codes of behaviors at workplaces, in community functions, and in homes. The gender division was further complicated by sociospatial segregation of Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivian men and women coexisting in these settings. Once Okinawan-Bolivians moved to a Japanese city, such as Yokohama, the gender divergence among Okinawan-Bolivians was often challenged by the radically different economic and social responsibilities assigned to the migrants in these urban settings, where both men and women worked as manual laborers and often earned a comparable amount of income. The chapter also sheds light on intermarriages between Okinawan-Bolivians and nonNikkei Bolivians, and between Okinawan-Bolivians and Japanese Naichi-jin. These couples not only faced changing gender roles and codes of behavior in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan, but also coped with highly racialized and sexualized stereotypes of “Bolivians” held by other Okinawan-Bolivians and of “South Americans” (and, to a lesser extent, “Okinawans”) held by Japanese Naichi-jin in-laws. Their stories reveal how Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject positions were profoundly mediated by the different gendered norms in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan. In my conclusion I draw together the data on Okinawan-Bolivians’ contradictory subject positions in Bolivia and Japan in order to theorize the meaning of racialization in a transnational context. The various subject-makings of Okinawan-Bolivians—as “Japanese” farm owners in Colonia Okinawa and as “South American” manual laborers in Yokohama, as “good Bolivians of Japanese descent” in educational institutions in Bolivia, and as part of an “Okinawan” diasporic brotherhood and sisterhood across the globe—exemplify a social process of citizenship, conferring individuals with different degrees and modes of belonging in the respective locales. This study reiterates that, in studying and theorizing race, class, and culture in the globally interconnected world today, we can use anthropological techniques to discern the ways in which political, economic, and social institutions and everyday practices of individuals together shape and reshape the meanings and expressions of these concepts. The quotations from the subjects in this book are from formal interviews,


21

informal conversations in which I was involved, or observations recorded in my fieldnotes. Throughout the book, the names of individuals are pseudonyms, although the names of official organizations, such as schools and state institutions, are not. Although many individuals I quote or portray will be well known to other members of the community in Colonia Okinawa and Tsurumi, I have tried to conceal their identities as far as possible. Where quotes were originally spoken in Japanese, Spanish, or both, I italicize the words uttered in a language different from that of the rest of the quote. For Japanese names, I maintain the typical order of family name first, given name second (e.g., “Suzuki Taku” instead of “Taku Suzuki”), while for Spanish and English names, I employ given name first, family name second to minimize alteration of actual enunciations.

[1]

MODERN OKINAWAN TRANSNATIONALITY: COLONIALISM, DIASPORA, AND “RETURN”

During my research in Colonia Okinawa, I repeatedly heard a popular anecdote from Okinawan-Bolivian returnees from Japan after several years of dekasegi. The anecdote went like this: Growing up, they spoke only Japanese with their parents and friends in Colonia Okinawa. When they decided to go to work in Japan for the first time, therefore, they were very confident that they could easily “pass” as Japanese, because the Okinawan-Bolivians spoke their language fluently, looked the same as Japanese, and possessed a Japanese passport. When the Okinawan-BoliviansÂ� landed at New Tokyo International Airport and reached the immigration counter, however, they were shocked. The Japanese immigration officials did not seem to understand what the Nisei were saying. They wondered, as one interviewee jokingly told me, “Why don’t Japanese people understand the Japanese language?” This was when the Nisei realized that the language they had spoken in Colonia Okinawa, which they had firmly believed to be “normal” Japanese, was in fact Uchināguchi (the Okinawan language), which most Japanese Naichi-jin would not understand.1 This seemingly innocent and comical anecdote encapsulates the drastic identity transformations that Okinawan-Bolivians have experienced in the last sixty years, during which their often ambiguous subject positions were constituted and reconstituted. In this chapter, I outline three periods of Okinawan and Okinawan-Bolivian migrations: Okinawan immigration to western Bolivia before the 1950s, Okinawan immigration to Colonia Okinawa in east22

MODERN OKINAWAN TRANSNATIONALITY

23

ern Bolivia from the 1950s to the 1970s, and Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration to Japan from the 1980s to the 1990s. These three distinct waves of Okinawan and Okinawan-Bolivian migration reflect Okinawa’s colonial and postcolonial relationships with Japan throughout the twentieth century and the Okinawan diaspora’s shifting subject positions within those relationships. Pre-1950s immigrants to Bolivia were part of a larger trend of Okinawan exodus under the Japanese imperial rule of Okinawa. Issei who grew up in prewar and wartime Okinawa were ambiguous Japanese national subjects until 1945 and then became nationless—neither Japanese nor American—subjects under the United States military occupation after 1945. For those Issei, the three decades after immigration to Bolivia in the 1950s brought about a gradual process of self-identifying simply as Japanese instead of as Okinawans. In the 1980s, limited employment opportunities in the mainstream Bolivian economy and a labor shortage in the manufacturing and construction industries in Japan, along with Issei’s anxiety about their children’s cultural assimilation into rural Bolivian society, prompted the mass emigration of Nisei to urban Japan. Throughout the history of immigration, settlement, and dekasegi re-migration, Okinawan-Bolivians have been placed at the margins of what anthropologist Liisa Malkki (1995) calls “the national order of things.” To address the marginal and often ambiguous nationalities that Okinawans and OkinawanBolivians have been assigned, particularly in relation to Japanese Naichi-jin, my discussion here does not regard Okinawans as a discretely bounded group of individuals who can be objectively distinguished from Japanese Naichi-jin. Instead, following Tomiyama Ichirō, a historian of modern Okinawa and the Okinawan diaspora, I view “Okinawans” not as a group of individuals who innately possess discernible “Okinawan culture and identity” but as a discursive category that has been assigned to those who were produced as “Okinawans” in modern Japanese society (Tomiyama 1990, 3). As Nomura Kōya, an Okinawan sociologist, argues, the political and psychological violence of Japanese colonialism from the late nineteenth century to 1945 “constructed Okinawans as those who are not Japanese” (Nomura 2005, 42–43). Thus, the history of Okinawan and Okinawan-Bolivian migrations summarized in this chapter exemplifies the ways in which the colonized subjects encountered and reacted to the “colonizing gaze” (Pratt 1992) cast upon them, which created the racialized categories of colonizers and colonized, rendering their differences as absolute and “natural.”

24

CHAPTER ONE

The Japanese “Family State” and the Okinawan Diaspora Formerly an autonomous kingdom that prospered as an international trade hub in East Asia, Okinawa (Ryūkyū) became imperial Japan’s laboratory for producing “Japanese” national subjects, the colonial agenda that was later applied to the peoples in Taiwan, Micronesia, and the Korean peninsula (Ching 2001; Oguma 1998; Tomiyama 1997, 2002). Within the nationalist ideologies and colonial discourses, Okinawans and the Okinawan diaspora were encouraged to self-acculturate into Japanese society, yet they were rarely granted equal legal and socioeconomic status with those of Naichi-jin Japanese, whether the Okinawans were in Okinawa Prefecture or migratory destinations. Contrary to the common perception of prewar Japan as a nation-state that boasted of its cultural homogeneity and racial purity, historian Oguma Eiji (1995) argues that the imperial regime often proclaimed Japan to be “an empire of mixed-ethnos,” a union of multiethnic and heterogeneous Asian peoples. This self-image of a multiethnic Japan was legitimated by the ideology of a “family state” (kazoku kokka), within which diverse ethnic groups within the empire were unified as a family of common ancestry. The ideology of a multiethnic family state justified Japan’s colonial expansion not only as repatriation of the “original” Japanese peoples who resided in the neighboring regions, but also as the paternalistic readoption of the colonized Asians as those who had been wrongly raised and therefore were underdeveloped “children” of the Japanese nation (Christy 1997, 153). In effect, the family state ideology produced an ambiguous boundary between the Japanese Self and colonized Others, and eradicated “any sense of guilt or responsibility in the [Naichi-jin Japanese] perpetrators” (Ching 2001, 107). The metaphor of family reflects a certain notion of the household institution, or ie, in Japan, which is best conceived as a corporate residential group whose membership is not rigidly defined by blood relationships (Nakane 1970; Smith 1974).2 While it is true that the flexibility of the ie allows any outsider to become a member of the family and to be treated with benevolence by the household head, the adopted member was also expected, if not forced, to abandon any connection to his original family, change his family name, and obey the rules of the new household. Moreover, the notion of ie contains a “natural” hierarchical order within it: between husband and wife, parents and children, and elder siblings and younger ones. Within the new family, adopted children must “naturally” and happily assume subordinate positions in relation to those who are above them (Oguma 1995, 388).


25

The ie metaphor frequently appeared in writings by prewar Japanese intellectuals and politicians about the Japanese empire and Okinawa’s position within it. As adopted children, the authors claimed, Okinawans were expected not only to abandon their previous customs, beliefs, and language to become indistinguishable members of the Japanese nation, but also to “naturally” obey the ie’s household head: Naichi-jin and their national government.3 Okinawans were, consequently, saddled with a profoundly ambivalent identity: they were perceived as authentic, even “original,” Japanese long estranged from Naichijin, yet they were never allowed the same rights as Naichi-jin (Christy 1997, 158–159; Oguma 1995, 374–376). It took decades after the Japanese government’s annexation of the Ryūkyū Islands in 1879 for Okinawans to achieve the same legal rights as Naichi-jin under the national constitution, while cultural and linguistic assimilation, or dōka, policies were still enforced by the Japanese government (Oguma 1998, chapter 5).4 Okinawa’s ambiguous status within the Japanese nation-state created a psychological trauma for Okinawans, especially when they encountered Japanese Naichi-jin after immigrating to the Japanese mainland or overseas. A massive emigration of Okinawans began soon after annexation, due to the increasingly unstable Okinawan economy caused by the Japanese government’s promotion of monocultural sugarcane production in the prefecture. The first group of Okinawans moved to Hawai‘i in 1899, and by 1927 some 26,500 Okinawans had migrated overseas (Sakihara 1981, 15; see also Ishikawa 1973; Tomiyama 1990; Rabson 2003). Even in overseas migratory destinations, however, Okinawans could not entirely escape the colonial stigma of being “almost the same, but not quite” Naichi-jin (Bhabha 1994, 86).5 As many historians and journalists reported, Naichi-jin émigrés in Hawai‘i, Brazil, and the islands of Micronesia often regarded their Okinawan counterparts as “the other Japanese” (Kaneshiro 2002; Ueunten 2002) and blatantly discriminated against them, accusing them of being lazy, dirty, heavy-drinking, and, therefore, less civilized than Naichi-jin (Ige 1981; Miki 1988; Peattie 1988; Tomiyama 1997; Toyama and Ikeda 1981).6 A common reaction by Okinawan émigrés in these destinations to the Naichi-jin’s prejudice was to strengthen their identification with their Japanese nationality and relinquish what were perceived as uniquely Okinawan customs and behaviors.7 For instance, sociologists Mori Kōichi (2000, 2003) and Kozy Amemiya (1999a) found that the leaders of Okinawan immigrant communities in prewar Brazil, who had been looked down upon by Naichi-jin immigrants and often neglected by the Japanese government, actively referred to themselves as part of the larger Japanese immigrant community in their publicÂ�

26

CHAPTER ONE

addressesÂ� and launched the “Lifestyle Reform Movement” (seikatsu kaizen undō), which prohibited them from speaking Uchināguchi (the Okinawan language) or playing sanshin, a traditional Okinawan musical instrument, in public.8 After World War II, Okinawan-Brazilians, especially Nisei, who foresaw that their future would lie in Brazil, began to describe themselves as ken-jin (prefectural people) and koronia-jin (people from an agricultural settlement), rather than Okinawa-jin (Okinawans), to minimize their outsider status in the Japanese-Brazilian community (Mori 2003, 43).9 In other instances, Okinawan émigrés also amplified their hostility toward and, occasionally, discrimination against the local (non-Japanese/Okinawan) residents to be more closely associated with Naichi-jin immigrants. In the Micronesian islands during the 1930s, Okinawan émigrés worked in harsher working conditions and received lower wages than their Naichi-jin counterparts on sugarcane plantations. The Okinawan émigrés responded to the prejudice from the Naichi-jin colonial bureaucrats, scholars, and their coworkers by amplifying discriminatory behaviors against native Micronesians to demonstrate their proximity to the JapaneseÂ�colonizers.10 Legal, socioeconomic, and psychological impacts of Japanese colonialism on Okinawans and the Okinawan diaspora notwithstanding, these experiences of Okinawan immigrants overseas reveal that the particular socioeconomic and political situations in the host societies either divide “Japanese” and “Okinawan” immigrant communities and identities or merge them. The Okinawan immigration to Bolivia and transformations of Okinawan-Bolivian communities in the prewar and postwar eras also demonstrate that the boundaries between “Japaneseness” and “Okinawanness” were variously drawn by Okinawans who left Okinawa under different circumstances and that the changing local and extralocal social conditions after their arrival in Bolivia influenced their interpretations of what it is to be Japanese, Okinawan, and/or Bolivian.

Before Colonia Okinawa: Prewar Immigration The first group of Okinawan immigrants in Bolivia entered the country via Peru, where they were contract laborers on sugarcane plantation. The first Okinawan immigrants to Peru, thirty-six men under the contract of the Meiji Colonization Company (Meiji Shokumin Gaisha) from Tokyo, arrived in Callao in 1906. After suffering from low wages and poor living conditions at a British-owned sugar plantation in coastal Peru, a group of thirty Okinawans left for Bolivia to work for the Inca Rubber Company, a United States enterprise, in 1910 (Tigner


27

1954, 474).11 In the 1890s, when automobile production in North America and Europe dramatically increased, rubber became a highly desirable commodity worldwide (Kunimoto 2000, 116). The rubber industry in the Bolivian Upper Amazon, one of the few major rubber-producing areas in the world at the time, was booming and attracting workers from around the world. During the peak years of the rubber economy in the 1910s, some forty Okinawans worked in the city of Riberalta and surrounding rainforest.12 After the international rubber market collapsed in the mid-1910s, most Okinawans settled in cities like Riberalta, Trinidad, Oruro, and La Paz (Satō 1997, 22; Tigner 1954, 476). The number of Okinawans in Riberalta reached fifty-five in 1930; among them only three were women (Shioiri 2000, 159; Tigner 1954, 475). The growth of the Okinawan population in Bolivia was very limited after the peak of the rubber economy, and many Okinawan immigrants left Bolivia altogether, leaving the Okinawan population before the 1950s relatively small: the estimated Okinawan Issei population in 1952 was ninety-four (seventy-four men and twenty-two women), with 220 Nisei (Tigner 1954, 471).13 The number of Naichi-jin immigrants also remained small during the same period; the only increase came from the practice of yobiyose (summoning family members, relatives, and friends from the homeland) by the immigrants already living in Bolivia (Table 1). While records of prewar Okinawan immigrants are scarce, available accounts indicate that unlike Okinawan émigrés in Hawai‘i or Micronesia, who suffered discrimination by Naichi-jin (Sellek 2003, 79–80) and formed, in response, self-segregated Okinawan enclaves, the Okinawan immigrants in BoliviaÂ� reportedly neither experienced conflicts with Naichi-jin immigrants nor established exclusive communities apart from them. Business partnerships table 1.â•‡

Prewar Naichi-jin and Okinawan immigrant populations in Bolivia

1900–1915 1915–1941 Total

NAICHI-JIN

OKINAWANS

300 (re-migrants from Peru)




25 (yobiyose from Japan)

29 (yobiyose from Okinawa)

433

126

Source: Tigner 1954, 477

28

CHAPTER ONE

and intermarriage between Okinawans and Naichi-jin were not uncommon, and both groups participated in pan-Nikkei organizations. In fact, unlike most other Okinawan immigrant communities overseas, Okinawans in Bolivia never established a kenjinkai (prefectural people’s association) in the prewar years; instead, they cofounded the first Japanese Association with other Naichi-jin immigrants in La Paz in 1922. Okinawans apparently had equal standing with Naichi-jin members within the association, evidenced by the fact that all nineteen Okinawans living in La Paz in 1952 belonged to the association, and Okinawans occupied three of the ten seats on the board of directors. As was observed in 1954, it seemed that in Bolivia Naichi-jin discrimination against Okinawans was minimal, and, consequently, Okinawans showed little sign of an “inferiority complex” (Tigner 1954, 484) toward Naichi-jin. A pressing issue for Okinawans in Bolivia was the fragmentation of the Okinawan immigrant community into socioeconomically successful members in urban areas, largely business owners and professionals, and struggling members in rural areas, mostly small-scale shopkeepers and laborers.14 The gap in socioeconomic status between the two groups also affected their marriage patterns. While Okinawans in La Paz by the 1930s had accumulated enough wealth to bring so-called picture brides from Okinawa Prefecture to Bolivia, the vast majority of those in rural areas intermarried with non-Nikkei Bolivian women (Tigner 1954, 485, 487–497; Furuki 2000, 134–135).15 It was reported that many of the Issei Okinawans who married poor Bolivian women struggled economically, while a small number of those who married yobiyose Okinawan women or non-Nikkei Bolivian women of middle- or upper-class backgrounds were affluent business owners in cities.16 It was within this context that ethnic Okinawan community leaders called for a new Okinawan immigration and settlement project after World War II, as a way of not only rescuing their ancestral homeland from the devastation of the war, but also revitalizing their own ethnic communities in Bolivia. In 1949, after raising funds and sending goods to war-ravaged Okinawa to help their countrymen, President Gushi Kanchō of the Riberalta Association for Rescuing Okinawa from War Damage (Riberaruta Okinawa Sensai Kyūen-kai) proposed a plan to build an “Okinawan village” (Okinawa-mura) in Bolivia to “truly rescue our Okinawan brothers” and to “strive for our everlasting national development” (Gushi, quoted in Aniya 1995, 57). After Gushi and others searched for an ideal location for the settlement, the Uruma Agricultural Society (Uruma Nōgyō Kumiai) was founded by sixteen Issei Okinawans in 1949.17 The society purchased 2,500 hectares of land in Santa Cruz Prefecture, hoping


29

that not only new immigrants from Okinawa but also Okinawans from all over Bolivia would join in the construction of the new village. One of the founding members of the Uruma Society expressed his hope for the plan: “For the purpose of raising our successors in this country, this plan must be materialized” (Aniya 1995, 57). It is worth noting that most Uruma Society members, who were eager to bring new Okinawan immigrants to Bolivia, were from Riberalta and Santa Cruz rather than La Paz, the urban center where most of the prosperous Okinawans resided. Witnessing fellow Okinawan immigrants’ rapid assimilation into Bolivian society and declining socioeconomic status, the construction of “an Okinawan village” represented to them a means to regenerate the fledgling ethnic communities. The postwar Okinawan immigration project was, in this sense, conceived as the prewar Okinawan immigrants’ effort to maintain racialized boundaries vis-à-vis non-Nikkei Bolivians, especially those of rural and lower-class backgrounds.

Postwar Okinawa and the Emigration Project The Okinawan-Bolivian community was dramatically transformed, or, more accurately, reinvented, by the new immigration that began in 1954. In addition to the aforementioned ethnic Okinawan community leaders in Bolivia, the immigration and settlement project was orchestrated by three major institutions—the United States military administration of Okinawa, the local Okinawan (Ryūkyū) government overseen by the United States military administration, and the Bolivian government—all of which had different motivations and intentions. The United States military administration played the most significant role in planning and executing the Colonia Okinawa project. The tragic Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945, during which one-fourth of the entire population of Okinawa Prefecture’s main island (Hontō) died, was followed by Japan’s surrender to the Allies on August 15. Immediately, the United States military assumed governance of Okinawa’s land and population, an arrangement that would last for twenty-seven years, until Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972. Instead of returning the land to Japan, the United States government decided to retain Okinawa and to transform the islands into the largest United States military stronghold in East Asia against the perceived communist threat in the region. This peculiar mode of governance by the United States military transformed Okinawans from colonized subjects under imperial Japan into nationless subjects with no legal protection under any state constitution. In

30

CHAPTER ONE

DecemberÂ� 1950, the military administration was renamed the United States Civil Administration of the Ryūkyū Islands (USCAR), which subsequently founded the Government of the Ryūkyū Islands (the Ryūkyū government hereafter) in 1952. The Ryūkyū government consisted of locally elected officials and was in charge of the administrative and legislative functions of Okinawa but was obliged to obey executive orders from USCAR, which also maintained the right to nominate the government’s head.18 With the memories of the oppressive dōka (cultural and linguistic assimilation) policies by the Japanese government in the preceding years and the Imperial Army’s violence against Okinawan civilians during the Battle of Okinawa still vivid, many Okinawans initially welcomed governance by the United States. Their hopes for a better future, however, quickly dissipated as the United States government showed little interest in protecting Okinawans’ rights. Unlike the Japanese government, which had “adopted” Okinawa as a “child” of the Japanese family state, the United States government had no intention of annexing Okinawa or legally naturalizing and culturally Americanizing Okinawans. The United States government’s main goal in Okinawa was, after all, “to provide a stable environment for the construction of military bases” (Yoshimi 2003, 442).19 Â� Many local Okinawans, with few employment opportunities in the wartorn islands, worked at the military facilities, but they were paid substantially lower wages than the legal minimum wage set by the Ryūkyū government’s labor laws. Without legal protection under the United States or Japanese constitution, local Okinawan workers were not allowed collective bargaining, and those who protested or disobeyed USCAR’s orders were accused of being communists and often arrested on civil disturbance charges (Oguma 1998, 504, 474–476).20 As Okinawans became increasingly pessimistic about their future in Okinawa under United States rule, many looked for a way to leave Okinawa to improve their lives. Many Issei in Colonia Okinawa were among those who had once worked unhappily for the United States military and sought emigration as a way to escape. Responding to a survey conducted by Okinawan researchers, approximately 10 percent of Issei cited their dislike of living under United States occupation, especially of working for the military, as a primary reason for their decision to emigrate (Nakayama et al. 1986, 45).21 Okinawans’ frustration grew further as the United States military began expanding the bases on the island in the wake of the Korean War in June 1950. In April 1953, USCAR released the Compulsory Land Expropriation Order, which permitted the military to remove Okinawan residents and to seize their


31

land regardless of the landowners’ will. By the end of 1953, United States bases occupied 14 percent of the entire main island, or 42 percent of the island’s farmland (Ōshiro 1992, 99).22 Postwar Okinawa’s job and land shortages were further compounded by the mass return of Okinawans from the former oversea territories of imperial Japan. Immediately after the war, all Japanese civilians, including approximately 100,000 Okinawans—nearly one-third of the prefecture’s total population at the time—in Japan’s overseas territories were ordered by the United States to return to Japan (JICA Okinawa 1985, 44). Those who returned to Okinawa, a total of 56,900, without farmland or employment had no choice but to take service jobs on the United States military bases. It was no surprise that a survey by the Ryūkyū government revealed that the majority of the returnees from former Japanese colonies expressed their wish to re-emigrate overseas (Sellek 2003, 86). Those who immigrated to Colonia Okinawa were among those who were eager to re-emigrate. Nearly one-third of Issei in Colonia Okinawa had once lived outside Okinawa or the Japanese mainland, and among them, three-fourths were returnees from former Japanese colonies, such as Taiwan, Micronesia, and Manchuria (Nakayama et al. 1986, 31–32). During my own fieldwork, I also encountered a number of Issei who had spent their childhood or adolescence in “Nan’yō” (Southern Sea, a Japanese term for Micronesia)—for example, Saipan and Palau—and Manchuria, and found the return to devastated and crowded Okinawa after the war very difficult. An Issei interviewee told me why he applied for the emigration project after a number of attempts to emigrate during the war: My father lived in the Philippines when he was young. He used to tell me stories about his experience [in the Philippines] . . . growing Manila cotton, the local people’s lifestyles, deforesting in Mindanao [Island], and so forth. As a boy, I listened to his tales and dreamed, “Someday I will also emigrate.” . . . During the war, I wanted to go to Manchuria badly, wanted to join the Manchuria Colonization Team (Manshū Kaitaku-dan). . . . So I had always dreamed of [large-scale] “continental farming” [tairiku nōgyō]. . . . But before I could actually go there, the war ended. . . . I returned to Okinawa [from the Japanese mainland] a few years after the war ended. . . . I farmed only for a year or so before I was hired by the [United States] military, then I became a member of the Special Police [tokkei] under the military. . . . But my desire had always been to enjoy life with all my family in one large home. Then, I heard about the Bolivia immigration project.

32

CHAPTER ONE

Okinawan returnees from the former colonies of imperial Japan who viewed overseas migration as a chance to escape from the confinement of Okinawa waited impatiently for an opportunity (see Ishiki 1995; Amemiya 1999c). USCAR and the Ryūkyū government, who were well aware of Okinawans’ growing frustration with the land shortage, unemployment or underemployment, and their legal status as second-class citizens, considered a sponsored emigration project as a possible solution, which they also believed might prevent communism from spreading in the islands. They sent James L. Tigner of the Hoover Institute and Library at Stanford University to numerous Latin American countries in search of a possible destination for the Okinawan emigrants. Tigner and Paul H. Skuse, the chief of the Public Safety Division of USCAR, explained the value of the project: The Okinawan people are traditionally farmers and ownership of land is one of their most cherished desires in life. Okinawa, with its rising population and decreasing areas of available land, will offer progressively less future for the farming population. Restiveness and dissatisfaction will inevitably accompany the waning prospects of land ownership and fading hopes for an adequate livelihood, particularly among the youth of Okinawa. Since Communists appeal to the youth of a nation, and with apparent success in many areas of the Communist dominated world, the youth of Okinawa represent a potentially vulnerable element of the population. The prospects of obtaining large tracts of free land in a distant community as afforded by an emigration program will give fresh hope to the youth and in this way serve to cope with their discontent and susceptibility to the Communists’ false promises of reward. (Tigner 1954, 522) Although it is debatable whether land expropriation would have prompted the spread of communism in Okinawa, USCAR felt it needed a drastic measure to reduce the population pressure in the islands and appease the increasingly disgruntled Okinawans. Okinawans, facing a bleak future under the military occupation, embraced the emigration plan. Responding to the public notice for sponsored migration to Bolivia, which guaranteed fifty hectares of farmland for each migrant household, 3,591 applications were sent to the Ryūkyū government for the four hundred slots in only eighteen days (Ishikawa 1995, 31). As the migrants were expected to take part in hard physical labor, such as clearing land and farming,


33

and to reside in an underdeveloped area for a long period of time, commissions from local municipalities and the Ryūkyū government looked for candidates with previous farming experience and households with at least two members who could work immediately after their arrival in Bolivia. As a result, relatively young men in their twenties and thirties and their spouses and young children made up the majority of those who won the stiff competition (ibid., 26–30, 38–39). Many Issei interviewees in Colonia Okinawa recalled how excited they were about the prospect of leaving the crowded and impoverished island, obtaining a large tract of farmland, and starting a new life in a foreign land. Taira Hiroshi, an Issei, told me: “After graduating from high school, I took jobs here and there [at the military bases]. Then I was attracted to the advertisement that said that I would be given fifty hectares [of farmland]. In Okinawa, there was no landlord who owned fifty hectares. My village as a whole was only sixtysome hectares large. When I was leaving for Bolivia, I was excited, thinking, ‘I will become a landlord of land as big as my village!’â†œ” USCAR considered Santa Cruz Prefecture of Bolivia a desirable destination for the Okinawan immigration and settlement project not only because of the campaign by the existing ethnic Okinawan communities in Bolivia to bring in new immigrants, but also because of the Bolivian government’s enthusiastic acceptance of Okinawan immigrants. The Bolivian government expected them to be a potent force to develop the fertile but sparsely populated land of Santa Cruz Prefecture, after numerous attempts to attract European immigrants to the area since the late nineteenth century had failed.23 After the national revolution of 1952 and the subsequent agrarian reform of 1953 by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario), the Bolivian government desperately needed to increase sagging agricultural production to meet domestic needs.24 Unlike in the western altiplano, where the Revolutionary Nationalist government rigorously pursued redistribution of latifundia, in the eastern lowland the government promoted an economic policy of “agricultural enterprise,” a mode of large-scale agricultural production using modern technology and wage labor, allowing a small number of affluent elites to retain large tracts of land. The government then funneled economic investments to the lowland regions and to individuals who had been less affected by the agrarian reform (Gill 1987, 36).25 Part of the new government’s economic development plan was domestic and international migration and settlement in the eastern lowland. North-central Santa Cruz was the destination of several such domestic migration and settlement programs. In encouraging the relocation of thousands of landless peasants from the altiplano to nationally owned

34

CHAPTER ONE

wilderness in the region, the government hoped to relieve population pressure in the altiplano and to divert attention away from the possibilities of a more radical agrarian reform (ibid., 38).26 Other settlements of foreign immigrants, including Italians, North American Mennonites, and Naichi-jin Japanese, were also being planned, but the Okinawan immigration and settlement program was the first project granted. The Bolivian government released an ordinance in June 1953, which revealed the government’s high expectation for the Okinawan immigrants’ productivity:Â� “The Bolivian government demands that all immigrants who would settle as farmers have a certain amount of agricultural and stock-raising experience. Those who do not fulfill these requirements . . . are subject to repatriate to the homeland at the expense of the Uruma Society” (cited in Oshimoto 1970, 75). In September 1952, USCAR officially mandated the Okinawan migration and settlement program in Santa Cruz Prefecture, allocating US$160,000 to cover the cost of transportation for the first four hundred immigrants. The plan was finalized in June 1953, when Bolivian President Paz Estenssoro granted permission for the entrance of 3,000 families or 12,000 individual Okinawan immigrants in a ten-year period, giving them nationally owned, heavily wooded land near the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The first group of settlers suffered from a mysterious epidemic disease, later named Uruma disease, which killed fifteen settlers in the first eight months, and had to move twice before finally moving into the current Colonia Uno, or Daiichi Ijūchi, location between 1955 and 1956. To accommodate the incoming Okinawan settlers, who reached nearly 1,000 in 1958, the Okinawan leaders purchased more land from the Bolivian government, expanding the settlement with the founding of Colonia Dos (Daini Ijūchi) in 1959 and Colonia Trés (Daisan Ijūchi) in 1962 near Colonia Uno. By 1964, the total Okinawan population in Colonia Okinawa was more than 3,200, or more than five hundred households (Table 2).

Semisubsistent Farming (1954–1960s) The early settlement years from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s were characterized by the Okinawan settlers’ relative independence from and neglect by the United States, Bolivian, and Japanese governments. This inattention by national authorities had three major implications for the settlers: First, they struggled to survive in an underdeveloped rural village with little financial and political support from the indifferent United States and Bolivian governments and the resource-strapped Ryūkyū government. Second, because of the

35


table 2.â•‡ No.

1

Ryu¯kyu¯ government-sponsored migration to Bolivia Group

Persons in

Households

Households

62

215

Singles

Total

Arrival Year/Month

57

272

1954/8

2

21

113

16

129

1954/9

3

29

109

13

122

1956/2

4

40

209

5

214

1957/12

5

44

215

5

220

1958/5

6

38

213

4

217

1959/1

7

45

242

2

244

1959/7

8

34

207

1

208

1959/9

9

19

124

5

129

1960/4

10

29

175

5

180

1960/6

11

23

156

0

156

1961/4

12

20

138

0

138

1961/6

13

27

185

0

185

1961/8

14

30

198

0

198

1962/4

15

28

193

0

193

1962/5

16

27

116

2

118

1962/7

17

16

120

0

120

1963/6

18

14

71

5

76

1963/6

19

19

98

4

102

1964/6

Total

565

3,097

124

3,221

Source: Ishikawa 1992, 33

Colonia’sÂ�social and geographic separation from the Japanese government and other Japanese Naichi-jin, the settlers were able to maintain Okinawan customs and language with relative ease. Finally, being placed within the local class and ethnic dynamics of lowland Bolivian society, the Okinawan settlers, who were still without legal citizenship, self-identified as “Japanese” national subjects and upper-class patrones, or large-scale farm owners, vis-à-vis the “Bolivian” laborers whom the settlers employed. Similar to the approach to Okinawa under the United States occupation, the Japanese government largely stayed out of Okinawan-Bolivian affairs, becauseÂ�

36

CHAPTER ONE

it was afraid of causing waves in its bilateral relationship with the United States. The Japanese government nonetheless continued to claim vaguely defined “residual sovereignty” over the Okinawans in Bolivia and was afraid that a failed Colonia Okinawa project might damage Japan’s international reputation (Tamashiro 1979, 96). The lack of legal citizenship troubled the Okinawans in Bolivia as it had back in Okinawa before the migration. An Issei interviewee, who immigrated to Bolivia in 1954, told me that when he and his friends traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, they were detained at the airport, because, according to the immigration official, their certificates were issued by “neither the Japanese nor the American government.” He bitterly recalled how unhelpful the Japanese embassy in São Paulo was and how helpless he felt as a citizen of no country.27 To meet the community’s basic needs, such as securing a water supply and maintaining roads in and around the village, officials from the Ryūkyū government had to negotiate with the Bolivian and the United States governments as well as with many international agencies to improve the Okinawan settlers’ welfare (Ijū 1987). The Okinawan settlers had hoped that the Japanese government would recognize them as its citizens and provide them with legal protection and technical, financial, and administrative assistance (Oshimoto 1970, 71).28 Even though the Okinawan settlers desired Japanese legal citizenship in hopes of obtaining assistance from the Japanese government, the community’s detachment from Naichi-jin and the Japanese government allowed the settlers a certain psychological freedom. Unlike the Okinawan immigrants elsewhere who organized a “Lifestyle Reform Movement,” those in Colonia Okinawa did not feel compelled to assimilate themselves into mainland Japanese culture, however it was defined.29 Issei recalled that although they learned “standard” Japanese in school when they grew up in Okinawa before immigrating to Bolivia, they hardly used it in Bolivia during the early settlement years, while those who had immigrated from Okinawa’s off-lying islands or rural villages on the northern main island (Hontō) remembered that they had to get used to the “standard” Okinawan language, which is used in the Shuri area of Hontō, because this language became the common means of communication among the settlers. In addition to language, the settlers maintained a variety of customs and arts from their ancestral villages in Okinawa. The second anniversary of the foundation of Colonia Okinawa in 1958,30 for instance, was celebrated with village theater (murashibai), plays based on a variety of local folktales of villages across Okinawa, Okinawan classical dance (Ryūkyū buyō), and sanshin recitals, all performed by the settlers themselves (Ijū 1987, 254). Some Issei


37

interviewees recalled that, during the early years of settlement, members of the community frequently gathered and ate Okinawan cuisine, such as roast pig, and enjoyed Okinawan folk songs, dances, and plays performed by fellow settlers in the Okinawan language at social functions such as harvest festivals and weddings. The Okinawan settlers’ relative isolation from the Japanese government and Japanese Naichi-jin resulted in the re-formation of the settlers’ group identity within the particular racial and ethnic contexts of lowland Bolivia. Bolivian society has been, Diego Saucedo argues, fundamentally structured around the class-stratified and racialized bipolarity between “Indians” (indios) and “whites” (blancos) (Saucedo 1996, 95). Blancos in modern Bolivia are not necessarily defined by their pale skin or Iberian origin, but they are those who “speak Spanish, and identify generally with western notions of civilization, progress, (neo) liberal market relations, and citizens’ rights,” and hold “sway over economic, legislative, and judicial power” (Stephenson 1999, 2–3). In contrast, indios are thought of as “impoverished, illiterate, and uncivilized subjects” and “situated politically and economically at the periphery of the incipient culture of modernity” (Larson 1995, 29, cited in Stephenson 1999, 3).31 While maintaining the underlying blanco-indio polarity of Bolivian society at large, Santa Cruz Prefecture has shaped its own unique race-class stratifications. Thanks to the prefecture’s geographic isolation from the altiplano until the twentieth century, Santa Cruz’s disproportionately large population of Spanish descendants who originally moved from the La Plata region, and the prefecture’s fierce desire to maintain local autonomy from political authorities, such as the Spanish viceroys in Peru during the colonial era and the revolvingdoor presidents of the newly independent Bolivia, Santa Cruz has created its own ethnoracial category, camba. The term camba, which is believed to have its origin in the Guaraní word meaning “friend,” initially referred to the peasant class in the region but has become over time an inclusive category for Santa Cruz residents, both peasants and landlords (Stearman 1985, 20). Camba for the most part are mestizo, mixed descendants of highland Indian (Quechua and Aymara), lowland Indian (Guaraní, Guarayo, Chiquitano, and many more), European (primarily from southern Spain), and perhaps African (former slaves who fled from Brazilian plantations) heritages. The category, therefore, alludes to the group’s presumably stronger European heritage in their genes and physical features than those living in the altiplano.32 Those who were identified as neither indio nor blanco in Bolivia, such as non-European immigrants and their descendants, had to either acculturateÂ�

38

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themselves to “pass” as blancos or demonstrate resources other than European heritage that indicated their familiarity with modernity to gain social prestige. For instance, Arabs and Jews in Bolivia, most of whom immigrated in the early twentieth century, are identified neither as indios nor simply as blancos, but instead as extranjeros, or foreigners. The category of extranjeros implies their integration into the industrial capitalist economy and international networks, thereby presenting them as “people who must be shown respect” and an “upper-level social group who are urban and worldly” (Osterweil 1998, 151), in contrast with bolivianos, who are viewed as being confined within the peripheries of the global political economy. In modern Bolivian society, in short, one’s race-as-capital draws its symbolic value from two sources: either being a blanco, whose presumed Iberian heritage supposedly manifests in an individual’s physical features and cultural practices, or being an extranjero, who is allegedly equipped with transnational resources that are unavailable to other bolivianos. Within these local racial-class dynamics, the Okinawan settlers were positioned, and positioned themselves, as Japanese extranjeros, thus gaining “upper-level social group” status in Colonia Okinawa. Soon after their arrival in the 1950s, the Okinawan settlers employed local camba as inexpensive labor for clearing fields and harvesting rice (Hiraoka 1980, 97; Mori 1998b, 37–38). The practice of hiring farming laborers was nothing new in this region. Before the agrarian reform in the 1950s, just as campesinos in the altiplano had been tied to the hacienda, an agricultural establishment inherited from the colonial era, poor lowlanders were subjugated to a large-scale farm called a finca. The finca owners, or patrones, in Santa Cruz tied their farm laborers, or peons, “not by a long tradition of servitude” on the hacienda but by debt that no peon could possibly pay off with their low wage (Stearman 1985, 28–29).33 With little experience in slash-and-burn agriculture and a lack of knowledge of local vegetation, the Okinawan settlers quickly realized the necessity of hiring local camba to clear the land, plant, and harvest. Patterning themselves after other camba patrones in the region, they had little difficulty finding and employing agricultural laborers for their farms, using a few phrases and words in Spanish—such as “how much,” “one hectare,” “cutting trees,” and “planting”—they learned from the dictionary (Mori 1998b, 38).34 Through this labor practice, the Okinawan settlers gradually established a distinction between themselves and those whom they referred to as Boribiajin (Bolivians) or genchi-jin (locals). Meanwhile, they were referred to simply as los japoneses by local camba, who did not or could not distinguish Okinawa


39

from Japan—the newcomers were simply “Japanese” in their eyes, and what mattered to them was that those “Japanese” were patrones who employed trabajadores, or laborers.

Engagement by the Japanese State and Farming Expansion (1970–1980s) The 1970s were a turning point for Okinawan-Bolivians with respect to farming,Â� their relationship with the Japanese government, and their socioeconomic position within Colonia Okinawa. Unlike rice and corn production in the 1950s and 1960s, which was fundamentally for subsistence, in the 1970s and 1980s the Okinawan settlers turned their farms into large-scale commercial enterprises, thanks to newly available financial assistance from the Japanese government. Accompanying these changes was a rapid demographic shift: a sharp decline in the Okinawan population and a mass immigration of non-Nikkei Bolivians, particularly from the altiplano. For the Okinawan settlers, the 1970s also marked a renewal of their relationship with the Japanese government, after it became a sponsor and overseer of the Colonia in 1967. The Japanese government had little sociocultural influence on the everyday lives of the majority of Okinawans in Colonia Okinawa, as the number of Naichi-jin government agency staff members who were stationed in the Colonia remained small. Under these circumstances, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Okinawan-Bolivian community in Colonia Okinawa steadily cemented their “Japanese” positionality vis-à-vis local “Bolivians” without sacrificing the Okinawan language and Okinawan customs even after Colonia Okinawa came under the Japanese government’s supervision. In the mid- to late 1960s, Colonia Okinawa suffered from repeated floods and droughts, which resulted in the departure of approximately 40 percent of the settlers by 1967 (Tsujimoto 1999, 13–14).35 During the same period, Okinawa’s reversion to Japan became imminent, which prompted a discussion regarding the Japanese government’s replacement of the United States Technical Assistance Mission (USTAM) in administering the community affairs of Colonia Okinawa. Okinawan settlers were delighted by the takeover by the Kaigai Ijū Jigyōdan (Overseas Migration Agency), a predecessor of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which was a division of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but were concerned about whether the Overseas Migration Agency would treat the immigrants from Okinawa—which, after all, was still governed by the United States—as legitimate Japanese citizens

40

CHAPTER ONE

(Higa 2000, 250–251). On July 1, 1967, the Japanese government officially replaced USTAM and began stationing staff in Colonia Okinawa to help the community.Â� Okinawans in Bolivia legally became Japanese citizens five years before Okinawa’sÂ�reversion to Japan in 1972. The Japanese government’s involvement with Colonia Okinawa began with improvement of the community’s social infrastructure, such as fortifying the decaying roads and furnishing the central hospital with new medical equipment (Aniya 1995, 118). In addition, the Overseas Migration Agency attempted to help Okinawan settlers recover from the flood in 1968 by introducing large-scale, mechanized, and commercial cotton production, an experiment that ended in devastating failure after the collapse of the international cotton market in 1975 (Higa 2000, 252).36 The failure of cotton production dealt a final blow to many struggling Okinawan farmers, who left Colonia Okinawa for Brazil, Argentina, and Okinawa, after liquidating their assets (Tsujimoto 1998a, 280).37 Between the early 1960s and 1979, the number of Okinawan-Bolivian households in Colonia Okinawa decreased from more than 500 to 213, while the resident population declined from 3,200 to 1,344 (Table 3). Along with the decreasing Okinawan population, another significant outcome of the failed cotton production experiment was the mass influx and settlement of domestic Bolivian migrants from the altiplano. To fulfill the need for manual labor for cotton harvesting, the Issei leaders of the Cooperativa Agropecuaria Integral Colonias Okinawa (CAICO), or Colonia Okinawa Integral Agricultural Cooperative, went as far as to Chuquisaca and Potosí prefectures in central Bolivia to bring laborers to Colonia Okinawa (Gushiken 1998, 96).

table 3.â•‡

Estimated Colonia Okinawa population (1997)

Colonia

Nikkei

Nikkei

Nikkei

Nikkei

Non-Nikkei

Households

Men

Women

Total

Total (estimated)

Okinawa Uno

126

232

224

456

4,500

Okinawa Dos

59

110

115

225

500

Okinawa Trés

29

67

73

73

500

214

409

412

821

5,500

Total Source: Nichibo Kyōkai 1997b


41

The “cotton boom” in Colonia Okinawa, and Santa Cruz Prefecture in general,Â� had significant demographic consequences. In 1974, 34,000 peasants from the altiplano were brought to work on cotton farms as pickers in the lowland area, and more than half reportedly have stayed (Stearman 1985, 36). Many cotton pickers in Colonia Okinawa also stayed in the area after the boom economy abruptly ended in the mid-1970s, realizing that they could take advantage of plentiful year-round employment opportunities on the Okinawan settlers’ farms (Mori 1998b, 42). As a result of these economic and demographic changes, Okinawan settlers in Colonia Okinawa turned themselves into large-scale commercial farm owners, who, after their short-lived cotton production, grew wheat, sorghum, and, more recently, soy and sunflowers. To some Issei, the influx of the new immigrants from the altiplano, locallyÂ� referred to as kolla, presented a potential challenge to the majority status of Okinawan-Bolivians in the village, and their anxiety over the kolla influx was further fueled by the stereotype associated with the group.38 Owing to the centuries-old political divide between the highland and lowland regions and the purported racial differences between highlanders and lowlanders, there was deep distrust and antagonism between camba and kolla, exhibited in various stereotypes the groups projected on each other. Camba claimed that kolla might be hard workers but were untrustworthy, dirty, shrewd, and culturally backward, while kolla could be heard to say that camba were lazy, drunken, and roguish (Mori 1998b, 59; Stearman 1985, 208).39 The Okinawan settlers also adopted the local ethnic stereotypes (“lazy but easygoing” camba and “hardworking but shrewd” kolla). The very reason that kolla were brought to Colonia Okinawa in the 1970s was their supposedly superior work ethic. A CAICO official, who was in charge of recruiting the kolla cotton pickers, stated that camba were “not suited for work that requires patience and attention to details,” while kolla were more hardworking and meticulous (Gushiken 1998, 96).Â� The stereotypes of the kolla newcomers also made some Okinawan settlers nervous. An Issei interviewee expressed his view of kolla, in contrast with camba and those whom he called “whites” (hakujin) in the Bolivian lowland: People from the mountains [kolla] are punctual, while camba always say [they will do an assigned task] mañana [tomorrow]. Wherever you have a hot climate all year and foods are always available, people are easygoing, whereas people who live in cold climates and harsh environments work hard. All kolla can do math, so they don’t get duped by whites [i.e., farm owners], but people of Santa Cruz [camba]

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are simpleÂ�and not educated, so they are easily ripped off by whites [hakujin]. The whites want to hire those who can do math, but some patrones don’t like to hire smart ones. The smart ones may help you, but they may also do something bad to you.40 His statement exemplifies Okinawan-Bolivians’ mixed feelings of respect and anxiety toward kolla, who were viewed as being hardworking but potentially dangerous and smart but culturally alien. In reality, most kolla newcomers, like their camba predecessors, became farm laborers for Okinawan patrones, construction workers, or small retail business owners in Colonia Okinawa and were far from posing a real threat to Okinawan settlers’ dominant socioeconomic status. It is more appropriate, therefore, to interpret the Okinawan settlers’ anxiety over the kolla immigration in the 1970s as a reflection of the settlers’ uneasiness regarding the fast-changing population ratio in the Colonia and the increasing instability of commercial agriculture, which had become susceptible to trends in the global agricultural market that were beyond their control (Tsujimoto 1998a, 281). The decrease in population and the destabilization of farming as an enterprise in the 1970s were crucial factors in the dekasegi migration of the 1980s and 1990s. Migration to Japan represented to the Okinawan ethnic community an opportunity to revitalize Colonia Okinawa, in which they were outnumbered by non-Nikkei Bolivians and their capital-intensive farming businesses had become vulnerable. The Okinawan-Bolivians expected the dekasegi migration to provide them with an alternative income source, which would prevent the remaining farm owners from abandoning their operations and leaving the community. In this way, the Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration to Japan can be understood as the community’s strategy to maintain their endangered “extranjero” status, the source of their economic, social, and cultural capital in rural Bolivian society.

Dekasegi Migration to Japan After dramatic expansion and commercialization during the 1970s, Okinawan-Bolivian farmers became a major force in soybean production. In 1991, CAICO reported that its members’ soybean production, 392,000 tons, was approximatelyÂ�9 percent of the entire soy production of the prefecture of Santa Cruz that year, and their wheat production, 48,400 tons, was more than 12 percent of the prefecture’s (CAICO 1991). Okinawan-Bolivians’ prominence in


43

agriculture was also apparent in the amount of land they had under production.Â� In 1996, Okinawan-Bolivian farmers owned 26,856 hectares of soybean fields, which was 6 percent of the entire soybean farmland of the nation, and 9,750 hectares of wheat farmland, or 7 percent of the national total (Nomura Eisaku 1998, 20; CAICO 1996). Despite this apparent prosperity during the 1980s and 1990s, the era also witnessed a steady population decrease due to Nisei’s dekasegi migration to Japan.41 My Okinawan-Bolivian interviewees generally agreed that the peak years of dekasegi migration to Japan were in the second half of the 1980s. After the mid-1990s, they claimed, more people returned to the Colonia than left it. The available statistics seem to support this impression. It was estimated that approximately four hundred Okinawan-Bolivians left for dekasegi to Japan from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, before the numbers decreased in the mid-1990s. The Okinawan-Bolivian population in Colonia Okinawa actually increased, albeit slowly, in the second half of the 1990s, while out-migration still continued. Since 1995, the total Okinawan-Bolivian population in Colonia Okinawa has been consistently around 800 to 850, and population changes have remained small.42 The most significant demographic consequence of the dekasegi migration in the 1990s was the absence of young Nisei residents in their twenties and the thirties. In 2000, more than half of the Okinawan-Bolivian Nisei between the ages of eighteen and thirty resided in Japan after having left Colonia Okinawa. When I attended a ceremony to celebrate new adults in Colonia Okinawa in January 2001, only one of seven Nisei who would become twenty-years old was present, while the rest were listed as currently living in Japan and thus unable to attend. Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration was, at the macro level, shaped

Emigration to Japan

44

CHAPTER ONE

by the capitalist world system (Wallerstein 1974), which has created and maintained a structural linkage between the sending country (Bolivia) of “peripheral” blocs and the receiving country (Japan) of “core” blocs of the global economy (Portes and Walton 1981; Sassen 1988; Glick Schiller et al. 1992). Domestic and regional factors also help us understand why Japan, among many “core” nation-states, was chosen by the Okinawan-Bolivians as their migratory destination, why the migration persisted after the initial causal factors had become insignificant, and why the migrants came from certain socioeconomic backgrounds (Castles and Miller 1998; Grasmuck and Pesar 1991; Parreñas 2001). Sociologist Wayne Cornelius (1998) claims that transnational migration often becomes “structurally embedded” in the local socioeconomic systems of the sending and receiving communities, and migration flows tend to persist regardless of the initiating factors. For those migrants, migration becomes “socialized” and normalized (Yamanaka and Iwanise Koga 1996) as they create and strengthen transnational institutions and connections between their migratory origin and destination (Chavez 1988; Glick Schiller et al. 1995; Margolis 1994; Rouse 1991). A crucial factor in Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration to Japan was the Japanese government’s nationality law (kokuseki-hō), which allows the second-generation offspring of Japanese immigrants overseas to obtain JapaneseÂ� citizenship and a passport. Nisei, as well as Issei, faced no legal obstacle to traveling to and working in Japan. Once the dekasegi migration to Japan became a sustained trend in the late 1980s and 1990s, it became structurally embedded and socially normalized, creating what Douglass Massay et al. called a “culture of migration.” As dekasegi migration has grown prevalent, it has become “deeply ingrained into the repertoire of people’s behaviors, and values

Colonia Okinawa population


45

associated with migration become part of the community’s values” (Massay et al. 1993, 452–453). Okinawan-Bolivians came to view the migration as an ordinary, even “natural,” choice in their lives. At the micro level, the dekasegi migration can also be understood as a tactical response by Okinawan-Bolivian families and individuals to larger societal conditions in which they were placed (Boyd 1989; Chen 1992; Portes and Borocz 1989; Sorensen 1998; Stoller 1996). The migration was an outcome of the generational shift in Okinawan-Bolivian families in Colonia Okinawa, Issei parents’ desire to mold their children into “Japanese” subjects, and growing personal connections with those who had previously moved to Japan. The changing characteristics of dekasegi migration from the early 1980s to the late 1990s reflect these different contributing factors. The first wave of dekasegi migrants consisted mostly of Issei, who left their family members back in Colonia Okinawa, while the second wave of the dekasegi in the late 1980s and early 1990s consisted mostly of young Nisei, creating the mass migration trend. Those who have continued to migrate to Japan from Colonia Okinawa after the peak of emigration were largely young Nisei and families with serious financial problems.

1982 to 1985: First Wave When the first group of Issei from Colonia Okinawa went to Japan for dekasegi in 1982, Bolivia was in the midst of hyperinflation.43 With the country suffering from the decline of the mining industry, which had been the largest generator of the nation’s foreign currency income, President Hernán Siles Zuazo’s regime increased currency circulation by more than 1,000 percent between 1980 and 1984. Inflation promptly jumped to three digits in 1983 and to an annual 2,177 percent in 1984. Incredibly, the inflation rate continued to rise to 8,170 percent in the first six months of 1985, before Siles Zuazo relinquished the presidencyÂ�(Klein 1992, 272).44 Among the Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, small-scale farmers and wage earners were hit hardest by the hyperinflation (Higa 2000, 253). Meanwhile, the Japanese economy experienced unprecedented growth from the 1970s to 1980s, particularly in the manufacturing and construction industries. Throughout the 1950s to the 1970s, Japan achieved rapid industrialization without the introduction of an immigrant labor force, thanks largely to the development and introduction of labor-saving technologies and a large rural labor force. By the 1980s, however, untapped sources of labor, such as the

46

CHAPTER ONE

rural population and women, were mostly exhausted, leaving little room for further significant increases in the labor supply. In 1989, it was reported that 46 percent of the companies in the manufacturing sector were suffering from labor shortages, and small-scale subcontractors in manufacturing and construction became so desperate that they began to employ illegal (i.e., without the proper visa) foreign workers from places such as Pakistan, Iran, and Bangladesh (Tsuda 1999; Yamanaka 1993). What attracted these foreign workers to Japan was the upward revaluation of the Japanese yen after the Plaza Agreement in 1985, which dramatically raised the relative value of Japanese wages. It was against this backdrop of economic chaos in Bolivia and booming economy in Japan that several Issei from Colonia Okinawa decided to migrate to Japan in 1982, which created small Okinawan-Bolivian communities in Yokohama and other cities in Kanagawa Prefecture. Upon their arrival, these first dekasegi migrants called phone numbers from job advertisement flyers, eventually landing assembly plant jobs at an auto manufacturer in Tochigi Prefecture. Their hard work at the factory impressed their employer, and they were asked to recruit friends from Bolivia (Ikuno 2000, 295).45 From this first group of dekasegi Okinawan-Bolivians in Tochigi, some moved to Kanagawa Prefecture, for example, to the Tsurumi Ward of Yokohama, around 1987. Since then, Tsurumi has become a major destination for dekasegi migrants from Colonia Okinawa. One interviewee in Colonia Okinawa jokingly called it Dai-yon Ijūchi (Colonia No. 4).46 Those who migrated to Japan in the early 1980s were mostly middle-aged wage earners or small-scale farmers who could not generate enough cash income. They left their families back in Colonia Okinawa and intended to work in Japan and send remittances to Bolivia for several years (Tsujimoto 1998c; Ikuno 2000, 295). Mr. Yara Hiroki, an Issei who immigrated to Colonia Okinawa in 1958, was among the pioneers. Mr. Yara had owned a small farm, but he had also worked at the Colonia’s agricultural cooperative to support his large family of eleven. His farming operation suffered from poor production in the early 1980s, and hyperinflation aggravated his family’s financial woes. Selling his farmland and going to Japan, it seemed to him, was the only choice: “Even my family understood why I had to go to dekasegi. My wife was not working, so my entire family [in Colonia Okinawa] was dependent upon my remittances from Japan. . . . All I had on my mind back then was how to survive the crisis my family was in, rather than what I would do in the future. I knew it was impossibleÂ� to move my entire family to Japan, so I went there alone.” He left Bolivia in 1982 and first worked in Saitama Prefecture, because his uncle and


47

aunt, who had moved from Okinawa Prefecture, lived there. He then moved to Hiratsuka City in Kanagawa Prefecture to work on the assembly line of a Nissan Motor subcontractor. He was the only Okinawan-Bolivian at his workplace and had few acquaintances in the area: “There were still very few of us who went to dekasegi back then, but it began to increase after I returned here [in 1985].” He decided to return to Bolivia when he turned forty-five years old: “Normally, good companies only hire those under forty-five. I could still find a job, but if I got paid only 170,000 or 180,000 yen a month, it would be very difficult to get by, let alone to send remittances.” Thanks to the money he had saved during his dekasegi stint in Japan, Mr. Yara managed to pay off his debt. After his return to Bolivia, he took various clerical jobs in Colonia Okinawa and did not purchase new farmland. Despite the low wage he earned at these jobs, he never considered going back to Japan because he thought that he was “too old.” For him, dekasegi was only “a means to cope with [financial] emergency.”

1985 to 1993: Socialization of Migration Despite the chaos it created, the hyperinflation in Bolivia throughout the 1980s was, in fact, a blessing for many Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners, who were trying to pay off large debts they had accumulated in the 1970s.47 As the Okinawan-Bolivians borrowed Bolivian pesos from JICA (through CAICO) for their cotton production, the hyperinflation in the 1980s, which reduced the peso’s value significantly against the U.S. dollar, in effect, dramatically reduced the financial burden for farmers whose accounting remained U.S. dollar–based.48 In the second half of the 1980s, Okinawan-Bolivians’ farms also shifted their main cash crop to soybeans, which became a major export product. Coinciding with the sharp rise in the international market price of soybeans in the late 1980s, Okinawan-Bolivian farmers enjoyed economic prosperity for the first time in Colonia Okinawa’s history. The apparent prosperity of Okinawan-Bolivian farmers did not result in a decrease of dekasegi migration to Japan; instead, the period of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the time of what Okinawan-Bolivians today call the “dekasegi fad” among youth. This “fad” was largely attributable to the generational changes among the Okinawan-Bolivian families in Colonia Okinawa. As Issei who were born in Okinawa but raised in the Colonia and Nisei who were born in the late 1950s and 1960s reached their adulthood in the 1980s, OkinawanBolivian families needed to make decisions about their future. As their farms became large, mechanized operations, with the use of non-Nikkei Bolivian

48

CHAPTER ONE

labor,Â�each Okinawan-Bolivian household needed only one child to inherit the family farmland and business. The oldest son typically took over his father’s farm, and the other siblings were left to simply assist their elder brother or to find work elsewhere. Many Nisei initially pursued college education and nonfarming careers, but during the economic and political turmoil of the 1980s, when Bolivian universities were paralyzed by frequent faculty and staff strikes, Nisei gave up their educational pursuits. With no other viable options in Bolivia—one Nisei returnee from dekasegi said to me, “What could you do if there is no job or school?”—they decided to join their family members or friends who had already moved to Japan. Issei parents embraced Nisei’s dekasegi migration as a positive experience for young Nisei to “see and live in the country their parents and grandparents came from” (Gushiken 1998, 202). Their approval of Nisei’s dekasegi for “broadening their worldview” (Higa 2000, 259) outside the rural village spurred the dekasegi fad from the late 1980s. Because of the rapid decrease in young Nisei during this period, many Okinawan-Bolivians recalled, community events in Colonia Okinawa were downscaled or canceled. When Nisei who had returned from dekasegi in Japan told me why they had migrated to Japan, I was struck by how casually they seemed to have made their decisions. Many could not recall a specific reason why they went to Japan, claiming that it was simply because “it was easy to do” or “everybody else was going.” The stated reasons for dekasegi migration during its peak years indicate the steady socialization and normalization of the dekasegi migration of Nisei. Mr. Nomura Takeshi, a Nisei, left Bolivia for Japan in 1989, three months after he graduated from high school in Montero near Colonia Okinawa. He is the youngest child among four Nisei children, with an elder brother and two elder sisters. When asked why he went to Japan, he replied: “Because my friend, Kaneda Eiken, was already in Japan. He had left for Japan a year before, after he had graduated from high school. So, I intended to go there as soon as I finished school.” Among his seven classmates who graduated from the middle school in Colonia Okinawa in 1984, according to Mr. Nomura, all but one left for Japan about the same time he did. Even though dekasegi migration came to be taken for granted by Nisei youth, some had a more concrete motivation for leaving Bolivia for Japan: making enough money to start their own farming operations in or near Colonia Okinawa. Issei also viewed dekasegi migration as a preparatory step for Nisei to become farm owners in Colonia Okinawa. Mr. Gushiken Kōtei, former CAICO president, estimated that US$330,000 was needed to start a new farm in Colonia Okinawa in 1997 (Gushiken 1998, 203).49 JICA would provide loans


49

of US$50,000 to US$80,000 for newly independent farmers, and typically their parents could provide US$20,000 to US$50,000. If a Nisei managed to save about US$100,000 during his dekasegi stint in Japan, Mr. Gushiken estimated, CAICO could provide the rest of the necessary capital in the form of a farmoperating loan (ibid., 204). Mr. Onaga Marco, a Nisei born in 1956, worked in Japan from 1982 to 1996. When he married a Nisei woman in 1981, he was still working for his father, but he wanted to become independent. He “needed a sum of money,” knowing his brother would likely take over his father’s farmland in the future. Back then, the land around Colonia Okinawa was much cheaper, so he estimated, “If I made 15,000 [U.S.] dollars, I would be somehow able to buy [enough] land.” He had no clear idea how long it would take him to save that amount of money, but he hoped it would be five years or so. Six years later, he sent US$22,000 to his parents in Colonia Okinawa to buy farmland: “As long as you had your own land, you could come home empty-handed.” He believed that those who were able to return to Colonia Okinawa were those who had purchased farmland earlier and asked their family members to manage it until their return. He said, “Fifty hectares of land used to cost only 30,000 [U.S.] dollars, but now the same land may cost 60,000 or 70,000! No wonder it is impossible [for those who still lived in Japan] to return and start farming.” He wished he had decided to return to Bolivia in 1992 or 1993, because it had become “more and more difficult to come back” in recent years because of the increasing cost of farmland and operating a farm. Still, he was “very happy” that he could return to and resettle in the Colonia, which few Nisei around his age, he said, had accomplished.

From 1993: Structural Embeddedness Japan’s so-called bubble economy, which was predicated on excessive and speculative investment in real estate and stocks, abruptly collapsed in 1991, and a recession ensued soon thereafter. Accordingly, the dekasegi migration of Nisei had slowed down by 1993, and some of those who had left for Japan in the 1980s began to return to Bolivia. The end of the dekasegi fad, however, neither stopped young Nisei’s out-migration from Colonia Okinawa to Japan nor prompted a mass return migration. Even though some macro-level economic factors changed from the peak years, the dekasegi migration had already been so structurally embedded that the migration flows steadily continued. Although the prolonged recession in Japan has reduced the shortage of laborers in larger companies and the white-collar sector, the labor deficit in

50

CHAPTER ONE

the manufacturing and construction industries has remained high and chronic (Tsuda 1999, 695; Tsujimoto 1998c, 315). In fact, while Japanese companies have tried to “restructure” (risutora in Japanese) their employment practices as a cost-cutting measure, relatively cheap and expendable wage laborers, including Okinawan-Bolivians, have become an even more valuable source of flexible labor (Tsuda 1999, 696). As a result, despite the gradually increasing unemployment rate and stagnant consumer demand throughout the 1990s, Japan’s recession did not eliminate the labor shortage in the manufacturing and construction industries. The local economic situation of Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa that prompted and facilitated dekasegi emigration in the 1980s, including the weak Bolivian currency and the sluggish labor market, did not change after 1991. The prosperity of Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners was already in question by the second half of the 1990s, owing to the widespread recession in East Asia that reduced the global demand for imported food and the influx of cheap North American products into the South American market, which dramatically lowered the sale price of soybeans (Higa 2000, 259). To make matters worse, the flooding of the Rio Grande River in early 1997 damaged 5,000 hectares of farmland in Colonia Okinawa, causing more than US$1 million in damage to Okinawan-Bolivian farmers’ properties (Gushiken 1998, 320). Because of the volatile global agricultural market and unpredictable local weather of Santa Cruz Prefecture, in addition to the capital-intensive and large-scale format, Okinawan-Bolivians’ farming operations became a “gamble” that could create a large fortune or a large loss in any given year (Tsujimoto 1999, 13). Okinawan-Bolivians’ high-risk and high-return farming operations often resulted in a large amount of debt. A report by JICA in 1994 showed that their average debt was 10,097,000 yen, or US$99,777 (JICA 1994). Because of the high interest rates of commercial banks in Bolivia (16 percent to 18 percent APR in 2000), most Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners relied on lower-interest loans offered by JICA and CAICO.50 CAICO implemented a barter system through which a member could take a loan from the cooperative and pay it back with his own crops shipped directly to CAICO upon harvest. The amount loaned to each farmer was determined by CAICO based on the sales price of each product to local buyers.51 I had a chance to see a CAICO member’s transaction record for February and March in 1993. The record indicated that he had paid for diesel fuel purchased from CAICO and shipping costs for his harvest, while making payments with his harvest, such as soy seeds, to the cooperative. His debt actually increased, however, by the end of the statement


51

period, largely because of the loan interest from the previous term and seed purchases for the next production cycle. He additionally requested the maximum possible loan from the cooperative for the projected 200 hectares of his farmland, which he intended to use for soybean production (CAICO 1993). Admittedly this was the record of only one farmer for a very brief period, but it gives a glimpse of how difficult debt payments could be for some OkinawanBolivian farm owners. Not surprisingly, delayed payment by CAICO members was a major problem. Rumors within the community often revolved around which farmers were in serious debt. Even children, housewives, and elderly women I met told me about the debt crises of other farmers. One day at school, a second-grade girl surprised me by candidly telling me that her friend’s family had “a huge debt” and therefore the whole family, including her friend, had left for Japan a few months before. A Nisei housewife of a farm owner told me, albeit jokingly, “My husband was saying, ‘Well, soon we will probably have to flee by night [because of his debt], so be ready.’â†œ” Shinjō Yoshi, an Issei in her seventies, lamented over the settlers’ debt problem: There seem to be so many people suffering from debt. [Lately] we have had floods and strong wind, which cut our wheat harvest to onethird of normal [production]. And the prices of pesticides and diesel have risen. Some literally ran away from here overnight [because of their inability to repay their debt]. Some families here are in trouble because they signed a loan contract as a guarantor for those who later fled without paying it back. In the past, men just took a big loan, and their wives didn’t even know about it, but now both husband and wife have to sign the CAICO loan contract together. [CAICO] rarely took over members’ land or machines in the past, but lately it does. The principal destination of Okinawan-Bolivians who left (or “fled”) Colonia Okinawa, because of cash flow problems or a poor harvest, continued to be Japan. Financial assistance by JICA, which enabled Okinawan-Bolivians to become large-scale commercial farmers, ironically, contributed to facilitating and normalizing the dekasegi migration from Colonia Okinawa to urban Japan. Many Okinawan-Bolivians had multiple dekasegi stints in Japan, and the returnees from Japan living in the Colonia, many of whom had purchased farmland and begun farming, still considered it possible that they would migrate to Japan again. When I asked Mr. Tokuma Shun, who had had three dekasegi

52

CHAPTER ONE

stints, if he would go to Japan again in the future, he said. “I really don’t want to, but who knows? If it becomes necessary, I will have to, won’t I?” Although the term dekasegi implies the temporality and brevity of the migration, OkinawanBolivian migration to Japan and return-migration to Bolivia have become a continuing and open-ended process for some that might never really end. The colonial and postcolonial pasts of Okinawa and the Okinawan diaspora have cast a long shadow on the history of Okinawan immigration to Bolivia and Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration to Japan. The history of prewar and postwar Okinawan immigration to Bolivia reveals how Okinawans, under the rule of imperial Japan and the postwar occupation by the United States military, were constantly made and remade as ambiguous national subjects. Emigrating overseas was often viewed by Okinawans as a way to escape the stigma of being not quite legitimate national subjects. While many Okinawan immigrants overseas continued to suffer from their marginal status within Japanese immigrant communities, Okinawans in Bolivia in the prewar and postwar years largely escaped similar difficulties thanks partly to the small presence of Naichi-jin immigrant communities and their influences. The Okinawan emigration project in the 1950s, such as that to Bolivia, was conceived as the United States military administration’s solution to diffuse social unrest among the increasingly disgruntled Okinawans under U.S. military rule. Once they migrated, these Okinawans were shaped into “Japanese” national subjects within the local ethno-racial and class dynamics of rural Bolivia, because self-identifying and being identified as “foreigners” was considered advantageous, and locals did not distinguish Okinawans from Naichi-jin Japanese. As Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa transformed themselves from subsistence farmers to capital- and labor-intensive commercial farm owners, they also became vulnerable to unpredictable global agricultural markets and prone to accumulating large debts. Moreover, as more struggling Okinawan settlers left and more non-Nikkei Bolivians have moved in since the 1970s, Okinawan-Bolivians have become a numerical minority group in Colonia Okinawa. These changes made Okinawan-Bolivians increasingly concerned about protecting what they perceived as the endangered “Japaneseness”—not the “Okinawanness”—of their ethnic community in rural Bolivia. Although the primary reasons for Okinawan-Bolivians’ dekasegi migration in the 1980s and 1990s were economic, one cannot dismiss Issei’s concern about the community’s decreasing Japaneseness as a key contributing factor for Nisei migration to Japan. It partly explains why, despite the collapse of the


53

JapaneseÂ� “bubble” economy in the early 1990s, the flow of dekasegi migration never ceased, much less reversed itself. By the mid-1990s, dekasegi migration from Colonia Okinawa to Japan had become structurally embedded in the existing socioeconomic systems at the local and extralocal levels. While the Japanese manufacturing and construction industries became chronically dependent on expendable and inexpensive (often imported) laborers, capitalintensive farming in Colonia Okinawa became a risky enterprise, given the unstable local weather and the unpredictable global agricultural market. The transnational Okinawan-Bolivian communities and households, built through these historical processes, presented different implications for Okinawan-Bolivian individuals in Colonia Okinawa and in urban Japan. The next three chapters will detail how Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject positions were shaped within the webs of local and global political economies, state and nonstate institutions, and Okinawan-Bolivian individuals’ own daily practices, which together contributed to a differently embodied belonging in each of the two locales.

[2]

The Making of PATRONES JAPONESAS and Dekasegi MigrANTS

The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Colonia Okinawa from the nearby city of Montero was that the village had nothing that particularly reminded me of the Ryūkyū Islands or Japan. Except for a steel arch that says “Okinawa Nihon Boribia Kyōkai: Asociación Boliviana-Japonesa de Okinawa” at the entrance to the Nichibo Kyōkai building, it was difficult to find anything that distinguished Colonia Okinawa from other villages in rural Santa Cruz. What I did notice immediately upon my arrival, however, was the obvious contrast between the houses with white-painted walls and orangetiled roofs and the small wooden houses with roofs made of motacú palm (Attalea phalerata) leaves. The tile-roofed houses, which were often surrounded by high walls lined with spearing irons, were owned by Okinawan-Bolivians, while most wood-and-motacú shacks were inhabited by non-Nikkei Bolivians. A similar contrast was seen in their automobiles. Whenever I saw a new, slick camioneta (pickup truck) or a motorbike passing by, the drivers/riders were likely to be Okinawan-Bolivians, while those riding old bicycles or beat-up motorbikes,Â� or driving a huge camión (dump truck) with sugarcane or hay in its cargo space, were without exception non-Nikkei Bolivians. Meanwhile, as I walked eastward from the Tsurumi train station toward the shore, it was easy to notice the changes in neighborhood characteristics, especially in terms of class and ethnic composition. The first several blocks from the station comprise a busy commercial district with department stores, restaurants, and retail stores, followed by a business district, with several blocks of 54

The Making of Patrones Japonesas

55

Residences of a non-Nikkei Bolivian (left) and an Okinawan-Bolivian (right) in Colonia Okinawa

large corporate office complexes. After crossing six lanes of National Route 15 and the Tsurumi River that parallels it, I entered the Nakadōri-Ushioda neighborhoods, where hundreds of South American Nikkei-jin, including many Okinawan-Bolivians, resided. Instead of the fashionable boutiques, chain restaurants, and office buildings that surrounded Tsurumi station, an ensemble of small factories, mom-and-pop grocery stores, and several Okinawan and South American restaurants became noticeable, making me realize that this was not only a working-class neighborhood, but also an immigrant enclave. These visible signs of Okinawan-Bolivians’ economic and social status in Colonia Okinawa and Tsurumi are the subject of my inquiries in this chapter and the following chapter. I zero in on the labor market and the workplace as “critical sites” of racialization (Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 154) in which Okinawan-Bolivians’ ambiguous belonging in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan were embodied and performed. In detailing the class positions and workplace relationships of Okinawan-Bolivians and their non-Nikkei Bolivian and Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers, I render the social processes of codification, representation, and interpretation of Okinawan-Bolivians’ bodies and behaviors as a “natural” embodiment of their socioeconomic status and cultural backgrounds. In this chapter on Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, I sketch the labor market structures in Bolivia and interventions by state institutions, such as JICA and the government of Okinawa Prefecture, both of which played critical roles in shaping Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject positions,1 and portray everyday encounters between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians and Japanese Naichi-jin at their workplaces, such as farm fields and cattle ranches, in Colonia Okinawa. Okinawan-Bolivians’ contradictory class positions in the ruralÂ� Colonia Okinawa community and in the larger (urban) Bolivian society

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CHAPTER TWO

Okinawan-Bolivian-owned restaurants in the Nakadōri-Ushioda neighborhoods. Both signs say, “Serving Okinawan and South American cuisines.”

are reflected in their racialized stereotypes of themselves and various non-Nikkei Bolivian groups within and outside Colonia Okinawa.

Patrón Japonés in Colonia Okinawa As summarized in the previous chapter, ethnic Okinawan communities in Colonia Okinawa had gradually turned themselves into privileged patrones in rural Santa Cruz by the 1990s. Economic and political interventions in Colonia Okinawa’s labor relations by the Japanese government (via JICA) and the Okinawa Prefecture government had created and maintained Okinawan-Bolivians as a rural upper class in Colonia Okinawa vis-à-vis non-Nikkei Bolivians. In 2000, members of the Nichibo Kyōkai in Colonia Okinawa owned a total of 51,250 hectares of farmland (Nichibo Kyōkai 2000, 4).2 JICA reported in 1994 that among the ninety-nine sample households the organization chose, the average landholding was 403.8 hectares (JICA 1994, 36). In 1998, OkinawanBolivians owned more than 95 percent of the land within Colonia Okinawa. Unlike the relatively large centro (village/town center) of Colonia Uno, where Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians resided side by side, OkinawanBolivians in Colonias Dos and Trés had prevented non-Nikkei Bolivians from living in the centro areas by limiting land sales to other Okinawan-Bolivians and by reporting to the authorities whenever they found a non-Nikkei Bolivian squatter on their property (Mori 1998b, 67). As a result, even during my resi-


57

dence in Okinawa Dos and Trés in 2000 and 2001, I saw very few non-Nikkei Bolivians near the centro areas of Okinawa Dos and Trés, except for those who were employees of Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and lived on their property. In 1996, the average Okinawan-Bolivian household’s net farming profit was 2,779,000 yen (US$27,461), and net nonfarming income was 519,000 yen (US$5,130), which combined for a net income of 3,298,000 yen (US$32,590). Agriculture in Colonia Okinawa was capital intensive and highly mechanized: Okinawan-Bolivian farmers owned an average of three tractors, one combine (harvester) machine, two automobiles, and three other machines, including grass-cutters and pesticide and herbicide sprayers (JICA 1996, 37). There was significant income variation among Okinawan-Bolivian farmers (see Table 4), and the average farmer had debt that was worth approximately a quarter of his assets.3 Nevertheless, the contrast with non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa was stark. The majority of non-Nikkei Bolivians were landless farm laborers or wage

table 4.â•‡

Income distribution among Okinawan-Bolivians in 1992–1993 Income

No. of

Percentage

(1,000 yen)

Households

of Households

500

8

8.1

500–1,000

15

15.2

1,000–1,500

12

12.1

1,500–2,000

9

9.1

2,000–2,500

9

9.1

2,500–3,000

10

10.1

3,000–3,500

2

2.0

3,500–10,000

34

34.3

> 10,000

2

2.0

Source: JICA 1994, 16

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CHAPTER TWO

workers and were employed by Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and their community institutions. One survey revealed that among 401 household heads of nonNikkei Bolivian families in Okinawa Uno’s centro area, 117 worked as farm field wage laborers and 63 were employees of public or semipublic institutions, such as schools, Nichibo Kyōkai, CAICO, and hospitals. Only twelve were independent farmers, but the average size of farmland for non-Nikkei Bolivians in the area was approximately 30 hectares (Mori 1998b, 54).

State-Sponsored Patrones: The Japanese Government’s Assistance The economic disparity between farm owners and farm laborers is hardly unique to Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa; the large-scale farming practices that the Okinawan settlers took up had long existed in Latin America and elsewhere. What made the wealth gap between the two groups in Colonia Okinawa noteworthy was the fact that it was largely a consequence of active assistance for the Okinawan-Bolivian community provided by Japanese and Okinawan state agencies. When I first went to Colonia Okinawa in December 1997, Kawabata Takashi, then the secretary general of Nichibo Kyōkai, drove me around the three subdivisions of Colonia Okinawa. While giving me a tour, he pointed at the Colonia’s major social service facilities, including hospitals, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and schools, and said matter-of-factly: “Well, if not for the help from the Japanese government, this Colonia would have disappeared a long time ago.” Although Nichibo Kyōkai tries to operate within a budget based only on dues collected from its members, he said, it is impossible for the association to pay for expensive civil engineering projects, such as road pavement and maintenance and bridge construction and repair. In addition to building and maintaining social infrastructure, the financial assistance from the Japanese and Okinawa Prefecture governments had a significant impact on Okinawan-Bolivians’ farming operations, medical services, and education. This state aid from Japan and Okinawa, which far exceeded that from the Bolivian national and local governments,4 was the single most important force in creating and reinforcing the drastic economic gap between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians. All major institutions in Colonias Okinawa were, in varying degrees, funded by JICA, through the Nichibo Kyōkai budget. According to the 1998 annual budget plan of Nichibo Kyōkai, approximately 30 percent of the estimated total revenue of the association for 1998 would be provided by JICA as financial assistance (Nichibo Kyōkai 1998b, 4). Similarly, approximately 30 percent of


59

the Okinawa Hospital’s operating budget in 1997, including staff salaries and maintenance costs for medical equipment, was provided by JICA, through Nichibo Kyōkai (Nichibo Kyōkai 1998a, 17). For the community school in Colonia Uno, 22 percent of the entire revenue came from JICA’s direct assistance and Nichibo Kyōkai expenditure, which was also originally provided by JICA. (See Table 5.) In addition to assistance for these community institutions, Okinawan-Bolivian farmers have repeatedly received aid from Japanese state agencies when natural disasters caused serious damage to the farmers’ assets. In early 1992, for example, a flood of the Rio Pailón River, which runs through the west end table 5.â•‡ Major facilities that received funding from JICA, the Japanese government,

or Okinawa Prefecture for construction and/or administration JICA or The Japanese Government

Okinawa Uno auditorium Okinawa Dos auditorium Okinawa Trés auditorium Okinawa Uno gymnasium Okinawa Uno Youth Association building Hospital Okinawa (Colonia Uno) Hospital Okinawa Dos clinic Colegio Centro Boliviano-Japones de Okinawa Uno (private elementary and middle school) Colegio Evangelica Metodista (church and school buildings) Colegio Nueva Esperanza (public elementary and middle school) Police station buildings (Okinawa Uno, Dos, Trés) Police chief residence (Okinawa Uno) CETABOL (Centro Technológico Agropecuario en Bolivia; Okinawa Dos) CAICO oil extraction plant Okinawa Prefectural Government

Nichibo Kyōkai headquarters building (Okinawa Uno) Okinawa Dos gymnasium

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CHAPTER TWO

of Colonia Okinawa, devastated Okinawan-Bolivians’ farms and ranches. In addition, a bridge collapsed on the only major road between Colonia Okinawa and Montero, leaving the Colonia virtually isolated from nearby cities. The president of Nichibo Kyōkai at the time detailed his efforts to obtain emergency aid from Japan: Nichibo [Kyōkai] repeatedly asked the municipal transportation authority to repair the [Pailón] bridge, but their answers were, “There is no budget” and “We have machines but no fuel.” . . . On June 4, Nichibo [Kyōkai] held a board meeting regarding the flood emergency and reached the decision to ask the Japanese government for help. Then I first visited Mr. K, the head of the JICA regional office in Santa Cruz, and asked his advice regarding where and how Nichibo [Kyōkai] should send a request for assistance. . . . On June 18, Mr. CM and Mr. KM, the president and the owner of CAICO, Mr. WD [non-Nikkei Bolivian], the principal of Metodista School, and I flew to La Paz [to meet the ambassador of Japan in Bolivia]. . . . Later, Nichibo Kyōkai planned a repair project of the national road between [Colonia] Okinawa and Montero, in collaboration with the consulate general, the embassy, and JICA. (Gushiken 1998, 251–256) As a result of Nichibo Kyōkai’s persistent effort, in March 1993, the Japanese government permitted JICA to provide approximately US$220,000 for the reconstruction of the roads. In addition, the Japanese government decided to fund the construction of seven concrete bridges between Okinawa Uno and Montero as part of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) for the Bolivian government. The construction of the bridges was completed in May 1997, with a festive inauguration ceremony that was attended by the Bolivian president and the Japanese ambassador.5 The protection of Okinawan-Bolivians’ economic assets extended to landownership. Since the 1960s, Okinawan-Bolivians have struggled with what they called “land invasion” by non-Nikkei Bolivians who migrated into the area. The problem began as early as 1963 in the Okinawa Trés area of Colonia Okinawa, when several non-Nikkei Bolivian landowners claimed ownership of part of the Okinawan-Bolivians’ farmland, despite the agreement between the Bolivian and Ryūkyū governments that allocated the nationally owned land. With complicated practices of land entitlement in Bolivia, particularly after the agrarian reform by the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement–led government


61

in the 1950s, it was not uncommon for one land lot to have multiple legal title holders (Higa 2000, 251). The situation was compounded by Article 77 of the Agrarian Reform Law of 1953, which granted any individual land entitlement if he or she had cultivated, or intended to cultivate, the unused land as farmland, even if he or she did not officially possess its legal title. In 1964 and 1965, Okinawan-Bolivian leaders attempted to settle the dispute by returning 750 hectares and 1,550 hectares, respectively, to the alleged former landowners, but the problem continued into the 1970s, forcing Okinawan-Bolivians to give up more than 10,000 hectares to non-Nikkei Bolivians. Kuniyoshi Hidehiko, an Issei in his forties, told me that “Malvinas,” the name of the township near Okinawa Trés, was derived from the Malvinas (Falkland) War between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982. In the same year, a large number of non-Nikkei Bolivian squatters, who formed a peasants’ union called Villa Barrientos, came to this area and opened up their own farmland, despite the legal land title possessed by Okinawan-Bolivians. A bitter legal dispute broke out: “We used to say, ‘We are having a war here, too,’â†œ” Mr. Kuniyoshi recalled. After their unsuccessful efforts to reclaim the land through an open hearing and inspection by a delegate from the Bolivian government, the Okinawan-Bolivians turned to the Japanese government. CAICO and Nichibo Kyōkai pressured the Japanese general consul and ambassador to persuade the Bolivian government, President Paz Estenssoro in particular, to intervene. The dispute was tentatively resolved by a presidential executive order in 1985, which secured Okinawan-Bolivians’ landownership; Mr. Kuniyoshi’s farmland was also returned by this measure. About a decade later, a non-Nikkei Bolivian man claimed 500 hectares of Taira Hiroshi’s property in 1994, and both appeared to have legal land title of the disputed lot. This time, action by the Okinawan-Bolivian community was swift. The president of Nichibo Kyōkai sent a letter to the Japanese Embassy in La Paz, in which he wrote, “This [land invasion] problem jeopardizes not only the property of Mr. Taira [who is a former Nichibo Kyōkai president and a prominent Issei leader], but also the social rights of all Japanese residents in Bolivia” (Gushiken 1995). After two years of negotiation by Nichibo Kyōkai with the Japanese Embassy, the Japanese ambassador to Bolivia brought the Nichibo Kyōkai petition to the attention of the minister of foreign affairs of Japan. In October 1996, the foreign minister of Japan raised the issue when President Sanchez de Lozada and the minister of foreign affairs of Bolivia made an official visit to Japan. According to Mr. Taira, the foreign minister of JapanÂ� “implied a possible cut or end of Japan’s ODA for Bolivia,” and the

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BolivianÂ� presidentÂ� agreed to resolve the issue by “administrative rather than legal means.” Eventually, the executive order that warranted Mr. Taira’s land title was signed in March 1997. These instances of financial assistance for flood damage and intervention into the so-called land invasion problem epitomized the Okinawan-Bolivians’ dependency on the Japanese government’s economic and political power in handling local problems. Japanese state sponsorship, which was unattainable by non-Nikkei Bolivians, provided Okinawan-Bolivians with substantial socioeconomic advantages over non-Nikkei Bolivians. Being japones, under this circumstance, became synonymous with being affluent patrones within the local context of Colonia Okinawa.

Limited Mobility: Struggles in Urban Bolivia Despite Okinawan-Bolivians’ economic dominance in Colonia Okinawa, they struggled to achieve the same degree of success in urban Bolivia. A small number of Nisei from Colonia Okinawa have become successful professionals, such as lawyers, dentists, and doctors, in cities like Santa Cruz de la Sierra, but they remain exceptions rather than the rule. Bolivia as a whole, moreover, is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual GNP per capita of only US$1,010 in 2005, and an uneven distribution of wealth; the bottom 20 percent of the national income was shared by more than 60 percent of its population (World Bank 2007). In addition, Bolivian higher education is inaccessible for a wide range of the population, and it does not always help graduates to gain employment in the white-collar sector. Nationwide, public universities, which are generally considered more prestigious than private ones in Bolivia, produced only 294 graduates in 1994, and it took an average of thirteen years for them to complete degrees (Gekkan Boribia 1996, 10). Nisei who spent a number of years on a degree could seldom find well-paying professional jobs other than a small number of positions at Japanese government agencies (e.g., JICA and the consulate-general) and Nikkei-owned small businesses, (e.g., travel agencies and auto repair shops) in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. As Issei realized this situation, many paid less attention to their Nisei children’s academic performance, and instead encouraged their children to gain vocational skills in areas such as auto repair and sewing (Mori 1998a, 114). The socioeconomic privileges Okinawan-Bolivians enjoyed in Colonia Okinawa,Â� in short, failed to translate into socioeconomic success in the larger Bolivian society. Nisei born into large-scale farm-owning families who


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belongedÂ�to the rural upper class in Colonia Okinawa yet were unable to maintain their socioeconomic privileges outside the confinement of the Colonia comprised the majority of dekasegi emigrants to urban Japan. Yara Hiroyasu, a Nisei, joined the dekasegi fad of the late 1980s and left for Japan in 1986 and then returned to Bolivia in 1990. He saved some money and entered a university in Santa Cruz de la Sierra upon his return, majoring in information science. He did not complete his degree after spending all the money he had saved, and he started his own small business in 1996. The business did not go well, so he had to leave for Japan again in 1998. Although Hiroyasu was reluctant to go back to Japan, his father, Hiroki, had another idea. When Hiroyasu consulted his father about whether he should stay in Bolivia or go to Japan, Hiroki told his son he should move to Japan permanently. He explained: “He didn’t have a foothold in Bolivia, so it was safer to live in Japan. There is no safety net in Bolivia, so the weak cannot survive here.” In addition, he claimed, in urban Bolivia, Okinawan-Bolivians could not compete with “Bolivians.” He believed that having Japanese citizenship was a handicap when many non-Nikkei Bolivian applicants were also competing for a position because “the employer would choose a Bolivian” over a Japanese candidate. Tokuma Shun is a Nisei who went to Japan for dekasegi in 1983 after studying for a year at a strike-prone university. Born the second son of one of the most successful farm owners, Mr. Tokuma made three dekasegi stints in Japan between 1983 and 1995. He and his elder brother, Masaru, took turns looking after their aging father’s farming operation in Colonia Okinawa while one of them was living and working in Japan. After his third dekasegi stint in Japan, Mr. Tokuma hoped that his two young sons would choose careers outside farming and become urban professionals: More [Okinawan-Bolivian] kids are going to colleges today than ten years ago. The first half of the 1980s was the most difficult period to go to college. . . . It’s been forty-five years [since the founding of Colonia Okinawa], so there will be more who choose jobs other than agriculture from now on. Maybe one [of the siblings] will take over the family farm, but the rest will have other jobs. . . . The problem is that it is unlikely that Bolivia will change dramatically, and it won’t industrialize anytime soon. That’s why having higher education is not useful here. . . . The [regional] population is small, so the market is too small for us to start a commercial business. . . . Besides, if you are farming, it is hard to start a business, because if you have a business, you have to

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work every day! I am still interested, though. My friends and I often talk about a possible new business, but few have actually started one. . . . It is difficult to develop a market, you know? I feel discouraged whenever I hear [other Nikkei entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz de la Sierra] are struggling. Nisei in Colonia Okinawa were painfully aware of the instability of agriculture and the limited class mobility for farm owners in larger Bolivian society. They hoped their Sansei children would be able to compete against urban elites in Bolivia’s white-collar sector. Asato Tadashi, a Nisei farm owner in Colonia Okinawa, inherited a portion of his father’s farmland but needed to migrate to Japan to save up money for start-up expenses. He expressed his hopes for his eight-year-old son: “It would be better for Sansei to stay here and succeed in Bolivia. Until they get into politics and other sectors, the Colonia won’t develop, either. I want my children to succeed in Bolivia. . . . I don’t want my son to take over my farm, because—how can I put this?—farmers belong in a lower layer [shita no hou no sou] of [Bolivian] society. I want them to become professionals [profesionales] instead.” Younger Nisei were more hopeful about becoming white-collar professionals in Bolivia as the universities became more stable than they had been in the 1980s. Kaneda Ken, a nineteen-year-old Nisei who just finished his first year at the National University of Gabriel René Moreno in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, said that some of his friends from Colonia Okinawa were currently studying at universities in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, La Paz, and Cochabamba. He also admitted that many others were working in Japan: “[Friends living in Japan] come back here on certain occasions, like community events and festivals, and stay for one or two months before going to Japan again. It is like when they get tired of living in Japan, they come back here to rest, and then go back there again.” He hoped to complete not only a bachelor’s but also a master’s degree in veterinary medicine and to become a veterinarian. Most of his non-Nikkei Bolivian friends from high school in Santa Cruz de la Sierra entered universities and studied electrical or mechanical engineering: “You must have [personal] connections [with the university administrators] to enter universities. So the kids who could go to universities are from rich families.” In a country burdened with a weak labor market and with a population polarized between a small minority of wealthy elites and a poor majority, it was extremely difficult to establish economic security through education. OkinawanBolivians’Â� socioeconomic privilege in Colonia Okinawa was, therefore, unable


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to help Nisei succeed outside the insular immigrant community, because they could no longer benefit from the Japanese government’s support.6 While their “Japaneseness” underwrote the Okinawan-Bolivians’ power and privilege within Colonia Okinawa, in other words, it was of little value outside the immediate environs of the village.

Performing Patrón Japonés in Colonia Okinawa The socioeconomic status of Okinawan-Bolivians was not merely observed in their structural positions in economic relations within Colonia Okinawa and in Bolivia at large, but also manifested in day-to-day situations at workplaces, through which the class differences between the Okinawan-Bolivian Self and non-Nikkei Bolivian Others were racialized. The ways in which OkinawanBolivians interacted with non-Nikkei Bolivian farm laborers were by no means unique or unusual for large-scale farm owners in the Bolivian eastern lowland. Given the class-ethnic stratification shaped by the Japanese state intervention, however, these interactions between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and nonNikkei Bolivian laborers functioned as racialized “boundary work,” everyday practices that “weave institutional divisions and cognitive classification” between the two groups (Lan 2006, 11, citing Nippert-Eng, 1996, 7). The racialized boundary between the employers and workers was narrated, understood, and confirmed through what sociologist Stephen Small describes as a tautological discourse of naturalization in which behavioral and psychological characteristics were attributed to a particular group, and these characteristics, in turn, were explained by the purported “essence” of the group, such as its ancestral origin (1994, 33). Through these steps, the socioeconomic class differences between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and their non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers came to be seen as essential and “natural” differences.

Everyday Production of Patrones Okinawan-Bolivian patrones I interviewed seemed to identify themselves as owners and operators of business enterprises rather than as farmers. As selfidentified business owners, Okinawan-Bolivian patrones in Colonia Okinawa did not appear to spend much time on their farmland, letting their employees (trabajadores), all of whom were non-Nikkei Bolivians, do the work in the fields. Except for periods of sowing and planting, the Okinawan-Bolivian patronesÂ�rarely spent the entire day in the fields, particularly if their farmland

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was located far from home. Some farmers candidly told me that their day-today work was “easy.” While showing me the personal golf practice cage in his backyard, Takara Masahide, a farm and cattle ranch owner in his forties said, “Some people say they are busy farming, but they must have much spare time. I mean, there just isn’t much work to do.” To provide a glimpse of the patrón-trabajador relationship, I present here an excerpt from my fieldnotes describing a typical day of an Okinawan-Bolivian farm owner during the nonharvest period. Kuniyoshi Hidehiko was in his midforties and had a wife and three boys, fourteen, nine, and eight years of age. He and his wife were both born in Okinawa but immigrated to Bolivia before they began kindergarten. Mr. Kuniyoshi had three fields within Colonia Okinawa. One lot, of only four hectares, was next to his house; another, of 227 hectares, was located in the submunicipality called San Marcos; the largest lot, of 245 hectares, was in Malvinas submunicipality, ten miles from his house. In the San Marcos field, he used most of the land for soybean production, while he diversified production in the Malvinas field for corn, soybeans, and sorghum. Mr. Kuniyoshi’s property, approximately 480 hectares, was slightly larger than that of the average Okinawan-Bolivian farm owner. February 2001 Mr. and Mrs. Kuniyoshi got up around 6:30. The first task of Mrs. Kuniyoshi was to prepare lunch boxes for two boys who go to school, Colegio Nueva Esperanza, in Okinawa Dos. The two boys, third and fourth graders, reluctantly got up around seven o’clock and had a quick breakfast of bread and powdered milk as they watched children’s TV shows on a local Santa Cruz channel. Mrs. Kuniyoshi, meanwhile, offered coffee to Mr. Kuniyoshi’s employee (a non-Nikkei Bolivian) at a dining table set on the front patio. Until the school bus came by the front of the house around 7:40 a.m., the boys sat with him, chatting in Spanish. A few non-Nikkei Bolivian men came to the front patio and asked Mr. Kuniyoshi if there was any work in his field today. Mr. Kuniyoshi gave the day’s orders to the leader, the non-Nikkei Bolivian among them who had worked for him the longest. He would gather the necessary number of workers, all of whom Mr. Kuniyoshi already knew. Occasionally, those non-Nikkei Bolivian employees who lived in the Kuniyoshi family’s old house next to their pigpens came by and asked for specific directions regarding the care of the hogs.


After the children left for school, Mr. and Mrs. Kuniyoshi finally had their breakfast in the dining room around 8 a.m., normally coffee and bread with fried egg and sliced ham. Throughout this busy morning, their TV was always on, normally showing news programs, which daily featured the ongoing drought in Santa Cruz Prefecture. As they watched the shows, Mr. and Mrs. Kuniyoshi talked about how much and in which part of Colonia Okinawa it had rained a day before. Around 9:00 a.m., we drove to his San Marcos field. Mr. Kuniyoshi was concerned about the lack of rain. His farm hadn’t had much rain for more than a month. As we inspected the two soybean fields, the land was cracked all over because of the drought. The soybeans, however, still looked green, and there were very few visibly damaged plants. Mr. Kuniyoshi told me: “They are still recoverable. But if we don’t have any substantial rain in the next few weeks, I’ll be in trouble.” He also concluded that the soybeans that he had planted in January, which still were in bloom, would need pesticide and germicide. Mr. Kuniyoshi said: “I am just waiting until the next rain before I do it. Right now they are weak because of the lack of rain, so they won’t be able to absorb the chemical very much.” One non-Nikkei Bolivian

An Okinawan-Bolivian farm owner inspects soy on his farmland

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Non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers at an Okinawan-Bolivian’s farm

familyÂ�lived on Mr. Kuniyoshi’s San Marcos property and took care of its day-to-day operations. On the way back, we passed a cornfield that looked like it was already devastated by the drought. Mr. Kuniyoshi shook his head. “Even if it rains soon, perhaps they won’t recover. They are already dying, and the surviving ones won’t produce much harvest, either.” Around 11:00 a.m., we stopped by the CAICO (farming cooperative) office in the centro of Okinawa Trés. Okinawan-Bolivian men came in and out of the office frequently, as this place was their hangout. They stopped by the office in the morning to exchange information and gossip. They frequently brought up the lack of rain and other Okinawan-Bolivian farm-related business (“So-and-so’s field in San Marcos is totally dried up.” “The workers for so-and-so work hard, but those at so-and-so’s farm are lazy.”). The centro was so empty and quiet that everybody looked out the window whenever a car passed by to identify whose it was. One non-Nikkei Bolivian man in his twenties worked at the office as a secretary and an attendant for the attached gas stand; however, he only stuck his head out into the lounge when he received a phone call for an Okinawan-Bolivian there and never


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engaged in an extended conversation with them. When noon approached, the Okinawan-Bolivians started to go home for lunch without saying good-bye to the others; they just left the lounge and got in their pickups. After having the lunch Mrs. Kuniyoshi had prepared at home, Mr. Kuniyoshi took a nap until 3:00 p.m. Then he went to his pigpen to talk to the non-Nikkei Bolivian workers there. Once a week, he went to Santa Cruz de la Sierra to shop and run errands before returning home around 6:00 p.m. Between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m., families of the non-Nikkei Bolivian workers or neighbors frequently knocked on the door to ask Mrs. Kuniyoshi for rice, meat, or vegetables, which Mrs. Kuniyoshi sold to them on credit. After 7:00 p.m., the flow of nonNikkei Bolivian shoppers finally stopped, and Mrs. Kuniyoshi looked in the direction of the employees’ house next to the pigpen, where her kids played with the employees’ children after coming home from school, and yelled out her children’s names. It was suppertime. Drawn from my observations at Mr. Kuniyoshi’s fields as well as from other Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners’ stories, the following section examines how the patrón-trabajador relationships between Okinawan-Bolivians and nonNikkei Bolivians were performed, normalized, and subtly challenged.

Normalization of Exploitation Except for busy periods of sowing and harvesting, Mr. Kuniyoshi told me, he rarely operated farm machines in his fields. When his farm was smaller, he said, he used to operate all the machines, but he no longer did. It was efficient to use cheap labor for all the routine tasks. On any given day, there were five to ten workers in Mr. Kuniyoshi’s fields. Basic field tasks, such as plowing and weeding, paid a worker 30 bolivianos, or US$5, a day, while more technically sophisticated tasks, such as operating a tractor, counted for 1.5 days, paying 45 bolivianos a day, or US$7.50. During busy periods, such as those for harvesting and sowing, they could earn more. For instance, when they worked until 10:00 p.m. harvesting, they received 1.5 days’ pay. On average, each worker earned thirty to forty days’ pay per month, between 1,000 and 1,200 bolivianos (US$166 to US$200), typical for workers on Okinawan-Bolivian-owned farms.7 Mrs. Kuniyoshi kept a notebook in which she recorded the workers’ days and hours of work. About ten persons were regular workers at Mr. Kuniyoshi’s

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farms, while the rest were employed on a temporary basis, being brought in by the regular workers during busy spells. In addition to their low wage, non-Nikkei Bolivian field laborers often worked in hazardous working conditions. One morning, Mr. Kuniyoshi and I stopped by his Malvinas farmland, where one of his employees was spraying herbicide. He told Mr. Kuniyoshi that he had finished spraying the assigned area and told him that he would empty the tank, because he needed the same machine to spray another kind of chemical the next day. After a brief chat with him, Mr. Kuniyoshi and I returned to his pickup truck, and he said to me, “You can smell the chemical from here, can’t you?” There was indeed a foul odor. I said: “That smells awful! Isn’t it poisonous?” Mr. Kuniyoshi replied: “Oh, yeah. Very poisonous.” Remembering that his employee did not appear to be protected from such a poisonous chemical, I asked him, “Shouldn’t he wear a mask or something?” Mr. Kuniyoshi shrugged. “Well, yeah, actually he should. But instead I rotate the operator of the spraying machine [to avoid poisoning]. . . . When we were producing cotton [in the 1970s], I used to spray pesticide and herbicide by myself. But it made me very nauseated, so I wouldn’t do it myself anymore.” Workers were rotated every few months, partly to spread the tasks (such as spraying poisonous pesticide) to more workers and partly to reduce the risk of collective work sabotage. A large pool of available labor enabled OkinawanBolivian farmers to change their employees frequently. On two separate occasions, Mr. Kuniyoshi of Colonia Trés and Mr. Takara of Colonia Uno, while they drove me around their fields, acknowledged a number of their former or current non-Nikkei Bolivian employees. In Malvinas, where the majority of Mr. Kuniyoshi’s employees lived, he told me, “I know practically everyone here, because I have employed pretty much all of them at least once.” Mr. Takara, likewise, while driving through a small village next to his farmland, told me, “Everybody is my friend here,” waving his hand at a young non-Nikkei Bolivian man on the street. Although they insisted they had cordial relationships with non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers, it was the Okinawan-Bolivian employers, not the non-Nikkei Bolivians, who had the power to rotate their workforce. Tsukamoto Hideo employed three non-Nikkei Bolivians for his cattle ranch and house for six days a week, from eight to five. Their day’s task was assigned each morning, depending on Mr. Tsukamoto’s needs, including lawn mowing, cutting grass along the fences, uprooting and planting trees in the garden, or mending fences on his ranch. I ran into the three non-Nikkei Bolivians just outside the house when


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they were about to leave. When I asked what they thought of their job, they reluctantly told me that it was “good” (Es bueno), and they liked the stable wage that they received for the job. Having seen me talking with Mr. Tsukamoto, they probably wouldn’t disclose their feelings toward their employer, but they told me that they didn’t expect to work for him for long. In fact, a few days before, Mr. Tsukamoto had fired one of his employees. According to Mr. Tsukamoto, the worker had refused to show up for work fifteen minutes earlier in the morning. Mr. Tsukamoto said: “It takes ten to fifteen minutes to drive to the ranch. When I told them that they must come earlier, he said no. So I fired him.” To be sure, exploiting laborers who handle menial tasks, maintaining a clear division of labor between employers and employees, and rotating labor sources were labor practices not limited to the Okinawan-Bolivian patrones but widely found in the Bolivian lowland, where there was a long history of the finca (large-scale agricultural establishments) system (Stearman 1985). Within the social fabric of Colonia Okinawa, however, these practices enabled OkinawanBolivian patrones to view the boundary between employers and workers as being drawn not only between socioeconomic classes, but also between national origins. I asked Mr. Takara why no Okinawan-Bolivian patrón employed other Okinawan-Bolivians for farm labor, even though some Okinawan-Bolivians were in serious financial trouble and might be willing to work for others in Colonia Okinawa. He looked at me in disbelief and flatly denied the possibility: “No way will anybody employ Japanese [Nikkei] on his farm! It would be too complicated for him to use a Japanese—how much to pay him, which work to make him do, that sort of thing. It is just much easier to use Bolivians.” To him, the class and labor divisions between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa were so normalized that being an OkinawanBolivian meant being an upper-class patrón who “used” non-Nikkei Bolivians as trabajadores.

Paternalism and Resistance Despite the exploitative relationships established between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and non-Nikkei Bolivian trabajadores, non-Nikkei Bolivians who worked for Okinawan-Bolivians had a favorable impression of their employers. One of the reasons cited in a study by a Japanese sociologist was that nonNikkei Bolivian laborers thought that Okinawan-Bolivian patrones treated the laborers better than other non-Nikkei Bolivian patrones; Okinawan-Bolivians

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often provided their employees with food, clothing, and medical care at the employers’ expense (Mori 1998b, 60). These practices were neither new in lowland Bolivia nor unique to the relationship between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians. In the nineteenth century, some finca owners in Santa Cruz provided their peones, or farm laborers, with housing, education, and medical attention (Stearman 1985, 29). The farm owners’ benevolent actions toward their laborers could be, however, understood as an exercise of symbolic power, “the gentle, invisible form of violence, which [was] never recognized as such” (Bourdieu 1977, 191). In an analysis of plantations in the U.S. South, historian Eugene Genovese defines paternalism more blatantly, claiming that it “grew out of the necessity to discipline and morally justify a system of exploitation” as it created a tendency for the subordinates to identify with their employers/masters as individuals rather than as a class (1976, 4, 6). OkinawanBolivian patrones, who provided trabajadores and their family members with much informal and personal assistance, therefore, also exercised a form of “symbolic violence” (Bourdieu 1977, 165) against their workers, establishing “a prevailing ethos” (Genovese 1976, 6) under which non-Nikkei Bolivians had to accept the unequal relationships with their Okinawan-Bolivian employers as legitimate and even “natural.” The non-Nikkei Bolivian workers on the Kuniyoshis’ farm, many of whom lived near the Kuniyoshis’ residence, came to the house to purchase food such as potatoes, bread, rice, and carrots. Because the workers didn’t have vehicles to travel to markets or stores in the cities, they relied upon the Kuniyoshis, who sold the workers the daily necessities at market price. The Kuniyoshis stored huge sacks of rice, onions, carrots, and coca leaves, a stock of canned meat, cooking oil, and bags of flour and salt in their house as if it was a grocery store. Mr. Kuniyoshi drove to a market in Santa Cruz de la Sierra once a week, usually on Friday, to purchase various vegetables and dry foods. Mrs. Kuniyoshi told me, “[Knowing that my husband goes shopping on Fridays] many people come here to buy food on Saturday mornings.” She was in charge of these retail transactions, not only recording purchases by each employee’s family members but also giving her husband a grocery list before he went shopping. It was common for Okinawan-Bolivian patrones to provide lunch, and sometimes breakfast and supper, for their laborers. Mrs. Kuniyoshi was extremely busy preparing the laborers’ meals during the soybean harvest period in March, when they needed to work overtime. The workers at Mr. Kuniyoshi’s farm always had a cup of coffee in the morning, served by Mrs. Kuniyoshi, before Mr. Kuniyoshi gave them the work orders for the day, and occasionally


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they ate a lunch prepared by Mrs. Kuniyoshi at the table on the front patio.8 When Mr. Kuniyoshi stopped by his farms in the morning to check the work of his trabajadores, he also delivered the lunch boxes that his wife had prepared in the early morning. Many Okinawan-Bolivian patrones also paid for their employees’ and their family members’ medical care. Mr. Takara, for instance, employed eight nonNikkei Bolivian farm laborers who lived in a nearby village. He paid his employees weekly, rather than daily, because, he said, “They would otherwise use all the money right away.” When his employees or their family members became ill, he took them to the hospital for treatment: “If I don’t, they would go to a small clinic [poste], because it is cheap. It costs only 5 or 10 bolivianos, but it would not really help them.” Mr. Takara, therefore, paid all the medical bills for them: “They can’t pay for it, you know, so I feel sorry for them.” According to the Colonia Okinawa Hospital’s records in 1997, nine Okinawan-Bolivians paid for the treatment of twenty-two non-Nikkei Bolivians, who had made thirty-six visits to the hospital (Nichibo Kyōkai 1998a, 11). Thanks to this informal and personal assistance, non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers appeared to favor “benevolent” Okinawan-Bolivian employers over other non-Nikkei Bolivian ones (Mori 1998b, 60), but the Okinawan-Bolivian patrones’ paternalism toward their trabajadores also masked the fundamentally exploitative relationship between them. As a result, both Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and non-Nikkei Bolivian trabajadores came to pay less attention to their profoundly unequal structural positions than to alleged differences between generous Okinawan-Bolivian employers and tightfisted non-Nikkei Bolivian employers. The paternalistic relationships established between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and non-Nikkei Bolivian trabajadores notwithstanding, there was also what James Scott called “everyday forms of resistance” (1985, 1990), a subtle and informal means for the weak to challenge the power of the dominant. The non-Nikkei Bolivians’ subversive activities might not have been overt and confrontational but still could achieve a certain amount of “symbolic and/or material gain” amidst the exploitative labor relations and even heighten the awareness of social inequality among themselves (Rose 1997, 153). A common means of resistance by non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers was theft of farming equipment and other valuable materials, such as pesticides, from their Okinawan-Bolivian employers. Not unlike African American slaves’ looting of their absentee owners’ properties (Genovese 1976, 382; Scott 1990, 195), non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers took advantage of the frequent absence of

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Okinawan-Bolivian employers from the fields. Maeda Tadashi, an elderly Issei farm owner, told me how theft took place on his farm: What happens is that [non-Nikkei Bolivian employees] steal pesticides and herbicides. These chemicals sometimes cost 500 dollars for one liter. . . . Oftentimes, we let [non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers] spray the herbicide during our absence. But when we come back and check [the fields] afterwards, the weeds don’t look like they have been killed. We wonder, “Why aren’t they dead? This is strange,” and looked into it more carefully. Then we find that [the employees] used only three liters or four liters of the herbicide, although they were supposed to use five liters. They have stolen the rest. No wonder it didn’t work! . . . This kind of problem is very common. . . . So [Okinawan-Bolivian patrones] should be present at the fields and keep an eye on [the employees] all the time. Such tactics by employees can easily be overlooked unless the farm owners persistently monitor employees’ work on a daily basis, something many Okinawan-Bolivian employers were not attentive enough to do. Even though low-paid non-Nikkei Bolivian farm laborers might be economically exploited and symbolically dominated by their Okinawan-Bolivian employers, through low wages and paternalistic treatment that naturalizes the power inequality between them, the same workers might informally challenge the exploitation and domination through deception and stealing. Although everyday workplace interactions might appear cordial and businesslike, and Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners might indeed treat their non-Nikkei Bolivian employees more kindly than other non-Nikkei Bolivian patrones, underneath the calm surface a struggle between the two groups for material and symbolic power often played out in informal ways.9

Racialized Categories In conversations with Okinawan-Bolivians, I always had to be attentive to the meaning of the phrase koko no hito. Literally meaning “people [or a person] here,” koko no hito could refer to non-Nikkei Bolivians in general, camba, the residents of Colonia Okinawa as a whole, Okinawan-Bolivians, or Bolivian citizens in general. The fluid and situational definitions of “people here” indicates that the subject positions of Okinawan-Bolivians were defined in opposition to


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a series of Others in given social contexts. When “people here” referred to nonNikkei Bolivian populations in Colonia Okinawa or Bolivian society in general, the following three terms were most commonly used: genchi-jin (locals), Boribiajin (Bolivians), and hakujin (whites). Less frequently, gaijin (foreigner) and dojinā or dojin (aboriginal) were used to refer to non-Nikkei Bolivians, mostly by Issei elders. The stereotypes the Okinawan-Bolivians attached to the categories of genchi-jin, Boribiajin, and hakujin indicated their understanding of the socioeconomic class structures and political power dynamics both within Colonia Okinawa and in the larger Bolivian society, and their own subject positions within them.

Boribiajin/Genchi-jin: Rural and Powerless Bolivians Boribiajin was the most inclusive and neutral description of non-Nikkei Bolivians, referring to non-Nikkei Bolivians of different socioeconomic backgrounds living in and outside Colonia Okinawa. Because the term refers merely to nationality, Okinawan-Bolivians occasionally called themselves Boribiajin to emphasize their firm Bolivian roots. When I asked the returnees from dekasegi in Japan to Colonia Okinawa why they had decided to come back or when I asked them why they would like to continue to live in Bolivia, the most common answer was “Because I am Boribiajin—I was born and raised here.” Similarly, “because they are Boribiajin” was the most common response I received from Issei in Colonia Okinawa when I asked them why they believed that their Nisei children living in Japan would eventually return to Bolivia. These usages of “Boribiajin” highlight the difference between one’s Japanese or Bolivian ancestral origin, the dichotomy that was also commonly accepted by the non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa. Regardless of their ethnoracial (camba or kolla) or socioeconomic backgrounds, they simply referred to Okinawan-Bolivians as japonesas (Japanese), without distinguishing between Bolivian-born Nisei and Okinawan-born Issei, or between Okinawan-Bolivians and Japanese Naichi-jin in Colonia Okinawa (Tsujimoto 1999, 87). Genchi-jin was another common term that referred to all non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa. It was most commonly used when Okinawan-Bolivians referred to their non-Nikkei Bolivian employees at farms or ranches, as in “I use five genchi-jin on my ranch to oversee cattle.” Genchi-jin rarely referred to non-Nikkei Bolivians outside Colonia Okinawa and was never extended beyond camba and kolla groups in Santa Cruz Prefecture. Other recognizable immigrant groups in cities, such as Koreans and Chinese, were not referred

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to as genchi-jin, but instead were called coreanos and chinos, respectively. Okinawan-Bolivians, even Nisei, did not call themselves genchi-jin, even if the person was locally born and had never left Bolivia in his or her life.10 Frequent use of this term by Okinawan-Bolivians to refer to non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa suggests that Okinawan-Bolivians did not believe that the other genchi-jin population and they belonged in the same “local” community. The ways in which Okinawan-Bolivians used genchi-jin and Boribiajin indicate different, albeit subtle, socioeconomic meanings attached to the two terms. While Boribiajin could include both upper- and lower-class groups of non-Nikkei Bolivians, genchi-jin primarily referred to manual laborers. For instance, although genchi-jin and Boribiajin were almost interchangeably used by Okinawan-Bolivians to refer to the trabajadores on their farms or ranches, non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers at the schools were normally called “Boribiajin teachers” and less frequently referred to as genchi-jin. Likewise, non-Nikkei Bolivian engineers and mechanics at CAICO and Nichibo Kyōkai, who worked side by side with Okinawan-Bolivian employees, were more often referred to as Boribiajin than as genchi-jin. In addition, genchi-jin was used to describe all non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, even if they were not originally from Colonia Okinawa but from the western altiplano or the central valley. Despite the literal reference to locality, therefore, the term genchi-jin indicates Okinawan-Bolivians’ views of the intertwined relationships between socioeconomic classes, nationalities, and immediate local belongings. Various stereotypes were projected onto the labels of genchi-jin and Boribiajin by Okinawan-Bolivians. Through these stereotypes, Okinawan-Bolivians interpreted and explicated the socioeconomic differences between non-Nikkei Bolivians and Okinawan-Bolivians as trabajadores and patrones. OkinawanBolivians’ views on non-Nikkei Bolivians reflected not only their sense of superiority to them but also their anxiety over them as an overwhelming majority in the village. These two sides of stereotyping were articulated by historian David Roediger (1991) and postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha (1994) as common features found in the discourses of racism and colonialism. Roediger argued that in the late nineteenth century United States, white working-class’s racism against African Americans was simultaneously loathing of and fascination with what they perceived as the carefree, lazy, and indulgent lifestyle of African Americans. Bhabha similarly claimed that the colonizers projected “split” imageries of their fantasy and fear upon the bodies of the colonized through stereotypes. The bodies of the colonized represented contradictions: the incivilityÂ� of “cannibal” and dignified obedience, childlike innocence and “rampantÂ�


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sexuality” (Bhabha 1994, 82). The similar “split” imageries were found in the Okinawan-Bolivians’ depictions of non-Nikkei Bolivians: lazy, dependent, simple-minded, yet disingenuous and shrewd.11 All of these stereotypes were, in turn, inversions of the self-images of Okinawan-Bolivians as hardworking, self-reliant, intelligent, but naïve. These stereotypes reflected both OkinawanBolivians’ disrespect of non-Nikkei Bolivians as a lower socioeconomic class and envy of them as those without the burden of running a large and risky farming enterprise.

Lazy and Dependent Bolivians Issei elders occasionally used the term flojo, a Spanish adjective for “lazy,” to describe non-Nikkei Bolivians. When I asked Mrs. Shinjō Yoshi, an Issei in her seventies, to describe her view of non-Nikkei Bolivians, she didn’t miss a beat before using the term and quickly attributed their alleged character to the group’s Spanish heritage: “[Non-Nikkei Bolivians] are flojo. Japanese [Nihonjin] work hard when they are trusted, but ‘people here’ turn bad when they are trusted too much. Spaniards [Supein-kei] are the same everywhere, you know.” In addition to their Spanish heritage, the warm climate and rich natural environment of Santa Cruz Prefecture were often cited by Okinawan-Bolivians to explain the laziness of Boribiajin/genchi-jin. Maeda Tadashi, an Issei, said: People here [koko no ningen] could eat even if they were just playing around. . . . Well, I think it used to be the case anyway. If you went to the mountains [yama, meaning jungle], there were animals, if you went to a river, there were fish, and if you planted yuca [cassava] and bananas near your house, it would be enough [to feed yourself ]. Then, in order to buy milk, sugar, and salt, and all the other stuff you needed to live, you could work only two or three days a week. In his narrative, the perceived laziness and laid-back attitude of local Boribiajin/genchi-jin were “natural” attributes born out of their genealogical heritage and natural environment. Okinawan-Bolivians often accused non-Nikkei Bolivians of economic dependency on resourceful people and institutions, such as international aid agencies. Takara Masahide, a middle-aged Issei farm owner, as he drove through small communities near the Río Grande river, told me that the houses around there could easily go under water in case of flood. Nevertheless, he

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continued, non-Nikkei Bolivian residents continued to live there because “they could get government or international aid when the flood happens.” He recalled: “When a large-scale flood happened a few years ago, many people from nearby communities, which were not damaged, came here to receive the aid goods.” Nagamine Tsuyoshi, a Nisei farm owner, also told me, “When there was a large fire around 1990, those who lived in wood-and-motacú houses had their houses burn down. The government gave them money to rebuild their houses, and they ended up building much better houses than their previous ones. Those who lived in brick-walled houses didn’t get any money, so they were really angry, saying, ‘I wish my house had burned down, too!’ [laugh]” Okinawan-Bolivians, too, were heavily dependent on the Japanese government’s financial assistance—especially for recovery from natural disasters— without which they could not have achieved and maintained their current socioeconomic status in Colonia Okinawa. In the Okinawan-Bolivian narratives above, however, it was the innate character of non-Nikkei Bolivians, which purportedly originated from their Spanish heritage and tropical natural environment, that shaped their lower socioeconomic status and, furthermore, made them content with their position inferior to Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa.

Untrustworthy and Irresponsible Bolivians If Okinawan-Bolivians’ stereotyping of local Boribiajin/genchi-jin as a lazy, dependent, and simple-minded people served the purpose of justifying the paternalistic exploitation of non-Nikkei Bolivians as “obedient and dignified servants” in their fields and on their ranches, the image of untrustworthy and sneaky Boribiajin/genchi-jin fulfilled the other side of the stereotype, that of “accomplished liar” and “manipulator of social forces” (Bhabha 1994, 82). Teruya Sumi, as well as many other elderly Issei, expressed her fear of being taken advantage of by the family’s non-Nikkei Bolivian employees: “They just cannot be trusted. When we feel sorry for them and give them the things we no longer need, they think that we give them because we have too many things. . . . You should never loan money to them, either, because they would never pay you back the money.” Shinjō Yoshi, another elderly Issei, was more blatant when she told me that she often warned young Nisei not to trust non-Nikkei Bolivians: “Boribiajin are liars [usotsuki]. They say they are religious, but there are so many thieves among them. Their religious belief is just talk. . . . Young [Okinawan-Bolivian] people should be careful. They shouldn’t trust everybody.


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Once Boribiajin become friends with you, they will steal things from you. They are good talkers. . . . They take things away from you but never pay you for them.” These Issei’s accusations were not unfounded. As described earlier in this chapter, many Okinawan-Bolivians suffered thefts of expensive herbicides and pesticides by their non-Nikkei Bolivian employees. Anthropologist Dorinne Kondo has suggested that despite academics’ tendency to romanticize informal and crafty resistance by the weak against the dominant, these resistances are often “riven with ironies and contradictions” (1990, 224). Stealing, a common form of everyday resistance by non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers against wealthy Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners, contradictorily reconfirmed the negative stereotypes projected upon the laborers by Okinawan-Bolivians. These stereotypes of untrustworthy and sneaky Boribiajin/genchi-jin narrated by Okinawan-Bolivians were reflections of their self-image as trustworthy and honest people. Higa Hiroshi, a Colonia resident, wrote that OkinawanBolivian farmers were trusted by Bolivian commercial banks because they paid all the accumulated debt after the collapse of cotton production in the 1970s, whereas many non-Nikkei Bolivian cotton producers in the region fled without paying off their debt (2000, 253). In reality, however, it was JICA and, by extension, the Japanese government that assumed much of the responsibility for Okinawan-Bolivians’ unpaid loans. During the hyperinflation in the mid1980s, Okinawan-Bolivians paid off their debt to JICA with vastly devalued Bolivian pesos instead of U.S. dollars; in effect, JICA paid the price for the peso devaluation (Gushiken 1998, 146). One could argue, therefore, that it was the Japanese government that raised the reputation of Okinawan-Bolivians among local creditors. State-sponsorship by the Japanese government was as responsible for the trustworthiness of Okinawan-Bolivians as the group’s inherent character and morality, which they contrasted with the character of non-Nikkei Bolivians.

Hakujin: Urban and/or Powerful “White” Bolivians The term hakujin (whites) was rarely heard from Okinawan-Bolivians in daily conversations or interviews. Despite its connotation of skin color, hakujin did not simply refer to persons with pale skin or European heritage. It instead referred to either a small number of wealthy camba landowners in Colonia Okinawa or to upper-class Bolivians in cities, regardless of their actual skin color or ancestral origins. When Okinawan-Bolivians spoke of hakujin, moreover,

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they normally paired it with negative characterizations, such as “cruel,” “individualistic,” or “greedy.” Shimada Eisei, an elderly Issei who was usually compassionate with non-Nikkei Bolivians, expressed anger during my conversations with him toward wealthy non-Nikkei Bolivian farm owners in rural Santa Cruz: “These rich hakujin patrones bring in barbaros [indigenous peoples in rural Santa Cruz] and make them work in their farms.12 When they are no longer needed on their farms, they simply abandon them. It is so wrong! They must bring [the workers] back to their homes. [The farms] are not their homes, you know?” He went on to criticize hakujin for taking advantage of the poor and vulnerable camba: “All kolla can do math, so they don’t get duped by hakujin, but people of Santa Cruz [i.e., camba] are simple-minded, so they are easily ripped off by hakujin.” Note that hakujin patrones were distinguished from other camba in Mr. Shimada’s statement, although these landowners might very well be camba, as they were probably native lowlanders with some Iberian heritage. While Mr. Shimada did not refer to hakujin clearly as a “race” (jinshu), Kaneshiro Yasunori, an elderly Issei, addressed hakujin as a distinct jinshu, although he, too, was not referring to their skin color. When I asked him why there weren’t many successful Okinawan-Bolivian (and Nikkei in general) entrepreneurs and professionals in urban Bolivia, he pointed to racism by hakujin in Bolivian society: Some [Nikkei] might look as if they have succeeded, but they have been destroyed. Everybody has been crushed. Mr. K used to own a Toyota dealership, but it went bankrupt in his son’s era. . . . Mr. S was also successful but eventually became bankrupt and returned to Japan. . . . If these were hakujin’s companies, they wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Because they are a “colored race” [yūshoku jinshu], they have been ruthlessly destroyed. This country is a scary place. . . . No Nikkeijin is successful. His definition of hakujin was not so much predicated on their skin color or European heritage per se as on their power as business elites in a larger Bolivian society. He defined hakujin by the amount of economic, social, and cultural capital he believed they possessed. Asked if he socialized with non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, he cited the different “levels” (reberu) of social status between non-Nikkei Bolivians, himself, and urban Bolivian elites: “In the environment of the Colonia, there aren’t many Bolivians I could socialize


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with. Those who live in the Colonia are lower class [kasō kaikyū], the kind of folks who shit on the roadside. I can’t make friends with such people. In big cities like Santa Cruz [de la Sierra], such a high-level [reberu no takai] place, I might be able to make friends. . . . But in the Colonia’s environment, people are proletariat class [rōdōsha kaikyū], and that’s not good.” Okinawan-Bolivians’ usage of the term hakujin appears to be in line with the definition of blanco (white) in larger Bolivian society, as described by Marc Osterweil as “the upper-level social group who are urban and worldly” (1998, 151). Either positively portrayed (sophisticated and influential) or negatively regarded (cruel, racist, and disingenuous), hakujin were those upper-class urban Bolivians of, most likely, European heritage, whose political and economic power allowed them to stand above not only poor rural Bolivians but also Okinawan-Bolivians (and Nikkei in general). Hakujin, in other words, embodied the unattainable socioeconomic privilege in larger Bolivian society in the eyes of Okinawan-Bolivians, whose dominance was limited to a small rural domain and agricultural sector of the economy. Okinawan-Bolivians’ resentment against Bolivian hakujin elites and the country dominated by them led them to generalize about “Bolivians” in general, who, in their view, lacked essential qualities to run a country. For instance, Mr. Kaneshiro’s criticism of hakujin, urban Bolivian elites, extended to the national character of Bolivians in general: “Bolivia is a terrible country. Above all, the soul [kokoro] of Bolivians, the national character [kokuminsei], is no good. The Japanese kokoro and the Bolivian kokoro are different. The difference is [Bolivians’] extreme individualism, especially in the field of politics. . . . I think the Japanese kokoro is much superior to the Bolivian one.” In his narrative, the alleged selfishness inherent in the hakujin’s soul was the main cause of economic, political, and social problems in Bolivia, while Japan’s high international standing was owed to what he viewed as the favorable national character of its people. The various stereotypes regarding innate characteristics of non-Nikkei Bolivians mentioned by Okinawan-Bolivians reveal as much about their understandingÂ� of their own socioeconomic positions in Bolivian society as their views on non-Nikkei Bolivians. In their narratives, Okinawan-Bolivians’ abundant socioeconomic power within the rural ethnic enclave and their lack of such power outside it were interpreted and expressed through racialized— generalized and naturalized—differences between themselves and their nonNikkeiÂ�Bolivian Others, such as impoverished laborers in Colonia Okinawa and wealthy elites in urban Bolivia. These racialized differences, in turn, providedÂ�

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Okinawan-Bolivians with explanations for why they occupied a different socioeconomic status within Colonia Okinawa and in larger Bolivian society. This chapter has examined not only structural macro-processes at the local, national, and international levels that shaped the socioeconomic status of Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, but also their daily interactions with non-Okinawan-Bolivians at their workplaces in which they defined, normalized, and negotiated unequal positions in labor relations. The division of labor between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and non-Nikkei Bolivian trabajadores was legitimized, though subtly challenged, by exploitative and paternalistic relations between the two groups. The different positions that Okinawan-Bolivians and their non-Nikkei Bolivian Others occupied in socioeconomic structures and labor markets in Bolivia were interpreted by Okinawan-Bolivians through stereotyping, which oversimplified and essentialized the complex and heterogeneous structural conditions in which they were placed. These stereotypes, which Okinawan-Bolivians formed through daily interactions with and observations of their non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers, deterministically explicated the two groups’ subject positions, including their different socioeconomic status: the behaviors and characters of each group were innate and unchanging, and those were the reasons for their current socioeconomic status. The socioeconomic status of Okinawan-Bolivians as large farm owners in rural Bolivia was, in this way, understood and enacted in relation to racialized Others, such as non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers in Colonia Okinawa and political and economic elites in urban Bolivia. The next chapter will examine a similar process of subject positioning that Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants went through in their workplaces in Yokohama and other Japanese cities. The major difference between the two situations is, however, the much inferior socioeconomic status that Nisei migrant workers occupied in urban Japan than they enjoyed in rural Bolivia, where they were the offspring of affluent farm owners.

[3]

From Patrón to Nikkei-jin RO¯dO¯sha : Class Transformations

Many young Nisei moved from Colonia Okinawa to urban Japan after realizing that it was extremely difficult to achieve economic success on their own outside the insular environment of Colonia Okinawa. They needed to accumulate cash quickly in order to launch their own farming operations in (or near) Colonia Okinawa.1 Once they had moved to urban Japan, such as to the Tsurumi Ward in Yokohama, Nisei found jobs in the manufacturing and construction industries. The majority of Okinawan-Bolivians in Tsurumi lived and ran their businesses in the Nakadōri and Ushioda neighborhoods; one study in 1998 counted twenty-one small businesses in Tsurumi run by Okinawan-Bolivians from Colonia Okinawa, among which were two restaurants serving Latin American and Okinawan food and fifteen electrical installation firms (Tsujimoto 1998c, 320). While landing jobs through personal connections was relatively easy, Nisei faced numerous difficulties at their workplaces in urban Japan. In addition to highly stratified labor market structures within the construction and manufacturing industries, Nisei’s lack of complete fluency and literacy in “standard” Japanese and their own desire to return to Bolivia in the near future limited their options to those that presented little potential for upward socioeconomic mobility in Japan. This chapter portrays the experiences of Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in Japan, most of whom were Nisei children of affluent Issei farm owners in Colonia Okinawa. Paralleling the last chapter, which examined OkinawanBolivians’ socioeconomic positions and labor relations in Colonia Okinawa 83

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and in Bolivia at large, this chapter outlines the labor market structure in the construction industry in Japan and locates the dekasegi migrant workers within it. Ethnographic snapshots of the dekasegi workers’ working conditions at construction sites, the physically demanding tasks they performed in a hazardous environment, the spatial isolation (and autonomy) they maintained, and the interactions among themselves and with other workers, such as Japanese Naichi-jin and Nikkei-jin migrants from other South American countries, indicate how their subject positions in Japan were shaped and experienced. The dekasegi migrants frequently interpreted and performed their subject positions within the larger economic structures and daily working situations in Japan through racialized stereotyping of others and themselves. Their various narratives on their structural positions within the Japanese labor market and the ways in which different groups of workers act and interact were reminiscent of Issei’s and Nisei’s racialized (overgeneralized and naturalized) explanations of the labor relations between non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers and OkinawanBolivian farm owners in Colonia Okinawa and of the economic structure of Bolivia at large. These narratives, which naturalized and embodied socioeconomic relations to their Others as manifestations of their essentialized cultural (Bolivian, Latin American, Japanese, or Okinawan) Selves, in turn, continued to shape their experiences in urban Japan as Nikkei-jin rōdōsha (laborers).

Electrical Installation: Subcontracting Pyramid The relatively small cost of starting up a business and the preestablished networks of Okinawan-Bolivian electricians in the area were cited as the key reasons for the large number of Okinawan-Bolivian-owned electrical installation firms existing in Tsurumi. Indeed, many Okinawan-Bolivian electrical installation firms in Tsurumi were founded by people who used to work for other Okinawan-Bolivian-owned electrical installation firms. To start their own electrical installation firms, they simply converted their apartments into office space and hired their friends from Bolivia as staff. Two electrical installation firms I came to know during my fieldwork employed thirteen and ten electricians, respectively, and the presidents of both firms used their own private apartments as company offices. The electrical installation industry was structured under a multilayered outsourcing system. The construction industry of Japan is heavily dependent on small-scale firms of under three hundred employees, comprising 99.7 percent of the industry, most of which were subcontractors for large general

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construction,Â� or zene-kon, firms (Sano 1995, 324). When a zene-kon firm was awarded a project by a client, the firm assumed the role of the designer and overseer of the overall construction process. The zene-kon firm would appoint specialized contractors for actual construction assignments, such as building a steel frame, cement work, electrical installation, painting, and interior furnishing. An electrical installation firm that was hired by a “parent” zene-kon firm would then appoint several subcontractors who would actually send electricians to the construction sites. The subcontracting practiced in the electrical installation industry and the construction industry in general was further classified into subcontracting (ukeoi) and staffing (haken or ouen, which means “supporting”). Ukeoi is an outsourcing practice through which a “parent” company allocates a certain amount of work to a subcontractor, which directs and supervises its own employees. In contrast, haken is the placement of workers by a subcontractor to its “parent” company, which maintains control over the staffed (subcontracted) workers at the work site. It is not uncommon that one construction project creates four or five layers of “parent-child” subcontracting arrangement (Tsujimoto 1999, 77).2 One construction project I worked on in August 2001 was overseenÂ�by the S Kensetsu zene-kon firm. For the project’s electrical

Zene-kon firm (S Kenetsu)

Contractor (F Denki)

Subcontractor (D Denki)

Sub-subcontractor (T Denki) Construction industry pyramid

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installation,Â� S Kensetsu contracted F Denki, which, in turn, appointed three subcontractors, among which was D Denki. D Denki asked T Denki, a subsubcontractor,Â� to supply (haken) a certain number of electricians to the site each day to work under D Denki’s supervision. As haken workers, T Denki electricians, mostly Nisei dekasegi migrants, were at the bottom of this construction industry subcontracting pyramid.

Financial Instability The zene-kon firm’s cash-flow problem directly affected its subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. As sub-subcontracted staff, T Denki’s electricians often suffered from delayed or unpaid wages. In return for staffing electricians, T Denki typically received 18,000 yen (US$150) per person per day from its “parent” firm, but the terms of payment were never clear to the T Denki employees. Shortly after I began working at T Denki, Kamikawa Kazuo, my coworker, told me that I should negotiate with the T Denki president, Tonoshiro Masao, about my wages because there was no fixed pay scale. T Denki’s base wage turned out to be 12,000 yen, or US$100, a day, and those who had work experience could make 15,000 to 16,000 yen a day. Although T Denki electricians could theoretically make 350,000 to 400,000 yen (approximately US$2,900 to US$3,300) each month, and, indeed, some of them told me they used to earn as much, their monthly income was typically much smaller. As one T Denki electrician told me: I used to make around 440,000 to 460,000 yen a month because I worked three hours overtime each day and five or six days a week. Recently, I haven’t received a chunk of money from T Denki. It is like I get 10,000 yen, 50,000 yen, or 100,000 yen every now and then. If I keep bugging [President Tonoshiro], “Hey, give me money!” then he gives me some. But lately he doesn’t. . . . If I get money like that [in small amounts], I don’t know how much I am making and getting from him, and no money is left afterwards. The unpredictable and unreliable payment of wages created financial stress for T Denki electricians. In late August 2001, as T Denki electricians were gathering at Ushioda Park, their meeting place, before heading to their construction site together, Tokashiki Oscar was trying to get hold of President Tonoshiro to discuss his delayed wage payment. Soon, other T Denki electricians started

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talking about their delayed wages. Tamashiro Satoru, an experienced electrician, and Kamikawa Kazuo, who was a relatively new electrician with only a few months of work experience, both said that they hadn’t been paid for two months. Mr. Tokashiki claimed that T Denki owed him nearly 800,000 yen.3 Mr. Tokashiki decided to take action. He told others, “Until we get paid, we shouldn’t go to work.” He called Mr. Ishikawa of D Denki, which had subcontracted T Denki for the ongoing project, to explain their situation. Mr. Ishikawa offered to loan some money to those who were in need, but Mr. Tokashiki refused it because it wouldn’t solve the problem. He wanted to talk to the president of D Denki, but Mr. Ishikawa couldn’t locate him. Mr. Tokashiki told him that he would go to the site in the afternoon to discuss the matter with the D Denki president. After the call, Mr. Tokashiki and Mr. Tamashiro discussed the situation: tokashiki: [The delayed payment] was not entirely [President Tonoshiro’s] fault. I asked him yesterday, and he told me that D Denki hadn’t paid T Denki, and he wasn’t clear when [D Denki] would pay T Denki, either.” tamashiro: [President Tonoshiro] shouldn’t work for D Denki anymore. They only give us money-losing projects. Then, one by one, the T Denki electricians began discussing their own financial woes: kamikawa: I was short my apartment rent this month by 3,000 yen. tamashiro: I asked the landlord of my apartment to wait for the rent payment this month. tokashiki: [A T Denki employee who wasn’t there that day] hasn’t come to work recently because he knows that the project is in the red and he is not going to get paid. He has a wife and a son, you know. tamashiro:[To me] After all, we are here for dekasegi to make money,Â�you know? tokashiki: [To me] You are lucky. You just started working. When we found Mr. Tonoshiro, he told us that, he, too, had been unable to pay his rent for the last two months. As a novice, I wasn’t asked to join in the negotiations with D Denki. Mr. Kamikawa told me about the meeting the next day: “We had to wait for hours to see the [D Denki] president. But eventually I got some money for my rent and a little ‘allowance money’ from him.”

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Apparently, T Denki frequently faced payment problems with its “parent” subcontractors, and the situation sometimes became ugly. When I was at President Tonoshiro’s apartment, which also functioned as the T Denki office, he showed me a letter from Y Denki, a sub-subcontractor, with which T Denki had been having a payment dispute. The letter was written in relatively formal Japanese, so Mr. Tonoshiro asked me to read it aloud for him. It said: “The payment that you, T Denki, are requesting from us must be D Denki’s responsibility. You, therefore, must negotiate with D Denki instead. If you continue to resort to the means that you have been using lately, we, Y Denki, will consider legal action.” Perplexed by the phrase, “the means that you have been using,” I looked at Mr. Tonoshiro, who then explained: “We worked for Y Denki on a project last month. But they haven’t paid us 1,700,000 yen that they owed us for the project. D Denki [which was the “parent” subcontractor for both Y Denki and T Denki] eventually agreed to pay us on behalf of Y Denki. And I used the yakuza [mafia] to harass them and make them pay. The whole Y family [who owns Y Denki] had run away. When the yakuza guys and I went to their house, they were gone.” I could not tell whether he was describing the dispute accurately or exaggerating it, but the unsurprised response from other T Denki employees when I read the letter aloud to them led me to believe that similar troubles must have taken place before. For these Okinawan-Bolivian electricians, it appeared, delayed or unpaid wages by subcontractors was business as usual. Some Okinawan-Bolivian owners of electrical installation firms formed a moyai, or mutual aid organization, which pooled money to assist members who were in financial trouble in paying their employees’ wages (Tsujimoto 1999, 80). According to Mr. Tonoshiro, however, moyai was no longer practiced, and many Okinawan-Bolivian-owned businesses faced reoccurring cash-flow problems. Another problem that dekasegi workers faced was inconsistency of work availability. During the three months or so I worked for T Denki in 2000, the actual number of days I went to construction sites was only thirty-five. I was often frustrated in the morning because I did not know whether, where, or when I was supposed to work that day. My phone calls to Mr. Tonoshiro’s cell phone the night before were rarely returned, and I had to keep calling him even as I headed to the meeting place in the early morning. When one of us finally got hold of him by phone, we were often told that there was no work that day and to go home. We were told not to come to work on the project that T Denki was staffing for a money-losing construction project. At one construction site, my T Denki coworker told me: “[This] project is in the red. . . .

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The construction firm estimated four hundred person days of labor, but it has already cost seven hundred person days.” Mr. Tonoshiro later confirmed it, as he told us not to come to work until the current project was finished, because T Denki’s “parent” firm ordered him to keep novices like me from working for the project to reduce labor costs. At one point in early September 2001, Mr. Tonoshiro didn’t know when there would be another project for any of his employees. On other occasions, there were sudden call-ups without prior notice. One morning, around 7:20 a.m., Mr. Tonoshiro called my cell phone and asked me if I could work that day, although he had told me the night before that there wouldn’t be any work for the next few days. Still half asleep, I said yes and asked him where and when I should go. He asked me if I could get to Atsugi in central Kanagawa Prefecture before 7:50 a.m. It was impossible to get there in thirty minutes, so I told him that it would take more than an hour. He grumbled for a while but backed off. Because of such irregular working hours, Mr. Kamikawa, who had a wife and two school-age children, decided to leave T Denki and had to find another job less than five months after his arrival in Japan.4 While we waited for our coworkers at the meeting place on one of many frustrating mornings, he told me, “I can’t keep doing this. My señora (wife) prepares a lunch box for me every morning, expecting me to go to work.” Other Okinawan-Bolivians who worked in the manufacturing industry were similarly frustrated with fluctuating wages and work schedules. Many returnees from dekasegi in Japan whom I interviewed in Colonia Okinawa told me that they had decided to return to Bolivia when their employers began to delay paying their wages. In addition, since most factories paid their employees hourly, the decreasing number of overtime hours was a serious blow to those who worked in the manufacturing industry. For instance, Onaga Marco, who worked for a gas company in Yokohama for fourteen years, decided to return to Bolivia in 1996, after his company’s business “started to look shaky” in 1993. He was, at one point, earning approximately 420,000 yen a month, but later his wages began to be delayed. When he finally quit the company, he claimed, the firm owed him more than 900,000 yen in unpaid wages, and he didn’t receive the retirement pension benefit due all full-time employees.

Limited Mobility in an Economic Enclave Instability of work and income in the construction and manufacturing industries caused Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants to change employers and

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jobs frequently. By exploiting informal networks among family members, relatives, and friends from Colonia Okinawa, the migrants sought jobs with higher and more consistent income. Their options were, however, limited to the construction, manufacturing, and service industries. Further constrained by their lack of Japanese higher education required for white-collar jobs and their reliance on kinship and friendship networks, the dekasegi migrants found themselves confined in a segregated labor market. Some of my T Denki coworkers had tried to pursue more stable employment and higher wages in the past. Tokashiki Ken and Tamashiro Satoru left T Denki once because they thought the company would go bankrupt. Ken said, “We were telling each other, ‘This company will go out of business, so we’d better quit before it’s too late!’â†œ” Ken and Satoru’s separation from T Denki, however, didn’t last long. Ken worked for a relative’s equipment installation firm (setsubi-ya). He studied for three months to obtain his license for equipment installation, but he found that the wage payment at the company was, like T Denki’s, not reliable. (“Things like pay can be very inconsistent if your relative is your employer, you know.”) So he decided to return to T Denki, which was surprisingly easy. He recalled: “I was really nervous when I asked [Mr. Tonoshiro] if I could work there again, but he said, ‘Okay.’ I was like, ‘Whew!’â†œ” Ken was, though, thinking about leaving T Denki again: “If I don’t get paid 15,000 yen [a day] for this month, I will just say ‘bye-bye’ to [President Tonoshiro].” Those who had enough experience could also try to improve their situations by becoming independent. Satoru and his friend, also from Colonia Okinawa, had a quarrel with President Tonoshiro over wage payment, after which the two left T Denki. By the end of September 2001, they had begun contracting with other “parent” electrical installation firms for which they had once worked through staffing. They tried to talk their friends at T Denki into leaving to join them. Nisei dekasegi migrants’ struggles as sub-subcontractors and manual laborers in the construction and manufacturing industries in urban Japan show that their ability to move physically between Bolivia and Japan did not translate into upward class mobility. Once they were removed from the insular Colonia Okinawan community and entered the highly stratified labor market in urban Japan, their socioeconomic status declined from that of offspring of upperclass farm owners to lower-class laborers; Nisei’s transnational connections to Japan, a source of their privilege in rural Bolivia, no longer possessed much value once they moved to Japan.

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At the Construction Site: Ro- do-sha in Yokohama After Nisei migrated to Japan to become manual laborers, they not only suffered from a drastic decline in status within the economic structure and labor market, but also endured numerous physical and mental hardships in their day-to-day work. The jobs they took up in Japan, such as physical labor at construction sites (genba) and assembly line work in factories, were commonly known as “3K” jobs in Japan. The three Ks stood for kitsui (difficult or strenuous), kitanai (dirty or unclean), and kiken (dangerous). As more young Japanese who had grown up in the affluence of the 1970s and 1980s were reluctant to choose such unattractive jobs, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants, along with other South American Nikkei-jin immigrants, filled the labor shortage in the “3K” jobs. Virtually all interviewees in Colonia Okinawa who had returned from dekasegi in Japan had worked on factory assembly lines and at construction sites, while a few others worked in retail stores as cashiers.5 Although it is impossible to generalize about all Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants’ experiences in Japan, even a brief look at a day at a construction site in Yokohama shows the sense of powerlessness T Denki electricians felt as well as feelings of resignation, a degree of freedom, and pride in their work. Because of the widely varying types and number of tasks at different construction sites, there was no “typical” day for Okinawan-Bolivian electricians. The excerpt from my fieldnotes below shows only a glimpse of their work. August 2001 I arrived at I Park, near President Tonoshiro’s apartment, which was also T Denki’s office, a few minutes after 7:00 a.m. As usual, only Tokashiki Oscar was there. His whole family had moved to Japan several years ago, but his uncle still lives in Colonia Okinawa. He was in his early thirties. He and his wife, who is camba, had a two-year-old daughter. He told me that she was currently in Colonia Okinawa staying with her family because she was scheduled to give birth soon. One by one, other electricians arrived by foot or bike. “Buen día” [good morning], sleepy greetings were exchanged among them. Today’s members were Tokashiki Oscar, his younger brother Ken, Uema José, and Kamikawa Kazuo, Tamashiro Satoru, Aniya Akira, Tomori Minoru, and me. Except for Mr. Kamikawa, who is in his forties with three school-age children, and Oscar, all the others are unmarried and in

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their early to mid-twenties. On the street next to the park, they were sitting on the curb, looking at e-mail messages on their cell phone screens. They chatted almost exclusively in Spanish, though there wasn’t much talk. Around 7:20 a.m., apparently enough members showed up, and we got in vans without anyone giving a cue. The day’s genba was a high school in the Kōhoku Ward of Yokohama, about a twenty-minute drive from Tsurumi. We needed to drive two vans, in which various tools and construction materials were crammed. We needed to arrive at the site before eight o’clock, when the morning meeting, which all workers were supposed to attend, starts. From the first day of my job, I was asked to drive one of the vans, because only one other T Denki electrician had a Japanese driver’s license. They told me that before I joined one of them drove without a license. The van was generally quiet in the morning; some munched on pastries they had bought on the way to the park. We arrived at the high school site late for the morning meeting. The morning meeting at any construction site normally started with rajio taisō, or “radio exercise,” to warm up. All the workers lined up according to their divisions (i.e., interior furnishing, equipment installment, electrical installations, and so on) and methodically and precisely moved their limbs in unison to the tape-recorded music and cues. Even when they arrived at the genba in time for the exercise, the T Denki electricians tended to move uninterestedly through the motions. After the warm-up exercise, a project supervisor from S Kensetsu, a zene-kon firm, gave a briefing on the project, such as the loading of the construction materials and the expected dates for the fire marshals’ inspections. The meeting ended with the zene-kon supervisor’s call to the workers, “Let’s work hard and safely today!” (Kyō mo anzen-sagyō de ganbarō!), to which all the workers responded by raising their fist in accordance, yelling, “Oh!” This routine was followed at all the other construction sites at which I worked. The T Denki electricians wore worn-out sneakers and olivecolored uniforms provided by D Denki, T Denki’s “parent” firm. Only Aniya Akira, who lived far from Tsurumi and took a train to I Park, changed from his street clothes to the uniform in the van. They wore a helmet that says “D Denki” and a tool belt, or koshi dōgu, which typically held a few screwdrivers, a nipper, pliers, a wrench, a ratchet, a flashlight, a scale, a cutter knife, an electric cord knife, and a balance

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scale. Some of us had more tools, depending on the day’s work. The tool belt has an anzen-tai, an expandable safety band, with a large carabiner-like ring-hook at the end. The band prevents an electrician from falling when he works high above the ground without a stable foothold. Some were smoking cigarettes or drinking soda while Mr. Shimoda of F Denki, the firm that supervises all the electrical installation projects, including those subcontracted by D Denki (and, therefore, T Denki), spoke. He was giving the day’s work orders to Tomori Minoru, Tamashiro Satoru, and Tokashiki Oscar, the most experienced electricians at T Denki. After the meeting, Tamashiro gathered all the T Denki staff and divided them into three groups, giving each one the directions for the day in Japanese. Then, they entered the school building, which was already noisy and dusty. The day’s major tasks for T Denki in the morning were Installment of lighting equipment (kigu zuke): Following the blueprint given by Mr. Shimoda of F Denki, they cut out the ceiling panels where the lights needed to be placed. Then they pulled the electric cords down from above the ceiling and placed the light and its reflecting panels in the cut-out holes. The equipment often didn’t fit into the hole, so the electricians had to carefully enlarge the hole with a cutter knife without destroying the fragile ceiling panel, normally made of inflammable fibers. Often there weren’t proper electric cords placed for each location of the light, so they had to climb into the ceiling through an inspection hatch and crawl above the ceiling with a flashlight to rearrange the electric lines. If the cords were missing or incorrectly installed, they needed to install new ones. Partitioning (majikiri): Following the blueprint provided by F Denki, T Denki electricians installed the electric sockets and light switches in all rooms of the building. After opening holes in the wall with a power drill, they installed the power cords underneath the floor panels to make sure that all the switches and sockets on the wall would have electric cords to connect. At ten o’clock, there was a thirty-minute break. Tamashiro called other T Denki electricians in the building on his cell phone to tell them to

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take a break. They came out of the building, sweating, and bought cans of soda from a vending machine at the on-site office building. They placed a bucket or their own helmets upside down to sit on. Mr. Shimoda of F Denki asked Tamashiro Satoru and Tomori Minoru about their progress and whether they could finish the assigned tasks for the day. T Denki electricians were quietly chatting among themselves, in mixed Japanese and Spanish. Most were reading or typing e-mail messages, in Spanish, on their cell phones. Uema José, who lived with a Japanese girlfriend, called her. After a short chat in Japanese, he turned to me and said: “Well, we had a little fight last night. So I had to make up with her.”6 Around noon, all the workers took an hour-long lunch break. The T Denki electricians formed small groups, not in any particular order, and went to a nearby convenience store to buy lunch. With dirty work outfits, they rarely went to restaurants for lunch, except at a site where there was an employees’ cafeteria construction workers were allowed to patronize. They settled in the shade next to the building, sitting on flattened cardboard boxes. Tokashiki Oscar was sitting near me. He was anxious to find out about his wife’s delivery. As soon as he finished his lunch, he picked up his cell phone and made an international call to a hospital in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to talk to his parents-in-law. Oscar found out that a baby girl had been born safely, and both the baby and his wife were doing well. After finishing lunch, Uema José, Aniya Akira, and Tokashiki Ken took out a soccer ball from the van and started playing with it in the school’s athletic field. Sometimes, they played catch with a baseball and gloves. The rest of the T Denki staff spread the cardboard boxes and lay down to take a short nap until 1:00 p.m., when work would resume. During lunchtime, Mr. Shimoda of F Denki stopped by where T Denki electricians were, but only Tamashiro Satoru and Tokashiki Oscar, who had known him from other projects in the past, chatted with him. The major task in the afternoon was cable installation, or “cable drawing” (kēburu hiki). The main electric cables were installed through steel pipes or elastic plastic tubes. At least two people had to work together to install the cables inside the pipe or tube. From one end of the pipe or tube, one inserts a steel wire, or suchīru, until its tip reaches the other end of the pipe. Then his partner attaches the end of the electric cable, called a “head” (atama), to the tip of the steel

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wire by tightly wrapping them up together with vinyl tape. The person holding the steel wire at the other end of the pipe then begins pulling while his partner pushes the other end of it into the pipe. When it seemed that we wouldn’t have to work overtime today, Mr. Kamikawa said to me, “Normally, work ends at the standard time (5:30 p.m.). It used to end at 5:00, though, instead of 5:30. Even when we have to work overtime, it is normally until 7:30 or so.” This day’s work ended around 5:30 p.m. Tamashiro Satoru again phoned other T Denki staff in the building and told them to wrap up. At the onsite office, Tamashiro filled out the day’s labor registration sheet. He gestured to me to help him write the names of all the T Denki staff in kanji (Chinese characters), which he was not comfortable doing. Mr. Shimoda of F Denki was telling Tomori Minoru about the next day’s projects and the estimated number of electricians to be provided by T Denki. On the way back to Tsurumi from the site, the T Denki van was louder and more jubilant than it had been during the morning ride. Tokashiki Oscar, who didn’t have a driver’s license, was driving the van wildly, cursing in Spanish (“¡ Mierda!â•›” [Shit!], “¡ Puta!â•›” [Whore!]). As we approached I Park, the meeting place of the morning, they got out of the van, one by one, near their homes. Those who needed to take a train or who lived near Tsurumi station, including me, jumped off at the station. From this excerpt as well as the stories of Nisei who had worked in the manufacturing and construction sectors, three characteristics of their working experiences stood out: first, they had to cope with physical discomfort in often dangerous working environments; second, they struggled to gain a sense of independence and control at their workplaces, which was unattainable within the larger scheme of the hierarchical subcontracting system; and third, partly owing to their effort to maintain their self-control and independence, they largely avoided interacting with other Japanese Naichi-jin workers.

Dirty, Difficult, and Dangerous On my first day at a construction site, Tamashiro Satoru briefly introduced me to our supervisor from F Denki as a “rookie” (shinjin) before I started work. The supervisor looked at me and said, “Well, Suzuki-kun, it’s your first day,

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right? Be careful not to hurt yourself.”7 Then he joked, “I mean, you can fall from a ladder, rooftop, or whatever, but just don’t get injured [laugh].” None of the T Denki electricians was injured at the construction sites during my fieldwork, but I could see why construction work, such as electrical installation, was considered a 3K job. Several tasks and certain conditions drew groans and whines from my coworkers. One of the main tasks for electricians was power cable installation, or kēburu hiki, which sometimes required a whole day of work in an underground pit. One day at the site, it was raining heavily when Mr. Kamikawa and I struggled in a muddy underground pit to install a power cable that seemed too thick to come through the preinstalled pipe. Our jackets were soaked with sweat and rain, while our shoes were soggy from the muddy water pouring into the pit. Our uniforms were a mess, and my whole body was aching as we crawled out of the pit. Another day, Tokashiki Oscar, Ken, and I spent the whole afternoon inside the main underground pit of the construction site. The pit was approximately two and a half meters (eight feet) deep, so we used a ladder to enter. Inside it was dark, cool, and humid. We had to install the cables on a steel rack that was already in place. The pit was divided into many cells by concrete walls, and each wall had small holes with a diameter of only sixty centimeters (twenty-three inches). The holes were so narrow that we had to crawl into and out of them every time we moved to an adjacent cell. As we were setting up plastic pipes to install electric cables, Oscar struggled with the erratic pipe in a small compartment of the pit, while I was holding a flashlight to help him. Frustrated, Oscar cried out, “Aaahh! Why in the world did I become an electrician, having to work in a place like this?” Sometimes, the working environment was hazardous to workers’ health. Uema José, Tokashiki Oscar, and I worked in a recycling plant in Chiba City in September 2001. The plant disassembled, broke down, and sorted discarded home electronic appliances, such as TVs and refrigerators, into recyclable plastic and glass pieces. The plant was large and spacious, but the air inside the factory building was filled with plastic and metal dust. T Denki’s parent firm gave us Styrofoam masks to protect ourselves from inhaling the dangerous dust. It was difficult to perform our physically demanding tasks inside the hot factory with the masks on, however, so soon we took them off. Before long, we began coughing violently, and our faces and arms turned ash gray from the dust within a few hours. We spent the whole morning installing a thick cable on the high wall rack, approximately four meters (twelve feet) above the floor. Since there were not enough footholds around the rack nor was there a safety

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net below us, we could only secure ourselves with the safety band locked to a stem of the rack nearby. The common narratives of Okinawan-Bolivians who had returned from their dekasegi in Japan centered on how hard (kitsui) their working experiences had been. Those who worked on factory assembly lines had much difficulty with fast-paced work. Tokuma Shun, who worked at a truck assembly plant in Tokyo, told me that he hated the fast pace of his work (“not a kind of work any human being should do”). He quit the job after four months. When asked what he remembered most about his life in Japan, he replied: “I don’t remember Japan very much. All I remember now was how hard the work was and how bad [the working] conditions were.” While the fast pace of work was a main source of complaints from the Okinawan-Bolivian migrants who worked on factory assembly lines, those who had worked in the construction industry hated the physical strain and hazardous environment of their work. Onaga Marco, who had worked for a gas pipe installation firm for thirteen years before returning to Colonia Okinawa in 1996, grimaced as he recalled his work: “Especially during the summer, it became very hot because all the heat was reflected on the asphalt surface of the streets. It was so hot that sweat got into my eyes. When I used this [he gestures handling a jackhammer], my arms went numb after a while. Even the next day, my arms were aching badly. I really wanted to come home, but I had a goal [of saving money to buy land and start farming in Colonia Okinawa], so I could gut it out.” Nomura Satoshi, whom I met in Colonia Okinawa in the winter of 1998, left for Japan in January 1999 with his wife and two young children. He worked for a construction firm in Hiratsuka City of Kanagawa Prefecture for two years before returning to Bolivia in April 2001. I met him the day after he returned to Colonia Okinawa and asked him about his work in Japan. He recalled: “For the first few months, it was really hard! I had to carry construction materials that were so long and heavy. You need to carry them with your fingers like this [putting his hands in front of his abdomen, showing his palms to me], not with your arms or on your shoulders. I can carry heavy stuff on my shoulders, you know, but just with fingers?! It was hard. By the end of the day, my fingers became numb and couldn’t move.” Even though electrical installation was generally regarded by the T Denki electricians as less taxing than factory assembly line work or other construction work, it was still quite exhausting and potentially dangerous. As Tamashiro Satoru, a T Denki electrician in his early twenties, told me more than once, electric installation was “not the kind of work you do until you turn fifty [years old].”

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Struggle for Autonomy and Control Despite the unstable income and 3K working conditions, the electricians at T Denki preferred their jobs to others, such as assembly lines at factories and simple construction labor. Despite the numerous difficulties, they told me, they liked their job because it was “interesting” (omoshiroi).8 Their positive view of the job derived from the relative independence enjoyed by the Nisei electricians at their workplaces and their sense of pride in their manual skills, which they might not have been able to acquire in white-collar occupations. Even though their overall tasks were assigned by their “parent” firms, the electricians could maintain control over their daily work schedule and a social space among themselves at construction sites. After the morning briefing with the parent company’s project supervisor, in which only a few experienced electricians from T Denki participated, the rest were, by and large, left alone during the work hours. The T Denki electricians, unless they were badly procrastinating, enjoyed the freedom to chat in Spanish and playfully teased each other while working on their assignments. Freedom from strict and controlling Japanese Naichi-jin bosses was a major reason why Aniya Akira, a twenty-three-year-old Nisei, had left his previous electrical installation firm and joined T Denki. After arriving in Japan, Aniya worked for a Naichi-jin Japanese-owned electrical installation firm in Tokyo, which was very strict on punctuality, manners, and dress codes. He recalled: “They were always telling me to hurry up. But if you are always yelled at, how can you do a good job and enjoy the work, you know?” Then, he pointed at his necklace and earrings, and said: “They prohibited me from wearing these, too. Can you believe it?” Indeed, despite my slow and sloppy work as a rookie, the T Denki electricians were extremely patient with me, and I was never severely scolded by them. In fact, the only persons who yelled at me during my tenure as an electrician/fieldworker were Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors from a “parent” company, when they were unhappy with my slow work. Among the T Denki workers, criticism of work was exchanged in a friendly and joking manner, through good-natured jabs. One afternoon Tamashiro Satoru was trying to hurry Kamikawa Kazuo, who was a novice electrician: “Hey, Tío [“uncle,” a Spanish term of address used for an older adult man], do you want to see which one of us finishes the work first?” When he later caught Mr. Kamikawa and me chatting while we were setting up the floor power sockets, he yelled at us from the distance with mock exasperation, inserting an Okinawan word to soften the tone,

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“Hey, you guys are having a yuntaku [chit-chat] again!” It was a common sight at construction sites for two T Denki workers to put their arms around each other’s shoulders as they went back to their working locations from a break, jubilantly chatting in “standard” Japanese mixed with Spanish terms and expressions. Despite the norms that all workers must arrive at the construction site before the morning meetings, the T Denki electricians were often late for the meeting, sometimes missing it entirely.9 The T Denki staff normally joined the rest of the construction workers during the rajio taisō of the morning meeting, and they didn’t seem to be upset even if they were to miss the whole meeting. The consensus among them was that as long as they could begin their tasks (approximately) on time, it should not be a problem. To most of them, who were young, fit men in their twenties, mandatory warm-up routines like the rajio taisō to prevent injuries seemed unimportant. Meanwhile, direct work orders by Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors were often viewed as a nuisance. One day, Tamashiro Satoru and Tomori Minoru went to a different site as ouen (help) staff for D Denki from the project on which the rest of T Denki electricians worked. The next day, Tamashiro rejoined the rest of the T Denki staff and complained to Kamikawa Kazuo and me about his previous day’s work. He called a Japanese Naichi-jin supervisor from D Denki debu (“fat,” a derogatory term in Japanese) and criticized him for only giving orders to Tamashiro and Tomori Minoru, while never working hard himself. Tokashiki Ken also frequently complained to me about unreasonable orders given by the Japanese Naichi-jin boss of the parent firm: “Sometimes, we have to draw the cables twice on exactly the same route. I felt like telling him, ‘Then just tell us to do all of them at once!’ It’s stupid!” In addition to the independence they were allowed at construction sites, the Okinawan-Bolivian electricians enjoyed frequent changes in projects and the opportunity to acquire a wide variety of technical skills, which kept them interested in their jobs and gave them a sense of power and personal growth. Before becoming an electrician, Tokashiki Oscar had been an assembly line worker in a factory, but he “got bored” after three months; after learning all the skills required for the job, he felt, the work became a mere repetition. That was one reason why he chose to become an electrician, because there were “many tasks for [him] to learn and improve [his] skills.” When Aniya Akira worked for a Japanese-owned electrical installation firm in Tokyo before joining T Denki, he was ordered to do all the menial work, such as carrying steel pipes and opening boxes of lighting equipment, but was never asked to take

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on more complex assignments. Tokashiki Ken, Aniya’s close friend, explained to me why Mr. Aniya quit the firm: “He had to do the same work all the time. He got tired of it, you know? Besides, his boss yelled at him whenever Aniya didn’t do it exactly the way he was told, even when he hadn’t made a mistake. It was stupid. It didn’t make any difference if Aniya did it differently, right?” In contrast with the electricians’ freedom to improve and their independence, as Tokashiki Oscar pointed out, dekasegi migrants who worked in the manufacturing industry struggled with what they perceived as lack of freedom or room for personal growth in their work.10 Tomonaga Hiroshi, who was working at a small factory in Tsurumi, told me that he didn’t have a problem with his bosses, but he often became frustrated with them when he was not given any choice in how to do his work. He said, “I don’t like that I can’t do what I want to do. At my work, even if there are things I want to do, I am forced to do other tasks. I don’t have any freedom.” Insistence on relative freedom and the right to improvise was also a theme during my interviews in Colonia Okinawa with dekasegi returnees from Japan. Nomura Satoshi, a Nisei from Colonia Uno who had worked in a construction firm, insisted that his work was “fun” because of the new skills he could learn at work: “I enjoyed every day of the work. No matter what it was, I liked learning a new thing. Everything was new to me.” Many Nisei returnees in Colonia Okinawa were also eager to explain to me the details of the techniques they had learned through their work, such as how to weld steel pipes seamlessly or how to locate the hidden electrical cords behind the wall. Takara Wagner, a former electrician who had returned to Colonia Okinawa after nineteen years of dekasegi in Japan, boasted he knew far more about construction work than his Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors from zene-kon firms: Those [Naichi-jin engineers] might have studied architecture and such at the university, but when it comes to actual construction work, they didn’t know anything. I often had to oblige them and follow their stupid directions, but, in the end, when things didn’t turn out as well as they had hoped, they came to me and asked me what to do [laugh]. . . . The blueprints drawn by the architects didn’t take these things into account. So, I often ended up redoing all the designing [for electronic installation]. Okinawan-Bolivian electricians’ insistence that they enjoyed their work was not a self-consoling gesture toward their jobs as sub-subcontractors at the

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bottomÂ�of the Japanese construction industry; instead, as sociologist Paul Willis observed among young British manual laborers, it was an active assertion that their work was more masculine, and therefore more attractive, than office jobs. They liked their workplace to be “a place where people are not ‘cissies [sic]’ and can ‘handle themselves,’ where ‘pen-pushing’ is looked down on in favour of really ‘doing things’ . . . where you can speak up for yourself, and where you would not be expected to be subservient” (Willis 1977, 96). The physical strenuousness and potential danger that construction work presented to Nisei dekasegi migrants required them not to be “sissies” and to “stand for and express . . . masculinity” (ibid. 104), and the variety of manual skills and practical knowledge required for the job made them feel they were “really doing things.” The Nisei electricians at T Denki, therefore, did not merely persevere in their physically demanding work but often embraced it as an opportunity to express their masculine strength and individual agency.

Mutual Dissociation at Work Throughout a workday, beginning at the meeting place in Tsurumi, the van ride to the construction sites, the morning and afternoon working hours, the breaks, and ending in their ride back to Tsurumi, there were few direct contacts between Nisei electricians and Naichi-jin Japanese workers. Even when the two groups were working within the same section of the construction site, T Denki electricians received most of their directions from the more experienced electricians among them, not from Naichi-jin supervisors from T Denki’s “parent” contractor. As a result, a Naichi-jin Japanese supervisor would recognize only a few among about ten T Denki electricians who worked for the same project regularly for several weeks. Except for limited occasions during the breaks, I rarely witnessed conversations between T Denki electricians and their Japanese coworkers and supervisors, largely because the actual work of electricians simply did not require much collaboration with other workers. Most of the conversations between them during working hours, if they ever happened, were brief discussions regarding the tasks at hand and plans for the rest of the day. When a brief conversation did take place, it tended to be, at best, awkward. For instance, a pair of Japanese Naichi-jin electricians who heard the T Denki staff talking in Spanish approached them and timidly asked Uema José, “Is what you are speaking English?” When Uema told him that it was Spanish, they looked puzzled and walked away without further conversation.

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The awkwardness that followed the interactions between Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi workers was also found in factory settings, where the hierarchical relationship between supervisors and workers was reinforced daily through stylized forms of communication. Hokama Toru, a Nisei who had returned to Colonia Okinawa after working on the assembly line of a window frames factory in Kanagawa Prefecture for two years, described the relationship between Naichi-jin Japanese bosses and dekasegi migrant workers in his factory as follows: I think I was able to see the underside [ura, meaning the hidden but real “inner truth”] of Japanese society.11 I could see raw [nama no] Japan in the factory. For example, I realized there were vertical relationships [tate no kankei, referring to hierarchical relationships between managers and workers] and horizontal relationships [yoko no kankei, referring to relationships between those at the same rank] in the company, which I had never felt in South America. Among my coworkers, there were many Nisei and Sansei from Brazil and Argentina. Those who were in higher positions in the factory were all Japanese, but those who were working on the [assembly] line were all South Americans [i.e., Nikkei-jin].12 We spoke Spanish among ourselves but spoke in Japanese to bosses. But the only time we had to actually talk was during breaks. These hierarchical relationships between supervisors and subordinates and formal mannerisms, both commonly practiced in Japanese workplaces, made Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and Okinawan-Bolivian workers mutually dissociate from each other, creating and maintaining the clear boundary between the two groups. Conversely, in the case of Nisei electricians at T Denki, such formalized practices of boundary making and maintenance offered them a safe space shared with their fellow dekasegi migrants from Colonia Okinawa, sheltering them from interacting with Japanese Naichi-jin workers and supervisors.Â�

South American Nikkei-jin, Okinawans, and Nihonjin After having developed ideas about what “Japanese” were like, in contrast with non-Nikkei Bolivians in Bolivia, the Okinawan-Bolivian workers tested and reexamined their preconceptions about Japaneseness as they actually lived and

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worked alongside with Japanese Naichi-jin in urban Japan. When the dekasegi returnees in Colonia Okinawa recollected their working experiences in Japan, they frequently shared with me what they learned about Japanese Naichi-jin behaviors and characteristics, in contrast with what they had previously believed. Some of their preconceptions were confirmed, others rebutted, but what appeared to remain consistent in their narratives was their essentializations and naturalizations of the national character and behavior patterns of Japanese Naichi-jin as a whole in contrast with those of “Bolivians” or “South Americans,” which often included themselves. Although they appeared to have carried over the racialized understanding that they had become accustomed to applying in labor relations in Colonia Okinawa to labor relations in Japanese cities, the drastic class transformations Nisei underwent as dekasegi migrants, from children of affluent farm owners in rural Bolivia to sub-subcontracted laborers and assembly line workers in urban Japan, helped Nisei dekasegi migrants challenge their Issei parents’ racialized characterizations of “Japanese” people and their culture (in contrast to non-Nikkei “Bolivians” and their culture). Furthermore, even as their characterizations of themselves and their Others in urban Japan, such as Nihonjin (native-born Japanese Naichi-jin), other South American Nikkei-jin (primarily from Brazil and Peru), and Okinawans (from Okinawa Prefecture), were often filled with stereotypes, they occasionally alluded to the disparities in political and economic power between Japan and Bolivia (South America) and Naichi and Okinawa as underlying factors for shaping these groups’ characters and behaviors. The stereotyping narratives and practices that essentialized and naturalized the differences among Nihonjin, Nikkei-jin, and Okinawans portrayed below are, then, less an indication of their unsophisticated understanding of Japanese socioeconomic structures and their own positions within them than evidence of their continuing recognition and application of the racialized boundaries they had learned in Colonia Okinawa.

Nihonjin: “Workaholic” and “Lazy” Given the structural limitations in their career options in Japan and the occasionally degrading attitudes Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors displayed toward them at work, it was not surprising that many Okinawan-Bolivians generalized Naichi-jin Japanese as being “cold” (Tsujimoto 1999, 98, 103). Their negative impressions of Naichi-jin Japanese workers took the form of two polarized stereotypes: that of mindless workaholics and that of spoiled slackers.

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When the Okinawan-Bolivian returnees from dekasegi I interviewed in Colonia Okinawa described Japanese Naichi-jin, many were more appalled than impressed by the long hours their Nihonjin coworkers devoted to work and the robotically fast pace they managed to keep at work. Shimada Julio, a Nisei who had worked at a subcontractor for an automobile manufacturer in Hadano City from 1989 to 1993, didn’t understand why Nihonjin worked such long hours: “It seemed like Nihonjin are working for tomorrow [the future], but here, we don’t work when it rains [laugh].” To him, his Japanese coworkers’ work habits appeared abnormal: “Nihonjin like working, don’t they? . . . They are living life at such a frantic pace. I thought, ‘No wonder they became number one in the world, if they are working this much.’â†œ” Even as he expressed amazement about the fast pace of Japanese workplaces and the apparent willingness of Naichi-jin Japanese to keep up with it, he narrated these characteristics of Nihonjin with a hint of pity and condescension in his voice; as impressive as the Japanese economy and work ethic might be, he clearly did not want Bolivian society and its workplace culture to become like Japan’s. In contrast, many other Nisei interviewees, who had also worked in Japan as dekasegi migrant laborers, found that the “hardworking Nihonjin” was more a myth than a reality and that they, in fact, had a better work ethic than many of their Naichi-jin Japanese coworkers. Nomura Satoshi, a Nisei who had worked in two factories in Hadano and Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture from 1988 to 1992, found Japanese workers different from what he had imagined them to be. He said: “Before I went there for dekasegi, my image of Japan was, ‘People there are all serious and hardworking. If you don’t work hard, you will be fired.’ But once I was there, [I discovered that] the work was not that hard, except for the fact that they were very strict on punctuality.” Mr. Nomura insisted that “foreigners,” by which he meant South American Nikkei-jin migrants, including Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants, worked harder than their Nihonjin coworkers: The firm I worked in had many foreigners. Japanese employers actually preferred employing foreigners [i.e., South American Nikkei-jin]. . . . When I went to genba, it was so physically demanding. . . . It was so hot that you couldn’t stand it even after you tried to cool down in front of [an air conditioner]. My [South American Nikkei-jin] friends and I used to say, “Nihonjin would never work in a difficult place like this.” . . . Nihonjin think, “Oh, I can finish my work tomorrow,” but we have a purpose, like saving money or taking the family to [Tokyo] DisneylandÂ�

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while we still live in Japan. . . . Sometimes our work at genba was done around 3:00 p.m., and then some Nihonjin would say, “It’s all right. Just make yourself look busy by sweeping the floor with a broom or something.” . . . Nihonjin who had worked the same job for ten or twenty years took [frequent] breaks, calling it “task-waiting” [shigoto machi]. They could do things like that only in Japan! I was thinking, “Hey, because of these [lazy] guys, the projects go into the red.” Like Mr. Nomura, even when the dekasegi returnees in Colonia Okinawa detailed how difficult and dangerous their jobs had been in Japan, they tended to emphasize how tough and resilient they were, unlike Japanese Naichi-jin. Onaga Marco, another Nisei returnee from a long dekasegi stint in Yokohama, after explaining to me how hard it was to work for a gas pipe installation firm, added, “There is no way that Nihonjin could do that kind of work. . . . I had to teach some [Nihonjin] rookies how to do the work, like how to use a jackhammer. Do you know how hard it is to use one? Your arms get numb after a while. These guys just couldn’t handle it. They wouldn’t stick around for very long; it was just too hard for them.” While these comments on Naichi-jin Japanese coworkers bring to mind the ways in which Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa referred to the ancestral origins of non-Nikkei Bolivians and themselves as primary reasons for their different work ethics, they also indicate that the dekasegi migrants were astutely aware of the economic power differential between Japan and Bolivia, against which they observed (stereotyped) different attitudes toward work between Japanese Naichi-jin and themselves. The dekasegi migrants felt both jealousy and a sense of superiority toward Naichi-jin Japanese, who, the migrants believed, could afford to be lackadaisical about work thanks to the strong economic foundation of the country into which the Naichi-jin Japanese had happened to be born.

“Wild and Crazy” Bolivians: (Self-)stereotyping Nisei dekasegi migrants’ racialized interpretations of group boundaries were not merely practices they had brought from Bolivia to Japan, but also were shaped through daily working situations at construction sites and on assembly lines. Although my Nisei interviewees, both those who had returned to Colonia Okinawa from Japan and those who continued to live in Japan, rarely mentioned overt discrimination by their Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers and

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supervisors,Â�instances of subtle and blatant discrimination against South American Nikkei-jin in Japan have been widely reported (Mori 1992; Roth 2002; Sano 1995; Takenaka 1999; Watkins 1994; but see also Tsuda 1999).13 Whereas overt discrimination was rarely experienced by the Nisei dekasegi migrants at their workplaces, I encountered situations in which Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors made insensitive remarks toward T Denki electricians and T Denki electricians had to respond, sometimes with mere shrugs and other times with more extensive retorts. These interactions indicate that the racialized boundary drawing through stereotyping did not take place merely through observation and interpretation by the dekasegi migrants alone, but also through an interactive process involving both Naichi-jin Japanese and Nisei migrants. Mr. Uchida of J Denki, who was the supervisor of T Denki staff for a warehouse renovation project in Tokyo, was a rare Japanese Naichi-jin who did not seem reluctant to chat with T Denki electricians during breaks. Presumably in an attempt at making conversation with T Denki electricians who were not conversant with Naichi-jin coworkers and supervisors, he kept making fun of how under-equipped and disorganized T Denki was. One day, he was needling Tokashiki Oscar: “Hey, has Tonoshiro [T Denki president] finally fixed his fax machine? Not yet? How can he run a business like that? Geez, your company is really weird [laugh]. . . . How many of you guys have driver’s licenses, anyway? Just a few, right? That’s ridiculous! [laugh]” Later, when he heard that Mr. Tokashiki was paying approximately 150,000 yen (US$1,300) monthly on his cell phone bill (he frequently called his wife in Bolivia, who was in her late pregnancy), Mr. Uchida rolled his eyes: “How in the world could you end up paying 150,000 yen for a cell phone bill? You guys are stupid [baka]!” Knowing that most T Denki electricians were from South America, he often tried to joke about it to make light of awkward situations. Once when the T Denki electricians arrived at the construction site later than the scheduled time, Mr. Uchida laughed and said: “Where were you? Did you get lost on the way? If you drive like that, you might end up going back to [South] America!” Annoyed by his loud teasing and taunting, the T Denki staff remained silent. Instead of denying accusations of being “crazy” and “stupid” by Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and coworkers, T Denki electricians often responded to these stereotypes by playing up these “crazy” and “wild” self-images. Uema José, one of the few T Denki electricians who chatted with his Japanese Naichijin coworkers and supervisors with ease, liked to tell tall tales about how adventurous life in Colonia Okinawa, and in South America in general, was. He gave a Japanese electrician, Mr. Nishime, who worked with the T Denki staff

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during a warehouse renovation project in Tokyo, an exaggerated description of the Bolivian diet: “In Bolivia, people eat everything. We eat goat, armadillo, many different kinds of bird, wild boar, and alligator.” (This is true to an extent; with the exception of goat, however, these things were not part of OkinawanBolivians’ daily diet.) Enjoying Mr. Nishime’s disgusted look, Mr. Uema continued to describe graphically how he once killed a bird with a rifle, how “people in Bolivia” broil armadillos after shaving the fine hair on their shells, and how he and his friends used to abuse stray dogs in Colonia Okinawa with slingshots and BB guns, drawing further groans from Mr. Nishime. On a different occasion, Mr. Uema boasted about “gorgeous” South American women to Mr. Nishime: uema: Women are all pretty in Bolivia, you know. nishime: Really? What are they like? uema: Hmm. . . . well, in Japan, maybe one among ten women has a great body, right? But in Bolivia, most women are like that. nishime: Wow! uema: Brazilian women are even more amazing. They’ve got big asses, and when they go to the beach, many are topless and wear only a thong. nishime: Ooooh! [Jokingly] What would happen if you touched them? uema: Then her big black boyfriend would show up and beat you up [laugh]. Mr. Uema’s exaggerated descriptions of the “wild” lifestyles and voluptuous physiques of Bolivians and Brazilians, along with a joke that stereotyped AfroBrazilian men’s brute strength, exemplify the ways in which Nisei dekasegi migrant men asserted themselves vis-à-vis Naichi-jin Japanese men, who not only knew little about Bolivian society, but who also ridiculed their disorderliness, which they viewed as representative of their “natural” Bolivian (South American) characteristics. In so doing, the Okinawan-Bolivians contradictorily embellished and naturalized the aforementioned stereotypes as “wild and crazy” South Americans cast upon them by Naichi-jin Japanese superiors. Postcolonial theorist Ashis Nandy argues that the colonized often portrayed themselves as being crazy and irrational in order to gain psychological autonomy from the colonizers: “The non-achieving and the insane may often have a higher chance of achieving their . . . goal of freedom and autonomy without mortgaging their

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sanity”Â� (1983, 113). Uema’s tall tales about the “insane” life in Bolivia as well as his hypersexualized portrayals of Bolivian and Brazilian women could also be viewed as an attempt to gain power and authority over Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers and supervisors at construction sites by appealing to their “masculine ethos”—tough and reckless “machismo” and “mastery over women,” which were celebrated among blue-collar workers (Willis 1977, 104)—even if these stories might further solidify stereotypes about “Bolivian” society and culture.

Partial Passing: Closer to Nihonjin Than South American Nikkei-jin The majority of Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants were Nisei who had been raised in a tight-knit immigrant community. They spoke decent, if not always fluent, Japanese, and they possessed legal Japanese citizenship. Thanks to these factors, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants could try to avoid uncomfortable and potentially mortifying stereotyping by Japanese at their workplaces by “passing” themselves off as native-born Japanese. Unless they openly displayed their Bolivian/South American upbringing by talking aloud in Spanish at their workplaces, they could pretend to be Japanese, which they often did. Kōchi Takashi, an Okinawan-Bolivian electrical installation firm owner who had lived in Yokohama for fifteen years, told me that he prohibited his Okinawan-Bolivian employees from speaking Spanish at construction sites, because “some Nihonjin [workers and clients] do not like gaijin [foreigners] working at their place.” T Denki electricians also frequently tried to pass as Japanese in the eyes of other Japanese while the electricians were at construction sites. When they arrived at a new project site, they all had to fill out the registration forms, on which they had to write their names, medical history, and places and dates of birth. In stark contrast to the loud conversations they had had in Spanish before entering the office building, they all fell quiet in the presence of Japanese Naichi-jin project managers at the office. When someone could not understand what was written in Japanese on the form, he whispered to another T Denki colleague, asking for help. They all wrote “Okinawa Prefecture” in the “birthplace” column on the form, even though they were actually born in Bolivia. Although Tokashiki Oscar used his Spanish first name publicly (he wrote it in Japanese katakana, a syllabary script used for foreign names and words), Uema José invented a Japanese first name, Tarō, which he used for worker registration. Their Okinawan ancestral background played a crucial role in their largelyÂ� successful passing practices. Naichi-jin Japanese have long considered

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OkinawansÂ�to be different from themselves because of their accented Japanese speech, allegedly darker skin tone, and more pronounced facial features (Wagatsuma 1967). Taking advantage of Naichi-jin perceptions of Okinawans as “a slightly different” people, Nisei dekasegi migrants proclaimed their accented Japanese and other discernible differences from Naichi-jin Japanese were products of their Okinawan, not Bolivian, background. Tomonaga Hiroshi, a Nisei who had been working in the same factory in Tsurumi Ward for five years, believed that his coworkers, mostly Japanese and a few South American Nikkei-jin, didn’t even know he was from Bolivia. He explained: “Unless I tell them that I am [from Bolivia], they wouldn’t know. I mean, not that they would care that I am from Bolivia, but I don’t really need to say it. . . . [Suzuki: “Don’t they notice you are not from here?”] No. Okinawans [Okinawa no hito] have an accent [namari] in their [Japanese] speech, you know? So if I tell them that I am from Okinawa [Prefecture], they don’t think that my Japanese is strange at all.” The advantage of Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants’ passing as “domestic” Okinawans was most apparent when they were competing against other South American Nikkei-jin migrants, who occupied similar structural positions in the construction and manufacturing industries. Many dekasegi returnees in Colonia Okinawa insisted they were trusted by their Japanese bosses and had little trouble in communication, “unlike other South American Nikkei-jin.” Tonoshiro Mitsuo, an Issei living in Colonia Okinawa who had returned from dekasegi in Japan, told me that he had introduced himself as a “domestic” Okinawan to other Japanese at work: “I never voluntarily told others, ‘I am from Bolivia,’ but always said, ‘I am from Okinawa [Prefecture],’ when I introduced myself. If you told them that you were from South America, you would be looked down upon [baka ni sareru]. Besides, I had learned Japanese at school in the Colonia, so I had no problem [communicating in Japanese].” Some of them became interpreters between Japanese supervisors and other South American Nikkei-jin workers, most of whom were much less fluent in Japanese than Okinawan-Bolivians. Yara Eishō, an Issei who worked in a factory in Hadano City from 1989 to 1996, proudly said: “I could adjust to the work at the factory smoothly. Only the first three months were hard, but those of us from Bolivia, from the Colonia, were well trusted [by Naichi-jin supervisors]. I often translated for dekasegi workers from Peru and Brazil.” Nakandakari Kazuhiro, an Issei who had worked as a construction laborer in Hiratsuka City from 1987 to 1993, insisted that his supervisor wished he would stay there longer: “Even though I had told the president [of the construction firm] that I

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wouldn’t be able to work for good, he begged me to stay. He even offered a partial stipend for my apartment rent.” Many other dekasegi returnees in Colonia Okinawa told me similar stories; their Naichi-jin Japanese employers trusted the migrants so much that they pleaded with the employees to stay. By approximating the subject positions of Nihonjin, rather than South American Nikkei-jin, often through “passing” as Okinawans from Okinawa Prefecture, the migrants gained not only practical benefits in finding jobs and apartments, but also a psychological “wage” (see Roediger 1991), a sense of superiority over other South American Nikkei-jin migrants in Japan. Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants’ attempts to disguise themselves as “domestic” Okinawans did not mean that the migrants had close relationships with other Okinawans at their workplaces or in the neighborhoods in which they lived. When asked about other Okinawans in the area (the NakadōriUshioda neighborhood) where he lived, Tomonaga Hiroshi said, “I know there are many Okinawan people who live and work around here, but we don’t hang out with them.” Kōchi Takashi, a Nisei who had lived and worked in Tsurumi from 1983 to 1995, claimed that “domestic” Okinawans had a bad reputation among Naichi-jin Japanese: “Okinawans often drink too much and talk too loud until late at night. So real estate brokers in Tsurumi often turned down inquiries from Okinawan clients. A friend of mine [from Colonia Okinawa] who lived in Tsurumi had warned me that I should not tell them that I am Okinawan. But I had forgotten the advice, so I was turned down by all the agencies. . . . I finally had to use an Okinawan real estate broker to find a place to live. . . . It was later, after many more South Americans [i.e., Nikkei-jin] moved into the neighborhood, that pretending to be from Okinawa [Prefecture] actually helped us.”14 Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants, it appeared, did not self-identify as “domestic” Okinawans to assert their ancestral roots or a sense of kinship with the “domestic” Okinawan diaspora on the Japanese mainland but instead did so to make themselves appear less foreign and threatening to Naichi-jin Japanese and thereby to make their lives in Japan less inconvenient. For Nisei dekasegi migrants who had grown up as children of patrones japonesas, rather than patrones okinawenses, within the race-class relations of Colonia Okinawa, making a clear distinction between Okinawan and (generic) Japanese identity categories was not as important as managing the boundaries between Japanese and Bolivian (South American) ones. For Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in Japan, therefore, the “Okinawan” identity category functioned as a mediating device for reconciling the two highly racialized categories of “Japanese” and

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“Bolivian/South American” peoples and cultures. Racialized Okinawan differences from Japanese Naichi-jin, discerned by Japanese Naichi-jin through last names, certain physical features, and accented Japanese often mistaken for the Okinawan dialect, allowed Nisei dekasegi migrants partially to escape from racialized Bolivian/South American differences. For Nisei who had grown up as children of affluent farm owners who employed inexpensive laborers for their business, the transition to working as manual laborers in the highly stratified construction and manufacturing industries in urban Japan was a dramatic decline in socioeconomic status, even if they earned more money. Nisei dekasegi migrants dealt with this “contradictory class mobility” (Parreñas 2001, 3) by detailing both the structural limitations that the migrants faced in urban Japan’s labor market and their daily interactions, or lack thereof, with Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors and coworkers at their workplaces, where the migrants engaged in grueling tasks in often dangerous and unhealthy environments. Facing this dramatic transition in class mobility, Nisei dekasegi migrants reexamined their racialized stereotypes of “Japanese” (Nihonjin) in opposition to those of “Bolivians” (Boribiajin), both of which the migrants had learned back in Colonia Okinawa. Drawn from their observations of Japanese workplaces and interactions with Naichi-jin Japanese coworkers and supervisors there, Nisei dekasegi migrants reconfirmed or altered the contents of these racialized categories of Nihonjin and Boribiajin. However, the Nisei dekasegi migrants rarely challenged these racialized categories themselves; instead, they projected their own versions of essentialized and naturalized “Japanese” and “Bolivian/South American” characters and behaviors through their observations at Japanese workplaces. In their workplaces in urban Japan, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants were saddled with stereotyped behavioral and psychological characteristics of South Americans/Bolivians as opposed to Japanese; Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and coworkers interpreted what they considered unusual about Nisei dekasegi migrant workers as a “natural” manifestation of their Bolivian (South American) upbringing. These essentialized characterizations of Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants by Naichi-jin Japanese supervisors helped shape racialized distinctions between the Japanese Self and the Bolivian (South American) Other, while downplaying, or being oblivious to, the migrants’ vulnerable positions within the Japanese labor market as semiliterate if verbally fluent workers with no educational credentials in Japanese society.

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Through these various stereotyped images, which Nisei dekasegi migrants formed not only through their observations and interpretations, but also through interactions with Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers and supervisors, the migrants tried to make sense of the different socioeconomic positions they and their Others, such as Japanese Naichi-jin, other South American Nikkeijin, and domestic Okinawans, occupied in the larger Japanese socioeconomic fabric. While these actions by Nisei dekasegi migrants did not necessarily help them improve their situations, such practices provided the migrants with channels through which the otherwise disempowered dekasegi migrants could exert authority and power within the confines of the Japanese labor market and workplace. Under the drastically different socioeconomic circumstances they encountered in urban Japan, Okinawan-Bolivians continued to undergo racializing processes in which different content and manifestations were assigned to Japanese, Bolivian, and Okinawan psychological and behavioral characteristics by both Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others.

[4]

Educating “Good” Nikkei and Okinawan Subjects

While I was a volunteer Japanese language teacher at Okinawa Uno Japanese-Bolivian School (Colegio Particular Mixto Centro Boliviano Japones Okinawa Numero Uno, Numero Uno hereafter) in Colonia Uno and the Nueva Esperanza School (Colegio Mixto “Nueva Esperanza,” Nueva Esperanza hereafter) in Colonia Dos during my fieldwork, I was impressed by the number of hours the Okinawan-Bolivian Nisei and Sansei children spent studying the Japanese language, practicing Okinawan dance, such as Eisā, and preparing for community festivals and events. These classes were not part of the national curriculum, and these extracurricular activities would not necessarily be useful for students’ success in the larger Bolivian society. What, then, did the schools and those who worked for the schools intend to accomplish through education of young Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, and what were the actual outcomes for the students and for the community at large? In previous chapters, I explored how the subject positions of OkinawanBolivians were shaped in the labor markets and daily working situations in Bolivia and Japan. This chapter turns to another social “site” in which Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject positions were formed: educational institutions. Specifically, I examine elementary and intermediate schools in Colonia Okinawa, which most Okinawan-Bolivian Nisei and Sansei children attended before the vast majority graduated and then moved out of the Colonia. I argue that these educational institutions were intended to help young Okinawan-Bolivians become “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diasporic subjects who possess, in 113

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theory,Â�idealized and “distilled” attributes (Kibria 2002, 160) of Japanese, Bolivian, and Okinawan cultures. In various educational settings, the ideals of the “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diaspora were defined and performed by Okinawan-Bolivians vis-à-vis their Others in Colonia Okinawa, such as nonNikkei Bolivians, Japanese Naichi-jin, and temporary residents from Okinawa Prefecture. Nevertheless there were unintended consequences of the efforts to cultivate “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diasporic subjects out of the Nisei and Sansei children. Specifically, the interactions of Nisei and Sansei children with various people at the school—non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers, Naichijin Japanese teachers, and non-Nikkei Bolivian classmates—often contradicted, compromised, or redirected the school’s effort to produce ideal subjects.

School Education in Colonia Uno Education in Colonia Okinawa Uno began when Okinawans first settled in the current location of Colonia Okinawa.1 After several years of informal education, where the children of settlers were taught by their parents, the Issei leaders founded a K–6 grade school in 1958, which followed the Bolivian national curriculum (Código de la Educación Boliviana). During the 1960s, Colonia Uno’s formal education was run by the Catholic and Protestant churches, which founded two schools, Colegio San Francisco Xavier and Colegio Evangelica Metodista Colonia Okinawa, in the early 1960s. In 1964, San Francisco Xavier began formal Japanese education after hiring four Japanese nuns with teaching certificates from Miyazaki Karitasu Shūdōjokai (Caritas Sisters of Miyazaki), a Catholic organization in Miyazaki Prefecture, to teach the settlers’ children (Mori 1998a, 106). The school taught Spanish classes that followed the Bolivian national curriculum in the morning and Japanese language classes in the afternoon. The school suffered financial instability, especially after a flood in 1968 created an exodus of Okinawan-Bolivian settlers from Colonia Okinawa. When the Caritas Sisters of Miyazaki ceased to be part of the school administration in 1970, the Okinawan-Bolivian students moved to Colegio Evangelica Metodista. San Francisco Xavier eventually became a public school in 1974 without Japanese classes or teachers. Colegio Evangelica Metodista was founded in 1961 by a Japanese pastor of the Nihon Kirisuto Kyōdan (United Church of Christ in Japan) who had been preaching among Okinawan settlers in Colonia Uno. From 1962, a nonNikkei Bolivian pastor and his wife who possessed Bolivian teaching certificates taught regular classes in Spanish, while the Methodist pastor and his wife


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taught Japanese language classes. In 1965, as the non-Nikkei Bolivian population increased in Colonia Uno, the school became half-private, half-public, staffed with Bolivian teachers appointed by the government, and began to accept non-Nikkei Bolivian students for free. When Japanese education at San Francisco Xavier ended, Colegio Evangelica Metodista became the only school that Okinawan-Bolivian children in Colonia Uno (the most populated of the three subdistricts in Colonia Okinawa) attended. In the 1970s and 1980s, the rapid increase in the number of non-Nikkei Bolivian students and the steady decrease in Okinawan-Bolivian students (see Chapter 1) dramatically changed the ratio between the Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian students at Colegio Evangelica Metodista (Table 6). In this rapidly changing environment, Okinawan-Bolivian parents were concerned about the increasing number of thefts in the classroom and fights between Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian students. A Nisei woman who went to the school in the early 1980s recalled: “It was so chaotic! I remember that I had to carry around my backpack wherever I went, even when I was playing outside during recess. If I left it on my desk or shelf in the classroom, somebody would have stolen everything from it!” Issei parents believed these problems were caused by non-Nikkei Bolivian students at the school who were

table 6.â•‡

Student Population at Colegio Evangelica Metodista Coloma Okinawa

Year

Nikkei (Okinawan) Bolivians

Non-Nikkei Bolivians

1973

94.7%

5.3%

1978

50.4%

49.6%

1979

39.5%

60.5%

1982

24.3%

75.7%

1983

27.6%

72.4%

1984

26.6%

73.4%

1985

14.6%

85.4%

1986

11.8%

88.2%

Source: Mori 1998a, 105

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children of the farm laborers they employed. And that mixed classrooms with non-Nikkei Bolivian students were lowering their children’s “learning ability” (gakuryoku) (Nichibo Kyōkai 1985, 2). Furthermore, as the student population increased, the operational costs of the school also rose, which increased the financial burden on Okinawan-Bolivian parents. Okinawan-Bolivian parents pooled money to pay extra compensation for teachers and to help the school purchase and maintain equipment, but the parents of non-Nikkei Bolivian students were unable or unwilling to contribute financially to the school, because they assumed it was their employers’ responsibility to pay for the education of employees’ children (Mori 1998a, 109). In addition to a lack of public funding, Okinawan-Bolivian settlers had difficulty attracting and retaining qualified teachers, who did not want to be assigned to underequipped and understaffed schools in rural areas (Kunimoto 1986). As labor conditions and teachers’ salaries worsened during the nationwide hyperinflation of the 1980s, strikes frequently paralyzed Colegio Evangelica Metodista. These conditions generated heated debate among Issei on the future of school education in Colonia Okinawa, especially after tests conducted by a group of Japanese scholars in schools in Colonia Okinawa and elite private schools in Santa Cruz de la Sierra revealed that Okinawan-Bolivian students performed considerably worse than wealthy non-Nikkei Bolivian students in private schools in the city (Mitsuhashi 1983). Issei leaders addressed this concern in 1987 by founding a new private school, pooling money and constructing facilities in the centro of Colonia Uno. The Okinawa Numero Uno Japanese-Bolivian School, for elementary (five years) and intermediate (three years) education, accepted both Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian children but set its tuition high.2 A 1985 roundtable discussion concluded: “A Nichibo Kyōkai–run private school is desirable. It can accept Bolivian children as long as they satisfy independently set private school rules and other conditions, and thereby avoid anti-Japanese sentiment” (Nichibo Kyōkai 1985, 6). By setting the tuition high, Issei attempted to prevent their Nisei children from studying among lower-class non-Nikkei Bolivian children and to encourage them to socialize among themselves and with only a select few middle- and upper-class non-Nikkei Bolivians. Many of those non-Nikkei Bolivian students at Numero Uno were children of CAICO employees, teachers, or stepchildren of intermarried Okinawan-Bolivians (Mori 1998a, 112).3 During the 2001 school year, there were seventy-six students, including sixtyÂ�-five Okinawan-Bolivian students and eleven non-Nikkei Bolivian


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students.Â� Though it was not mandatory, all Okinawan-Bolivian students voluntarily paid extra tuition to attend the afternoon Japanese language classes, while only three among the eleven non-Nikkei Bolivian students who attended the Bolivian/Spanish classes in the morning stayed after lunch for the Japanese classes. In the afternoon, sixty-eight students attended Japanese language classes, which were divided into nine levels, from the “special class” for those who had little Japanese proficiency to classes 1 through 8, based on students’ language skills. Three Okinawan-Bolivian Nisei, four Japanese Naichi-jin, and two Okinawan teachers from Okinawa Prefecture were in charge of the Japanese classes in the afternoon. As with other community affairs in Colonia Okinawa, JICA has been the most influential state institution in Colonia Okinawa’s education, providing approximately 20 percent of the school’s entire revenue (Okinawa Daiichi Nichibo-kō 1998). Japanese language teaching materials, such as national language (kokugo) textbooks used in Japanese elementary schools, writing and grammar workbooks, a Japanese language teaching manual, various dictionaries, and encyclopedias were obtained through JICA’s Japanese Language Teaching Materials Donation Program.4 Numero Uno’s five stated educational objectives include a focus on the instruction of “Japanese” culture to students via Japanese language education in addition to fulfilling the Bolivian national curriculum’s requirements: “(1) We pursue the coverage of educational requirements set by the Ministry of Education of Bolivia and education suitable for the non-Nikkei Bolivian population; (2) We pursue an education that instills students with the pride and the intellect to live as Bolivian Nikkei-jin [Bolivians of Japanese descent]; (3) We foster students’ ability to understand and express proper Japanese; (4) Through instruction in the Japanese language, we enable the students to learn Japanese culture, to learn and embody [taitoku suru] the good characteristics of Japanese, and to develop as unique human beings with rich personalities; (5) We pursue co-living [kyōsei], cooperation, and coexistence with non-Nikkei Bolivians” (Okinawa Daiichi Nichibo-kō 2001, 1). Similar to Québécois nationalists who consider their French language a “national essence” (Handler 1988, 161), teaching Japanese language to Okinawan-Bolivian youth was regarded by community leaders as “natural resource and cultural property” that fostered their collective identity (ibid., 167). Through education, it was hoped, Nisei and Sansei youth would become “good” Nikkei Bolivians, who would possess and embody Japanese culture and values, command both the Japanese and Spanish languages, and “coexist” and “co-live” with, but not necessarily be culturally assimilated into, non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa.

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Numero Uno School housed a Spanish department (Seigo-bu) and a JapaneseÂ� department (Nichigo-bu), each with its own principal. In the morning, students attended classes that followed the Bolivian national curriculum, internally referred to as Spanish classes (Seigo kurasu), taught by non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers. Okinawan-Bolivian students then attended Japanese classes (Nichigo kurasu) in the afternoon, taught by Nisei and Japanese (Naichi-jin and Okinawan) teachers. The afternoon Japanese classes were modeled after classes in Japanese elementary schools, with three forty-minute sessions separated by two five-minute recesses and offering numerous nonacademic programs and chores, such as homeroom activities (gakkyū katsudō), student committee activities (iinkai katsudō), cleaning school classrooms and facilities, and brass band for the upper-graders. Since the Japanese classes in the afternoon were officially an extracurricular program, the non-Nikkei Bolivian principal of the Spanish department served as the school’s principal. Because the school also functioned as a key community institution for Colonia Okinawa at large, teachers took on the responsibilities of planning and running both school and community events. The school and community events in 2001 that involved Numero Uno students included the following (SP indicates mainly Spanish department events; JP, Japanese department events): Día del Padre (Father’s Day: SP, March) Bolivia Japanese Language Association Friendly Sports Match (sports event among Japanese language schools in the Santa Cruz region: JP, May) Día de la Madre (Mother’s Day: SP/JP, May) Día del Maestro (Teachers’ Day: SP/JP, June) School Track Meet (JP, June) Día de Amistad (Friendship Day: SP, July) Día de Patria (Independence Day: SP, August) School Marathon (JP, September) Keiro no Hi (Respect for Elders Day: JP, September) Japanese Speech Contest (JP, October) Feria de Ciencia (Science Festival: SP, October) Nichibo Kyōkai Softball Tournament (JP, November) Bolivia Japanese Language Association Speech Contest (JP, November)Â� Obra Teatral (Theatrical Work: SP, November) Shukuhaku Gakushu (School Sleepover: JP, November) Graduation Ceremony (SP/JP, November)


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By celebrating holidays based on both Bolivian and Japanese calendars and customs, and participating in local community events both within the municipality and in the larger Nikkei Bolivian community, Numero Uno pursued bilingual (Spanish and Japanese) and bicultural (Bolivian and Japanese) education. Â�Â�

Five Key Actors at School Despite the school’s fairly straightforward official goals, the diverse personnel within the school influenced Nisei and Sansei children in complex and often contradictory ways. There were five key groups of individuals that shaped the self-identification of the Okinawan-Bolivian children. The majority of the Japanese-class teachers were temporary residents visiting from Japan proper or from Okinawa Prefecture, sponsored by JICA, the Okinawa prefectural government, and the Methodist Church of Japan. In addition to these Naichi-jin Japanese and Okinawan outsiders, three other groups played important roles at the school: non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers of the Spanish department, nonNikkei Bolivian students, and Nisei Okinawan-Bolivian teachers of the Japanese department. Each of these five principal groups at the school—non-Nikkei Bolivian students, Spanish-class teachers, Naichi-jin teachers, Okinawan teachers, and Nisei Okinawan-Bolivian teachers—had a unique influence in forming Nisei and Sansei children’s identities.

Non-Nikkei Bolivian Students: Source of “Bolivianization” As stated in the school’s educational objectives, Numero Uno School did not intend to prevent Okinawan-Bolivian students from identifying themselves as Bolivian nationals, but it did appear to discourage what the Okinawan-Bolivian adults stereotyped as “Bolivian” cultural characteristics and habits. The same sentiments were frequently expressed by Japanese-class teachers, for example, when they frowned upon non-Nikkei Bolivian students for being tardy and rowdy. One teacher made fun of a non-Nikkei Bolivian student in his class who never brought her homework to class, saying that she would bring it mañana (tomorrow). He later nicknamed her mañana, and he gave up on her becoming more punctual and responsible. A veteran Nisei Japanese-class teacher who taught the special class that included several non-Nikkei Bolivian students confessed she struggled to deal with their behavior. One day she came back to the teachers’ office after a particularly trying class session and said, sighing:

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“I wonder why Bolivian kids [Boribiajin no ko] are so chatty! [Name of a nonNikkei Bolivian student] just couldn’t keep quiet.” Misbehavior by Nisei and Sansei students in the school was often described as a sign of their “Bolivianization” (Boribiajin-ka, literally “becoming a Bolivian person”), partly because their troubles at the school often involved non-Nikkei Bolivian students. While I was teaching at Numero Uno, a group of eighth graders were suspended for two days after they had broken school rules. They went off school property during a recess to fish at a nearby pond. The group included three Okinawan-Bolivian and two non-Nikkei Bolivian boys. As the teachers discussed the incident, they expressed their concern that “the Bolivian kids” were having a “bad influence” on some of the Okinawan-Bolivian students. A Nisei Japanese class teacher said, “As [Okinawan-Bolivian children] become older, they begin to imitate [mane o suru] some bad habits of [their non-Nikkei Bolivian classmates]. It is good that they get along with each other, but I don’t want them to do bad things together.” Okinawan-Bolivian students’ friendships with non-Nikkei Bolivian students were, therefore, tolerated insofar as their allegedly innate “Bolivian” moral characters were not transmitted to Okinawan-Bolivian students to erode the “Japanese” character that the school was trying to instill in the students. Partly because of subtle discouragement by the Japanese-class teachers and parents, it was uncommon to find OkinawanBolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian students developing close friendships at the school (Kasuya 1998, 126). Becoming a “good” Nikkei Bolivian, in the eyes of Japanese-class teachers at Numero Uno School, then, meant not being too culturally “Bolivianized,” which could be achieved by limiting socialization between Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian students.

Spanish-Class Teachers: Contradictory Role Model Non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers of Spanish classes were another group that was assumed to have a strong “Bolivianizing” influence on Okinawan-Bolivian students but could not be easily controlled by the Numero Uno School administration and Japanese-class teachers. While the school has separate offices for the Spanish-class and Japanese-class teachers, it was rare for non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers to step into the Japanese-class teachers’ office or vice versa. Most Japanese-class teachers came to the office around 1:00 p.m., after the Spanish-class teachers had finished their morning classes and left the school. The school had, however, many public functions and events in which both Japanese- and Spanish-class teachers had to participate. On such occasions, the


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Japanese-class teachers viewed the non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers as ambiguous role models for the Nisei and Sansei students. In the eyes of the Japanese-class teachers, non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers, who were expected to command respect from the students, embodied some of the “Bolivian” characteristics and manners that the Japanese-class teachers wanted to discourage the OkinawanBolivian students from acquiring. The Japanese-class teachers often complained that the Spanish-class teachers were not acting as good role models for the Okinawan-Bolivian students. During a Japanese-class staff meeting after the school track meet, Satō Tsutomu, a Naichi-jin Japanese teacher who taught at Numero Uno as a JICA senior volunteer, and Gushiken Akira, an elementary schoolteacher from Okinawa Prefecture, pointed out that the Spanish-class teachers had been lackadaisical while the students and Japanese-class teachers were doing a warm-up exercise. Mr. Gushiken, a physical education teacher, told the other Japanese-class teachers that, although he had instructed the students to move their bodies briskly to the music, “these [Spanish-class] teachers were the ones who looked most uninterested and moved dully in front of the students [laugh].” Mr. Satō agreed and said jokingly, “Maybe we need to teach the Spanish-class teachers how to move their bodies to the music properly before next year’s track meet [laugh].” The two teachers from Japan proper and Okinawa Prefecture, both of whom were temporary instructors at the school, found such behavior by the non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers amusing, but Nisei teachers, like Ms. Onaga and Ms. Tamashiro, didn’t seem to find it too funny. They responded, frowning: “We know. This sort of thing always troubles us [i.e., Japanese-class teachers].” Similarly, during a staff meeting after a school fieldtrip to Santa Cruz de Sierra, the Japanese-class teachers expressed frustration with what they viewed as the Spanish-class teachers’ irresponsible actions during the trip. Ms. Tanaka, a Naichi-jin Japanese teacher who had taught in Colonia Okinawa for decades, expressed her concern about the students’ behavior in public during the trip. Although one of the trip’s objectives was that “students should learn public manners and group conduct,” she pointed out that some students had wandered off from the group and bought snacks from peddlers on the sidewalk. Ms. Higa, a young Nisei teacher, was disturbed by it, too, but she “couldn’t say anything to the kids, because the Spanish-class teachers were the first ones [to go buy snacks from the street vendors].” Mr. Gushiken, as an outsider from Okinawa Prefecture, asked the Nisei teachers: “Well, to what extent are we supposed to enforce these rules? I also noticed that the kids were constantly eating snacks—on the bus, while visiting sites—I mean, all the time! I was wondering

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if I should just let such behaviors go as [an indication of ] the national character [okuni-gara] of this country.” In response, Ms. Onaga said, “We [i.e., Japaneseclass teachers] know such behaviors are not good, but they [i.e., Spanish-class teachers] don’t think so. There is really nothing we can do about it.” Non-Nikkei Bolivian teachers, however, also embodied what the Japaneseclass teachers considered to be favorable “Bolivian” national characteristics, such as their playfulness and allegedly exceptional hand-eye coordination. During Día de Estudiantes (Students’ Day), the event during which teachers showed their appreciation of the students, the Japanese- and Spanish-class teachers were together making a large number of sandwiches for the children to eat. Ms. Onaga and Ms. Ihara, both Nisei teachers, pointed at a female nonNikkei Bolivian (Spanish-class) teacher who used her palm as a cutting board while slicing a tomato with a knife. Seeing amazement in my facial expression, they said: “People here [kocchi no hito] are very good at using a knife. They cut and peel vegetables with a knife so smoothly.” At the same event, the Spanish-class teachers also put on elaborate shows, including dances, comic skits, and songs, for the students, who immensely enjoyed the entertainment. To Mr. Gushiken and me, who were also impressed by the teachers’ well-prepared and well-performed acts, Ms. Onaga said: “They are very good at entertainment, aren’t they? Whenever there are occasions, they always come up with very good stuff.” The non-Nikkei Bolivian (Spanish-class) teachers represented, in the Okinawan-Bolivian school staff members’ eyes, more of an obstacle than a help in the school’s attempt to instill in Nisei and Sansei children the ideals of “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects, a combination of what they considered to be the superior cultural traits of Bolivia and Japan. Even as teachers, from the Okinawan-Bolivians’ perspective, these non-Nikkei Bolivians lacked the strong work ethic and self-discipline that Nisei and Sansei students were expected to learn. Instead, these teachers demonstrated skills appropriate for manual labor and entertainment, which Okinawan-Bolivians viewed as amusing but not terribly important traits for ideal Nikkei Bolivian subjects.

Naichi-jin Teachers: Authentic “Japanese” The position of Japanese-class teacher is perhaps the most important public post in Colonia Okinawa that is typically filled by Japanese Naichi-jin. From 1972 to 1994, a total of twenty-four Japanese Naichi-jin teachers were placed in Colonia Okinawa in rotating positions to help with Japanese instruction. In


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addition, the Methodist and Caritas churches in Japan began placing volunteer Japanese language teachers in the schools in Colonia Okinawa in 1958 and 1964, respectively. Ms. Tanaka, originally from central Japan, who had been the pastor of the Methodist Church in Colonia Okinawa since 1975, became the first principal of Numero Uno School’s Japanese department. She also recruited younger Japanese Naichi-jin volunteers to help with church activities and to teach Japanese classes at the school. Since 1972, JICA has sent experienced schoolteachers, usually headmasters or principals, for two- or three-year terms to Colonia Okinawa and other Nikkei schools in Bolivia to help develop Japanese language education there. In 1990, the program was officially renamed the Nikkei Society Senior Volunteer Program. Before teachers were allowed to teach in Colonia Okinawa, JICA headquarters in Japan screened candidates for positions as senior volunteer teachers for competence not only as Japanese language teachers, but also as trainers of Okinawan-Bolivian Japanese language teachers and as administrative advisors for schools and community organizations.5 JICA’s Nikkei Society Youth Volunteer Program was a successor to the Overseas Development Youth (Kaigai Kaihatsu Seinen) program, which was originally founded in 1985 with the goal

Japanese language class at Colegio Evangelista Metodista Colonia Okinawa

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of promoting the immigration of young Japanese into overseas Nikkei communities in developing countries, such as Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay.6 During my fieldwork in Colonia Okinawa from 2000 to 2001, Satō Tsutomu, a retired high school principal from Aichi Prefecture, was the senior volunteer teacher for the Colonia Okinawa schools, and a new youth volunteer, Sawa Akiko from Yokohama, began teaching at Numero Uno School in March 2001. Â� These JICA volunteers and other Naichi-jin teachers were expected to bring a sense of authenticity to the Colonia schools’ Japanese linguistic and cultural education. Mr. Satō taught all grades of Japanese classes and participated in weekly staff meetings. He was also an advisor for Nichibo Kyōkai, which oversaw the school’s administration. He held a workshop for all Numero Uno Japanese-class teachers to inform them of the current Japanese language teaching curriculum in Japan and presented the new Instruction and Advising Guidelines (Kyōiku Shidō Yōryō) for elementary education in Japan to them. Taking notes diligently, Japanese-class teachers expressed their willingness to keep up with the latest educational trends in Japan, even though the guidelines were not enforced in Nikkei schools overseas. The authority given to Japan and Japanese Naichi-jin regarding Japanese language education by OkinawanBolivians was also apparent when I first visited Numero Uno at the beginning of my fieldwork. When I asked the Japanese department principal, a Nisei woman, about the possibility of volunteering at the school, I was surprised at how easily and eagerly she allowed me to start teaching Japanese, without even asking me if I had teaching experience. In her eyes, apparently, the fact that I had been born and raised in Japan and had completed college education in Japan was enough to qualify me to teach the language to Okinawan-Bolivian children at the school. The linguistic and cultural “Japaneseness” attributed to the Japanese Naichi-jin teachers also provided a point of reference against which OkinawanBolivians understood their own subject positions. Although the dichotomy between “Bolivian” and “Japanese” was undoubtedly the most fundamental distinction made by Okinawan-Bolivians, the presence of Naichi-jin teachers at Numero Uno School helped Okinawan-Bolivians recognize and assert their difference from the Japanese Naichi-jin. The JICA volunteer teachers were frequently invited to the homes of elder Issei, who were eager to tell the Naichijin newcomers how grueling yet adventurous the elders’ lives in rural Bolivia had been and to treat the newcomers to local Bolivian foods, such as grilled crocodile meat, even though these were hardly part of the Issei’s daily diet. One elderly Issei invited me and another Naichi-jin teacher to his house and


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showed us his old handgun and demonstrated to us how to clean it. He then told us that he often took new JICA volunteer teachers to his farmland and let them shoot his handgun and rifle there: “They have never shot a gun in their lives because they lived in a place like [virtually gun-free] Japan, you know? So everybody loves it! That’s the kind of thing they can only do here.” Similarly, I often witnessed a group of Nisei and Sansei students at Numero Uno catching new Naichi-jin teachers from Japan between classes and lecturing them about local food, customs, and Spanish slang that were unfamiliar to the newcomers, while enjoying their perplexed reactions. In contrast to the Okinawan-Bolivians’ self-presentation as being tough and wild, the Japanese Naichi-jin teachers were considered intellectually sophisticated but physically weak. They were, therefore, expected to help the Okinawan-Bolivians as organizers and stewards for the various community events. For instance, less than a month after I arrived in Colonia Okinawa, Nichibo Kyōkai asked me to serve as an organizing staff member for the Colonia Okinawa Track Meet. For the track meet, most event staff members assigned important tasks were Naichi-jin outsiders, such as JICA youth volunteers at the schools and hospital, Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers, and Methodist Church volunteers, all working under Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers, who were routinely designated as event directors. As Okinawan-Bolivians identified themselves as uneducated and unsophisticated—unfit for planning and executing details—Naichi-jin outsiders, such as Japanese class teachers at Numero Uno School, were asked to fill the void in the community. Their self-presentations as being uneducated but tough implied that Okinawan-Bolivians had a high regard for physical, embodied skills over intellectual skills. Despite their concern about the declining academic skills among Nisei youth, which led to the founding of Numero Uno in the 1980s, Issei and Nisei parents did not appear to be overly concerned about their children’s academic performance, often regarding vocational skills, such as machine repair and sewing, as more valuable (Mori 1998b, 114). Mr. Satō noticed that “the people [in Colonia Okinawa] fundamentally valued physical labor more than mental labor.” With a resigned smile, he continued: “When I was asked to hold tutoring sessions for high school students during the [summer] break, some parents were upset, saying that the sessions cost too much. . . . The farmers don’t value ‘head-using work’ [atama o tsukau shigoto] very much because it only uses one’s brain, not one’s body. They think, ‘Why should anyone be able to make money by working in an air-conditioned room?’â†œ” Ironically, therefore, the self-stereotyping by Okinawan-Bolivians as rural physical workers,

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as opposedÂ�to Naichi-jin as urban intellectuals, explicitly or implicitly encouraged Nisei and Sansei children to pursue vocational and manual skills instead of academic and intellectual ones. Kawabata Takashi, a Naichi-jin Japanese and former Japanese-class teacher at Numero Uno School, said: “One thing I noticed among the young [Okinawan-Bolivian] people here was that most of them have mechanical skills, such as welding and metal cutting. . . . They are fundamentally good at manual labor that requires skills. Perhaps that is why there are many [Nisei youth] from [Colonia] Okinawa working in car repair factories and the like.” Expected to bring authenticity and credibility to Numero Uno School’s Japanese language education and administration, Japanese Naichi-jin teachers provided Okinawan-Bolivians with points of reference against which the Okinawan-Bolivians understood their own subject positions. Even though Japanese Naichi-jin teachers were held up as the bearers of authentic “Japanese” cultural and mental traits, which Okinawan-Bolivian children were expected to emulate to become “good” Nikkei Bolivians, these teachers simultaneously embodied what Okinawan-Bolivians considered they were not and did not want to be: brainy and wimpy urbanites who lacked manual skills and physical toughness. These perceived differences in roles, abilities, and characteristics between the temporary Japanese Naichi-jin teachers and Okinawan-Bolivians indicate the community members’ ambivalent feelings toward the ideals of “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects that youth are expected to embody.

Okinawa Prefecture Program Teachers: Representing Okinawan Uniqueness Okinawan teachers from Okinawa Prefecture added more layers to Colonia Okinawa schools’ mission to mold the community’s youth into “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects. Okinawa Prefecture’s Education Ministry is actively involved in school education in the Colonia. From 1987 to 2001, sixteen public school teachers from Okinawa Prefecture were assigned to Colonia Okinawa as Okinawa-kenmin ijūchi kyōiku shisetsu haken kyōshi (teachers assigned to educational institutions in overseas settlements of Okinawan immigrants; Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers hereafter). Highlighting the historical and cultural uniqueness of Okinawa in their teaching and community involvement, these teachers helped Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa identify themselves not only as “good Nikkei Bolivians” but also as Okinawan diasporic subjects. Although Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers were, by and large, asked


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to fulfill the same roles as JICA senior and youth volunteer teachers, Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers were also expected to introduce Okinawan traditional arts, such as Eisā dance and sanshin, a stringed musical instrument, to the students and Okinawan-Bolivian community members at large during the teachers’ two-year tenures. During my fieldwork, there were three Okinawan Prefecture Program teachers in the Colonia. Gushiken Akira, an elementary school teacher from Okinawa, taught at Numero Uno. Ishimine Muneo in Colonia Dos was replaced by Ishiki Katsu after Mr. Ishimine’s two-year term ended at Nueva Esperanza School. As a member of a famous Okinawan music and dance performing team back in Okinawa Prefecture, Mr. Gushiken was also a well-trained performer and choreographer of Eisā dance and Ryūkyū drum (Ryūkyū daiko). During his tenure at Numero Uno, Mr. Gushiken taught the dance to the school’s upperclassmen, Colonia Okinawa Youth Association members, and the mothers’ associations in Colonia Uno and Trés. In addition to teaching Japanese classes and Okinawan folk arts, Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers were also expected to assume more responsibilities in planning and running Colonia Okinawa’s community events, such as the Colonia-wide Ekiden race and track meet, than other Japanese Naichi-jin teachers, presumably because of the program teachers’ ability to connect emotionally with Okinawan-Bolivian community members. Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers were very popular among the Okinawan-Bolivian students’ parents and grandparents, especially if the teachers possessed certain behavioral, psychological, and physical attributes that the community members considered (stereotyped) as “typically” Okinawan, such as fluency in Uchināguchi (Okinawan language), an easygoing attitude, dark skin, a loud voice, and generous consumption of alcoholic drinks. During my interviews with Issei in Colonia Okinawa, many fondly recalled Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers in the past who had taught sanshin and Eisā to the students and spoken to them in Uchināguchi. In fact, the Issei elders of Colonia Okinawa were disappointed if Okinawan teachers lacked these qualities. Ashimine Manabu, a former Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher, told me that he might have been more warmly accepted by the community had he been able to speak the Okinawan language fluently and to drink alcohol: “I don’t drink, and I don’t speak Uchināguchi. So, sometimes the parents and grandparents don’t seem to know what to do with me [laugh]. Mr. Nakane [another Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher teaching in Colonia Okinawa at the time] can speak Uchināguchi really well, perhaps because he is, unlike me, from a rural area. So he gets invitations from the grandpas and grandmas here quite often.” These

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allegedÂ� uniquely Okinawan characteristics that the Okinawan-Bolivian residents expected from the teachers went beyond the language they spoke. When a new teacher from Okinawa Prefecture arrived at Nueva Esperanza School in March 2001, Kuniyoshi Hidehiko, the school board chair, went to the Santa Cruz airport to welcome the teacher and his family. When I asked Mr. Kuniyoshi later what the new teacher, Ishiki Katsu, was like, Mr. Kuniyoshi was very happy with what he had seen: “Oh, he is an Okinawan, from whichever angle you look at him! [Doko kara mite mo Okinawa no hito dayo!] He talks loudly and dresses casually—he was wearing flip-flops coming out of the gate! [laugh].” These descriptions of “typical Okinawan” as embodied by the Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers highlighted the differences between Japanese Naichi-jin and Okinawans (and, by extension, Okinawan-Bolivians) recognized by Okinawan-Bolivians. Like Japanese Naichi-jin teachers for Japanese classes, Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers were a reference point against which Okinawan-Bolivians interpreted their subject positions as members of the Okinawan diaspora in Bolivia. During Japanese classes, Mr. Gushiken frequently used terms and expressions unique to the Okinawan language with his students, even though some students might not have understood him. When the intermediate Japanese class students were creating a short act for the Keirō No Hi (Respect for Elders Day) event, a Sansei student came to ask him how to say certain Japanese phrases in the Okinawan “dialect” (hōgen). Mr. Gushiken told the student the terms and then added, “Well, [the language] is not a [mere Japanese] dialect, it is Uchināguchi,” reminding the student that the Okinawan language is not subordinate to Japanese but a unique and autonomous language.Â� The distinction between the Okinawan diasporic Self and Japanese Naichijin Others made by Okinawan-Bolivians relied on the authority of the Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers as “real” Okinawans. At the welcome party for Ishiki Katsu, the Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher, a Nisei man in his thirties sat next to me and began accusing me of ignoring him on a previous day when we had passed each other on the street. I did not recognize him, so I told him that I didn’t think I had met him before. The man, who was quite drunk already, turned to Mr. Ishiki, who was sitting near us, and said, “See? Naichā [Naichi-jin] are so stuck up and cold [kiddote-ite tsumetai]! They are different from Uchinā [Okinawans], don’t you think?” He had been a dekasegi migrant to Japan, where he, like many other Nisei dekasegi migrants in urban Japan, had had a difficult time. He believed that he had been turned down when he appliedÂ� for jobs in Japan because of his Okinawan surname. He continued talking to


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Mr. Ishiki: “They [Naichi-jin] are all snobs, aren’t they? And they don’t like Uchinā.” This incident not only revealed the lingering antipathy and suspicion toward Japanese Naichi-jin felt by (at least some) Okinawan-Bolivians, which had often developed through their hardships as dekasegi migrant workers in mainland Japanese cities, but also indicated their reliance on the Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers as a reliable source of an authentic Okinawan perspective on the Japanese nation-state and Japanese Naichi-jin. Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers helped the Okinawan-Bolivian students, their parents, and school staff members learn and maintain their Okinawan cultural heritage through instruction in traditional music and dance. Equally important, these teachers functioned for Okinawan-Bolivians, students and nonstudents alike, as an authentic embodiment of their ancestral origin, represented through the teachers’ speech, habits, character, and even physical appearance, which were viewed by Okinawan-Bolivians as uniquely Okinawan. The teachers’ presence in Colonia Okinawa served as a crucial reminder for Okinawan-Bolivians of their distinctiveness as part of the Okinawan diaspora apart from Japanese Naichi-jin and their overseas counterparts.

Nisei Teachers: Ambivalent Mediators Among the four Nisei teachers at Numero Uno School in 2000, two were farm owners’ wives, one was married to a doctor at the Colonia hospital, and one was a young Nisei who had graduated from Numero Uno not long before. None possessed either Bolivian or Japanese teaching certificates or degrees from Bolivian or Japanese universities. Those Nisei Japanese-class teachers were placed in an ambivalent position at the school. On the one hand, as native residents of Colonia Okinawa who had been involved in the community’s schools for a long time, they played the role of bilingual and bicultural interpreter for temporary instructors visiting from Japan proper and Okinawa Prefecture, who commanded little Spanish and knew little about the Bolivian school system, the Colonia Okinawan community, or Bolivian society in general. On the other hand, as underqualified Japanese language teachers, they also had to learn teaching skills from veteran teachers from Japan proper and Okinawa Prefecture who had been properly trained and licensed. Thus, the Nisei teachers epitomized the ambivalence inherent in the hybrid ideal of “good” Nikkei Bolivians with an Okinawan cultural heritage, which the Nisei and Sansei children were expectedÂ�to pursue; the Nisei teachers felt they were unable to assert themselvesÂ�as beingÂ�fully qualified to help the students achieve any one particular aspect of the ideal.Â�Â�

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Most Nisei teachers at Numero Uno School had become Japanese language teachers to fulfill the community’s need, not out of their own aspirations. Finding enough qualified Japanese-class teachers was always the biggest challenge for the Colonia schools. While the aging Issei settlers were more comfortable in their command of Uchināguchi (or a regional variant), Nisei were generally not confident enough in their command of Japanese to teach in the classroom, especially writing and reading, because most had received formal Japanese language education only in Colonia Okinawa and only through middle school. In addition, as white-collar occupations like schoolteachers were not highly regarded among Okinawan-Bolivians (and were poorly paid) in Colonia Okinawa, Nisei housewives who were fluent in Japanese usually filled the vacant positions.7 Despite their fluent Japanese speech, adequate writing skills, and years of teaching Japanese classes at Numero Uno School, these Nisei teachers were insecure about their linguistic and pedagogical skills. When I first met Ms. Onaga Tokiko, the Japanese department principal, I told her that I had not had much experience in Japanese instruction. She dismissed my concern: “Oh, no, please don’t worry. We are more or less amateurs, too.” When Ms. Onaga wrote official letters, announcements, or newsletters in Japanese, she asked the teachers from Japan, Mr. Satō, Mr. Gushiken, or Ms. Tanaka, to doublecheck what she had written before mailing them out. The Nisei teachers regularly participated in workshops organized by the Japanese Language Education Study Group of the Region of Santa Cruz (Santakurusu-Shū Nihongo Kyōiku Kenkyū-kai), which was founded in 1980 to help Japanese-class teachers in Colonia Okinawa, Colonia San Juan Japones de Yapacaní, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra to improve Japanese language pedagogy. It was no easy task for these Nisei women to be at the same time native-born Bolivians, who understood the realities of rural Bolivian customs and norms, and Japanese-class teachers, who were expected to teach Japanese language and culture to the students, especially when there were irreconcilable differences between the Naichi-jin and Okinawan Japanese-language teachers’ ideas of appropriate school activities and local norms. For instance, Mr. Gushiken, an Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher, was troubled when he learned that Numero Uno students would perform Eisā dances around nine o’clock in the evening at the Nikkei Association’s festival in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which he considered too late for an official school activity. Ms. Onaga and Ms. Oshiro, both Nisei teachers, appeared apologetic, and they explained to him how Bolivian festivals normally took place:


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gushiken: Is there any way that the children [i.e., students] could dance earlier in the event and come home sooner? Nine o’clock seems awfully late for schoolchildren to participate in an event. Besides, this festival is not officially a school event, either. onaga: Events here usually begin very late. When they begin too early on a weekday evening, people can’t come because of their work. On the weekends, because people don’t have to worry about [going to work] the next day, events also start very late in the evening. So, either way, they tend to be very late. gushiken: Normally in Japan, schools don’t take students out at night after six o’clock. Never! On numerous occasions, Ms. Onaga and other Nisei teachers had to explain to the Naichi-jin and Okinawan teachers about the customs in Bolivia and ColoniaÂ� Okinawa, hoping that the teachers would agree to compromise. By acting as cultural intermediaries for the Japanese and Okinawan teachers, these Nisei teachers were placed in the position of defending the school’s ambiguously and contradictorily defined missions: to help Nisei and Sansei children gain idealized and essentialized “Japanese” characteristics and behaviors while continuing to live in the realities of Bolivian society. The ambiguity and contradiction in the ideals of “good” Nikkei Bolivians were also expressed by the Nisei teachers when they commented on non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa on different occasions. The Nisei teachers often were defensive about social norms of Bolivia and Colonia Okinawa when speaking with the Japanese and Okinawan teachers, but they also shared some negative stereotypes with their Issei parents regarding locals or Boribia-jin, thereby sharply distinguishing themselves from local non-Nikkei Bolivians. When Mr. Gushiken told his colleagues that he would plant a mandarin tree in his backyard, Ms. Onaga, a Nisei teacher, and Ms. Tanaka, a Japanese Naichi-jin teacher and a longtime resident of Colonia Okinawa, gave him their advice: onaga: You have to think carefully about where you plant a fruitbearing tree. Otherwise, the fruits will be easily stolen. tanaka: They [i.e., non-Nikkei Bolivians] are very smart when it comes to such matters [as theft]. gushiken: Mr. T [his predecessor] told me when I met him, “It would have been okay if they had taken only mangos from the trees in my yard, but they also took my laundry from the clothes line” [laugh].

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tanaka: And once you give them a piece of fruit, they will come to you all the time. onaga: [Nodding] They think that they deserve to receive it from you.8 As understanding and protective as the Nisei teachers might try to be of local customs and norms in Colonia Okinawa and in Bolivian society at large, fundamentally the teachers did not see themselves as part of the same community as non-Nikkei Bolivians; in their view non-Nikkei Bolivians remained fundamentally different subjects from what their Nisei and Sansei children should become. This is not to say, however, that Nisei teachers discouraged Nisei and Sansei students from identifying themselves as Bolivian (Boribia-jin). When an Okinawan-Bolivian student came to the teachers’ office and complained to a Nisei teacher that “some Boribia-jin kids” were causing trouble, the teacher chastised him for his wording, saying, “Well, you are Boribia-jin, too.” It appeared that, to maintain the ideal of the “good” Nikkei Bolivian subject as a logically feasible goal to pursue, these Nisei teachers tried hard to make a distinction between simply being a Bolivian national and being assimilated into what they negatively stereotyped as Bolivian culture. In their attempt to help Nisei and Sansei children fulfill the ideals of “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects with idealized notions of “Japanese” culture and morality, such as honesty, obedience, and hard work, as well as a strong “Bolivian” national identity, the Nisei teachers at Numero Uno School struggled with what were perceived as undesirable national characteristics and customs of Bolivia. Their solution was to encourage Nisei and Sansei to self-identify as Bolivian and, at the same time, to discourage them from acquiring what they negatively perceived as uniquely “Bolivian” customs and mentalities. The Nisei teachers’ awkward efforts to cope with the Japanese-class teachers from Japan, who were confused and frustrated by the local realities of the Bolivian school system, lucidly exemplified the Okinawan-Bolivian community’s ambivalent and uncertain pursuit in educating its youth.

Defining Bolivian, Japanese, and Okinawan Identities The complex and often conflicted ideal of “good” Nikkei Bolivians with Okinawan diasporic awareness that the Okinawan-Bolivian community hoped NiseiÂ� and Sansei youth would fulfill was narrated, negotiated, and enacted by the Japanese-class teachers and the students’ parents in various school and community events. Four events and activities that Okinawan-Bolivian students


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at Numero Uno School participated in were particularly noteworthy in this regard: Japanese-language speech contests, school chores, the Colonia Okinawa Track Meet, and Okinawan Eisā dance performances. These events provided venues through which various Okinawan-Bolivian community members articulated their diverse views on what it is to be Bolivian, Japanese (Nikkei), and Okinawan or part of the Okinawan diaspora. While communal harmony and equality were lauded as “Nikkei” virtues in intellectual settings, physical rigor and competitiveness were celebrated as “Okinawan” values, both of which the Okinawan-Bolivian community members hoped to instill into their Nisei and Sansei offspring, thereby preventing the threat of what they perceived as “Bolivian” cultural values, such as individualism and laziness, influencing the youth.Â�

“We Should Reward Everyone’s Effort”: Japanese-Language Speech Contests Japanese speech contests, in which the Okinawan-Bolivian students wrote and presented essays in Japanese, showed the ways in which the community sought to define, however tenuously, what “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects were supposed to be. During the long process of writing and practicing to present essays in Japanese, the Okinawan-Bolivian teachers, students, and community members exhibited a strong aversion to the very idea of competition among the community members, often resisting the temporary Japanese (including Okinawan) teachers’ directions. In the eyes of the Okinawan-Bolivians, no one within the community should be publicly acknowledged as linguistically and intellectually superior to the others or as more or less authentically “Japanese” than other Okinawan-Bolivian individuals. Their anxiety about being evaluated for their Japanese writing and presentation skills shows what they viewed as important attributes of “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects in Colonia Okinawa. Rather than possessing a superb command of the Japanese language, maintaining harmonious relationships among themselves and cultivating certain aptitudes, or, more specifically, a strong work ethic, were what would make Okinawan-Bolivian youth “good” Nikkei subjects. The School Speech Contest (Kōnai Ohanashi Taikai, literally “In-School Storytelling Convention”) in October was regarded by the Japanese-class teachers as one of the important events of the year. When I met with the Japanese department principal in early July 2000, I was told that the classes until October, when my term as a substitute teacher would end, would focus on preparing the students for the speech contest. All Japanese-class students, including non-Nikkei

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Bolivian students who were enrolled in Japanese classes, wrote, memorized, and presented short essays (length requirements differed among grades) in front of the parents and Japanese-class teachers, who were also the judges.9 As the contest approached, the students used class time to write, edit, and practice presenting the essays clearly. For the School Speech Contest, the teachers were asked to judge each student’s speech according to the following three criteria: 1. Expressive Ability (Does the student speak in correct Japanese with proper intonation?) • Is the student’s pronunciation correct? • Does the student’s voice carry well to the audience? 2. Content • Does the essay’s content reflect its title? • Does the essay include the student’s personal experience and opinion? 3. Attitude • Is the student dressed properly, and does he or she stand with good posture? • Does the student enter and exit the stage in a proper manner, and does he or she bow correctly? Mr. Satō, the contest’s chief judge, proposed dropping the third criterion, dress and bowing, from the list, because he thought manners were less important than the quality of the speech itself. The Nisei teachers were a little surprised by the suggestion to change the long-accepted criterion, but, as they usually accepted the Naichi-jin teachers’ authority, they adopted the change. Despite these evaluation criteria, the competitive aspect of the event was openly detested by the Okinawan-Bolivian students, their parents, and Nisei teachers at Numero Uno School. At the staff meeting before the contest, a Nisei teacher raised the concern that some students would be too discouraged if only two from each class won a prize, because “everybody [was] trying hard.” Thanks to the Nisei teacher’s push, the teachers eventually decided to give a participation prize (sanka-shō) to all students, although contest participation was mandatory for Japanese-class students. The contest began with the speeches by the students of the special class with limited fluency in Japanese and ended with speeches by the class 8 students. Some students struggled to remember their essays and stumbled, but most carried out their presentations well. After the contest, the Numero Uno


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teachers, especially the Nisei teachers, seemed to agonize about evaluating and grading the contestants’ speeches. In the staff meeting after the contest, the Nisei teachers revealed how sorry they had felt for the children who hadn’t won. Ms. Ihara, a longtime Nisei teacher, said, “I know some of my students were unhappy, and some were even teary with anger, when [names of two students] were given the prizes. They said it was unfair [zurui] only one won the first prize. They all had worked hard, you know? . . . There were other students who had made as great an effort as the winners, so if only one [actually two, the winner and the runner-up] received a prize, those students’ efforts would go unrewarded. . . . Probably we should grade their attitudes [taido] [toward the contest]; I think it is wrong to evaluate the essay presentations with points. They were at different levels [of fluency in Japanese], so we should take their efforts [doryoku] into consideration.” Ms. Onaga, a fellow Nisei teacher, agreed: “If we consider each student’s unique personality, level [of fluency], and process of preparation for the contest, I think it is insensitive to grade their speeches with points.” In an anonymous evaluation of the contest by the teachers, one respondent, whom I suspect to be one of the Nisei teachers, suggested: “Why don’t we eliminate all individual prizes [for the next year’s contest] and reward everybody with the participation prize? In the speech contest, we should teach them what is important and change their mentality. They should not work hard only to win a prize.” Mr. Satō responded to these critiques from Nisei teachers:

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“I also heard that there were concerns among [the contestants’] parents that it would be too harsh not to give any award to the children who worked hard on their essays. But as long as the event’s title is a contest [taikai], rather than a presentation [happyō-kai], I think it should remain a competition.”10 Unlike Mr. Satō, a Japanese Naichi-jin teacher, the Nisei teachers showed more concern about the students’ motivation than about the writing and speaking skills in Japanese they were able to develop. Through the annual speech contests, the Okinawan-Bolivian students were pushed by the teachers to improve not so much their writing and public speaking skills in Japanese as their overall work ethic. The contests gave the community members an opportunity to instill their Nisei and Sansei children with the virtues of hard work and self-improvement, which the community members viewed as being threatened by the assimilating forces of Bolivian society. Judging Nisei and Sansei children’s intellectual ability, much less their competence in Japanese language, then, was not only unimportant for Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, but also potentially counterproductive, because some children might be so disappointed with the outcome of the contest that they would lose their interest in working hard to reach their goals. The differences in the temporary Japanese teachers’ and Nisei teachers’ views of the competitive element of the contest were a telling illustration of how the Okinawan-Bolivian community defined “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects.

Competitiveness as Okinawan Spirit: All Colonia Okinawa Track Meet While competitiveness was disdained by Okinawan-Bolivian community members in the case of the Japanese Speech Contest, this was not the case at the All Colonia Okinawa Track Meet, where Nisei and Sansei youth were encouraged to compete fiercely. While the tasks of organizing and running the event were assigned to the outsiders (temporary Naichi-jin Japanese residents and Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers), competition among Okinawan-Bolivians became a focal point for educating the younger members of the community. In so doing, the community members expected to cultivate the intense, if not always cordial, sense of communal bonding among the Nisei and Sansei youth in Colonia Okinawa. The annual track meet, which the three Colonias (Uno, Dos, and Trés) took turns hosting, was considered the biggest of all the community events in Colonia Okinawa, and the competition was taken seriously by all participants. The


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daylong event consisted of a wide variety of track races, including sprints, longdistance races, relays of various lengths, and three-legged races. All races were organized by age group (elementary school students, intermediate school students, youth, adults, seniors, and so on) and by sex. Participants were divided into five teams, according to their community affiliations: Colonia Uno A and B (two teams from Colonia Uno, due to its disproportionately larger population than the other two Colonias), Colonia Dos, Colonia Trés, and the Okinawa Prefectural Association of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Each team selected an athlete for each race, who gained points according to his or her finish, and the teams competed with each other for the total points gained by their members. Each team selected a captain and held numerous training sessions for its members leading up to the event. The fierce competition among the teams at the track meet was legendary; many older Okinawan-Bolivians recalled that past athletes and spectators had been involved in brawls and had verbally attacked referees and staff members over rulings on the races. I was told that because of the decreasing youth population,Â� caused by Nisei’s dekasegi emigration to Japan since the 1980s, the intensity of the competition had declined, but the strong solidarity within each Colonia and the bitter rivalry and jealousy among the Colonias still fueled

The winning team of the Colonia Okinawa Track Meet, 1998

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competitiveness.11 In 2000, when I participated as a staff member, there was a tense moment when the captains of two teams furiously charged at the referees and the event’s chief of staff because of a controversial call during a relay race. At the staff meeting after the track meet, in which staff and representatives from all five teams gathered to reflect on the event, Ishimine Muneo, an Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher and the event’s staff chief, questioned the format and nature of the track meet. Mr. Ishimine pointed out the competitive imbalance among the three Colonias due to the different population sizes and suggested downsizing the event: “Shouldn’t we reduce the number of competitions? I think this issue also involves a more fundamental question: Is this track meet a recreational event to foster friendship among Okinawan-Bolivians or a serious athletic competition [kyōgi-kai]?” Onaga Miguel of Okinawa Uno immediately responded: “I think we must maintain the track meet as a competitive event. If we make its objective mere recreation, I am worried that the athletes would lose motivation.” Hokama Tōru, the captain of Okinawa Uno A team, agreed: “The track meet should basically retain the form of athletic competition. [Because the event is competitive,] children can receive a kind of discipline from the community’s adults that they cannot get at school.” Finally, the Nichibo Kyōkai president, who was a Colonia Trés resident, claimed that it was the fierce competitiveness that made the Colonia-wide track meet valuable: “Insistence on competition creates unity among Okinawans [Okinawajin]. We can assign a recreational function to the schools’ track meets and serious competitiveness to the All Colonia Okinawa Track Meet. Our pioneering spirit [kaitaku seishin] was nurtured [yashinawareru] by forging of our spirit [seishin no tanren] and by winning [katsu koto].” The All Colonia Okinawa Track Meet, thus, would remain a competitive event. During this heated discussion, Okinawan-Bolivians emphasized in front of many Japanese Naichi-jin outsiders their affirmation of physical toughness and competitiveness, which they believed to foster collective solidarity, disciplined behavior, and the pioneering spirit of the Okinawan diaspora. This emphasis on physical competition as a positive source for communal solidarity made a stark contrast with the Okinawan-Bolivians’ wariness toward promoting intellectual and linguistic competition at the Japanese speech contest, where they claimed the competitiveness would undermine the harmony among the community members. Linguistic and intellectual prowess was seen by Okinawan-Bolivians as a useful tool for cultivating “good” Nikkei (i.e., Japanese-Bolivian) subjects insofar as it does not undermine the children’s physical ability, which was celebrated as a key component of cultivating “good” Okinawan diasporic subjects.


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Not to Raise “Little Patrones”: School Chores The work ethic and self-improving attitudes of “good” Nikkei subjects and the competitiveness and winning attitudes of “good” Okinawan subjects that Nisei and Sansei children were expected to develop were, not surprisingly, both posed against what Okinawan-Bolivians viewed as inherently “Bolivian” character and attitudes that were lazy and complacent. Numerous school chores for the students were regarded by the teachers as a systematic tool to prevent the Okinawan-Bolivian children from learning these perceived “Bolivian” attitudes and behaviors. Numero Uno teachers made sure to enforce school chores as part of the students’ daily routine following Japanese classes. Every afternoon, all Japanese class students cleaned the classrooms, hallways, and bathrooms. After the cleaning was finished, the teachers went to their respective homeroom classrooms to inspect the results before permitting the students to go home. During staff meetings, the Japanese-class teachers repeatedly brought up students’ lack of interest in keeping their school clean as a serious problem. The teachers saw the students’ disinterest in cleaning and their general unwillingness to do menial tasks as the most telling evidence of their cultural “Bolivianization.” In this case, “Bolivian” culture referred not so much to negative stereotypes of poor non-Nikkei Bolivian laborers in Colonia Okinawa as to the stereotypes of a small group of wealthy non-Nikkei Bolivian farm owners (patrones) who employed domestic workers to do menial tasks around their houses. During the year-end staff meeting, many teachers raised concerns related to cleaning and other school chores: kawamoto: It seems like they can’t do most fundamental things [kihon-teki na koto] like cleaning. onaga: [Nodding in agreement] It is worse among the upper-graders. higa: I wonder if they even clean their rooms at home. tanaka: I don’t think they are. Their empleadas [employees, housemaids] are cleaning their rooms. Some Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers also noticed a similar attitude among students during the teachers’ short stints in Colonia Okinawa. Ahimine Manabu, an Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher at Nueva Esperanza School, was disappointed with the students’ lack of a work ethic and discipline. He said: “They are all really good kids, and I love teaching them, but they haven’t

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learned self-discipline [kiritsu ga mi ni tsuite inai, literally “discipline is not attached to their bodies”]. I wonder if they have been Bolivianized [Boribiajinka]; they don’t take school chores, like cleaning, seriously.” The teachers considered mandatory school chores an effective means of preventing Okinawan-Bolivian children from becoming culturally “Bolivianized.” Another Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher, on his departure from Colonia Okinawa in 1989, wrote about how he had tried to change what he described as the Okinawan-Bolivian students’ “little patrones attitudes” by creating a new school chore. He reflected on his effort: From the [Okinawan-Bolivian] children’s behaviors and comments, I noticed that they were little patrones [chīsana patoron] from the moment of their birth. Realizing the necessity of providing them with some work experience . . . I created a school garden with the PTA’s help. Through growing organic vegetables and flowers, I wanted to enrich their minds and encourage them to appreciate things around them, nurture a cooperative spirit, enjoy working, and develop a sense of responsibility. (Shimabukuro 1989) A similar effort was made at Numero Uno School during my fieldwork. Each Japanese homeroom class (from levels one to eight) had its own flower garden and was responsible for caring for it. The students watered the homeroom class’s garden during cleaning time, and the extracurricular activity period was occasionally spent weeding and thinning out overgrown plants. Upperclass students were also asked to help the teachers prepare school and community events during the extracurricular activity periods. They cleaned the community auditorium and the school auditorium, decorated them, and carried the heavy long benches and tables. The students’ parents encouraged the Japaneseclass teachers to require their children to do chores and, if they were slacking off, to use corporal punishment. When I met my homeroom students’ parents, they tended to ask more questions about their children’s behavior and attitudes than about their academic performance. The father of one of my students said to me, albeit jokingly, “Sensei [teacher], is my kid behaving well at school? If she is misbehaving or not doing her assignments or chores, please feel free to slap her! [tataite kudasai-ne!]” From the way Okinawan-Bolivian parents focused on students’ attitudes toward school chores, it appeared that the parents viewed Japanese classes at Numero Uno School more as a venue for disciplining children than as an


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institutionÂ� for intellectual development. According to the principal, parents criticized Japanese-class teachers for the large amount of homework they assigned but had little to say about their children’s academic performance at school. At the end of each semester, the Japanese-class teachers held open class sessions, after which they handed out report cards to the parents of their students. Few parents, however, actually showed up on these occasions, and even fewer asked the teachers about their children’s performance in the Japanese classes. This fact combined with the parents’ enthusiastic support for the school’s enforcement of school chores for the students made it apparent that the Japanese classes at Numero Uno School were expected to improve Okinawan-Bolivian children’s behavior and morals rather than to develop their Japanese language skills and expand their Japanese cultural knowledge.

“Okinawan Blood”: Eisa- Dancing Lessons One of the major assignments for Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers was to teach Numero Uno students and other Okinawan-Bolivian community members traditional Okinawan folk arts, such as Eisā dance and sanshin music.12 Members of the Okinawan-Bolivian community saw these lessons in Okinawan folk arts to the Nisei and Sansei children as more than an extracurricular activity; they were considered to be a crucial means to teach Nisei and Sansei youth self-discipline and hard work through physically rigorous training, which would help them develop into “good” Bolivians not simply of Japanese descent, but also of distinctly Okinawan heritage. Teaching Okinawan folk arts to the Bolivian-born children and grandchildren of Okinawan immigrants was an exciting project for Okinawan teachers who came to Colonia Okinawa because they felt that they were helping the community maintain its proud cultural tradition.13 A former Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher wrote that, after teaching the Numero Uno students Eisā dance throughout his tenure, he was overcome with emotion when he saw his students’ performance at a community event, because he felt that “the Okinawan blood” (Uchinānchu no chi) in their bodies showed through in their dance (Okinawa Daiichi Nichibo-kō 2000a). Gushiken Akira, an Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher, told me, to my surprise, that he was disappointed by how little Okinawan culture Colonia Okinawa had retained. He was eager to improve the quality of Eisā dance in Colonia Okinawa and to introduce shimedaiko (Okinawan drum) to the community. In preparation for major school and community events, such as the school track meet in June and the Okinawa

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Harvest Festival in July, he conducted a number of Eisā dance practice sessions for Numero Uno students, members of the Colonia Youth Association, and the Colonia Mothers’ Association. He also handpicked two intermediate school students and intensively trained them to perform the Shishi-Mai (Lion Dance), an acrobatic dance by two people wearing a mythical lion costume, alongside the Eisā dancers and shimedaiko drum lines. Within only eight months after his arrival in Colonia Okinawa, he had trained the Youth Association members and some Numero Uno students well enough to establish a Bolivian chapter of the Okinawan dance and drum performance group for which he was an international coordinator.14 The Okinawan-Bolivian community members responded enthusiastically to Mr. Gushiken’s Eisā and shimedaiko lessons for Nisei and Sansei youth. Nichibo Kyōkai purchased a new set of drums, made with locally available materials, and many Nisei and Sansei high school students, who returned to Colonia Okinawa from cities during school breaks, participated daily in physically demanding practices. Issei and Nisei parents of Numero Uno and high school students were happy to see their children joining the dance and drum lessons not just because they wanted their children to learn traditional arts of their ancestral land, but also because their children, who often were bored during school breaks, had an

Shishi-Mai (Lion Dance) performance by Nisei and Sansei youth


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Shimadaiko performance by Nisei and Sansei youth

opportunityÂ� to invest their time and energy in something they saw as positive. An Issei parent who had a teenager son on the dance team told me: “I am glad that Mr. Gushiken began [Eisā lessons for the Youth Association members]. It is great that [my son] has become so passionate about something, instead of just riding a motorbike around. [Nisei and Sansei teenagers] need something to do to stay out of trouble.” Indeed, high energy filled the Youth Association building, where some twenty high school and intermediate school students participated in dance and drum training conducted by Mr. Gushiken, who did not hesitate to raise his voice in correcting their mistakes. The training was intense and physically demanding; the shimedaiko drums that boys strapped on their bodies were very heavy, and the dance’s karate-like movements were fast and acrobatic. Mr. Gushiken himself was also aware that Eisā practice was not just about teaching the youth a form of folk dance, but also about providing them with discipline and guidance in their lives. He told me: “In Okinawa [Prefecture], too, many of those who joined [his Eisā and drum performance team] used to be rascals [furyō]. Oftentimes, those kids just don’t know what to do with their overwhelming energy and end up becoming members of motorbike gangs [bōsōzoku] or something. Eisā is a means to provide them with an opportunity to get excited about something and get some discipline through practice.”Â�

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Therefore, the Okinawan-Bolivian community members hoped Nisei and Sansei children, by passionately embracing Eisā and shimedaiko and by actively training through rigorous practice, would not only learn and embody the cultural traditions of their ancestral homeland, but also refrain from acquiring negatively perceived aspects of “Bolivian culture,” such as laziness and naughtiness. The older generation expected the younger generations to maintain the “Okinawan spirit” by undergoing strict disciplining and fierce athletic competition; physically demanding exercise under an authority figure was also seen as the key to developing a strong work ethic and self-discipline. Educational institutions, such as community schools in Colonia Okinawa, were intended to encourage Nisei and Sansei youth to become “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects who possess what Okinawan-Bolivian community members viewed as fundamentally “Japanese” characteristics, such as a work ethic and aspiration for selfimprovement, and the necessary skills to live in Bolivian society, such as speaking and writing abilities in Spanish. By encouraging Nisei and Sansei youth to learn Okinawan folk arts, the institutions also expected the youth to acquire and embody what they viewed as distinctly Okinawan virtues, such as physical and mental toughness, which would presumably keep the youth away from what their parents viewed as corrupting influences of local Bolivian culture and help them carry on the audacious spirit of the Okinawan diaspora. These ideals of “good” Nikkei Bolivian subjects of Okinawan heritage were constructed and enacted vis-à-vis the perceived influences from multiple subgroups within the school: a threat of cultural “Bolivianization” posed by nonNikkei Bolivian classmates and Spanish-class teachers; infusion of allegedly authentic “Japanese” language, culture, and morality by Naichi-jin teachers from Japan; and rigorous training in Okinawan traditional arts conducted by Okinawan teachers from Okinawa Prefecture. In relation to each of these three points of reference, Okinawan-Bolivians defined and enacted the ideals that Nisei and Sansei youth were expected to achieve. In their efforts to articulate ideals for Nisei and Sansei offspring, teachers and other Okinawan-Bolivian community members also helped these children to learn various stereotypes about Japanese, Bolivian, and Okinawan cultures and morals. As we have seen, Okinawan-Bolivians who grew up in Colonia Okinawa and attended its community schools developed highly racialized understandings of Japanese Naichi-jin, Bolivian, and, to a lesser extent, Okinawan characteristics and behavior, which the Okinawan-Bolivians carried with them when they migrated to Japan for dekasegi. Despite being educated to acquire


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(allegedly) Japanese morals and an Okinawan spirit in order to live as “good” Bolivian nationals, young Okinawan-Bolivians acquired racialized ideas of these distinct group categories, which led them to achieve only a partial and ambiguous belonging in Colonia Okinawa, larger Bolivian society, and urban Japan.

[5]

Gendering Transnationality: Marriage, Family, and Dekasegi

After having heard from Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa that dekasegi migration was a common phenomenon among young and middle-aged Nisei men, I initially sought to interview Nisei and younger Issei men in Colonia Okinawa who had returned from dekasegi in Japan. More often than not, however, when my interviewees had a hard time remembering the details of their dekasegi experience, their wives, who had been eavesdropping on our conversations, chimed in and eventually replaced their husbands in answering my questions. Though Nisei women were generally reluctant to be interviewed by me, a male outsider, outside the presence of their husbands, they were actually more comfortable communicating with me in Japanese than their husbands were. Furthermore, whereas the Nisei men’s recollections of dekasegi in Japan centered on their work experiences, Nisei women offered me a wide variety of anecdotes about their families’ day-to-day experiences during their dekasegi stints in Japan. Listening to these women’s stories made me realize that transmigration between Bolivia and Japan was a highly gendered experience.Â� Gender also played a significant role in racialization and transnationalization processes among intermarried couples between Nisei and non-Nikkei Bolivians.Â�When I attended numerous community events in Colonia Okinawa, I noticed the invisibility of intermarried couples or, more precisely, the nonNikkei spouses of Okinawan-Bolivians. Similarly noteworthy was the lack of 146

Gendering Transnationality

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intermarriage between Okinawan-Bolivians and Japanese Naichi-jin, given the fact that the majority of dekasegi migrants to urban Japan were young, single, and quite fluent in Japanese. While there were growing numbers of intermarried couples and mixed heritage children in Colonia Okinawa, it appeared that they were only partially integrated into the community, because of the community’s strong, if not always overt, resistance to intermarriage, coming particularly from Issei elders. Once the Okinawan-Bolivians migrated to Japan, they seemed to date and marry other Okinawan-Bolivians or South Americans of Okinawan ancestry, often with personal ties to Colonia Okinawa. Relationships or marriages between Okinawan-Bolivians and Naichi-jin Japanese were rare, partly because of mutual stereotyping between them and partly because of a potentially difficult decision they would have to make in the future: whether to continue living in Japan or to return to Bolivia. Their marriages and relationships were, therefore, rarely a matter of purely individual choice but social processes through which differences between Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others were constructed and naturalized. In this chapter, I explore processes of gender formation that “establish[ed] meaning for bodily differences” (Joan Scott 1988, 2) not only between Okinawan-Bolivian men and women, but also between Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others (non-Nikkei Bolivians and Naichi-jin Japanese) in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan. In examining these gender dynamics and interethnic courtships and marriages, more specifically, I look into two distinct but interrelated “gender regimes” (Walby 1997, 6) as critical social sites of Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject formations. Sociologist Sylvia Walby has defined the domestic gender regime as being “based upon household production as the main structure and site of women’s work activity and the exploitation of her labour and sexuality,” and the public gender regime as based on “the segregation and subordination of women within the structures of paid employment and the state, as well as within culture, sexuality and violence”; both regimes, according to Walby, must be analyzed in relation to “mutual structuring of class and ethnic relations” in each given social context (ibid., 6). For this study, I would like to add a “communal” gender regime, based on gender differentiation of semipublic/semidomestic social apparatuses, such as formal events and informal gatherings that community members participated in and through which they interpreted and naturalized gendered and cultural differences between men and women and between their Others and themselves.

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The Public Gender Regime of Colonia Okinawa At workplaces in Colonia Okinawa, Okinawan-Bolivian women were separatedÂ� not only from Okinawan-Bolivian men, but also from non-Nikkei Bolivian workers. The public gender regimes of Colonia Okinawa operated through exclusion of Okinawan-Bolivian women from economic and political positions of power within the community and through gendered differentiation within the Colonia’s overall paid labor market and each individual workplace. Gender relations in the Okinawan-Bolivian families in Colonia Okinawa were somewhat flexibly patterned after the ie (household unit) ideology in Japan (see Chapter 1), in which patrilineal succession to family property is the norm. Among the Okinawan-Bolivian families in Colonia Okinawa, eldest sons had primacy in inheritance and succession, so younger sons and daughters were left to make their own livelihoods. Frequently, an Issei father gave the largest portion of his farmland to his eldest son and smaller lots to younger sons. When the eldest son was not interested in taking over the family farm, however, a younger brother could substitute. Daughters, in any case, were never inheritors of the family farm. This patrilineal principle of inheritance was reconfirmed by Issei men when I asked them about their daughters. The men were largely indifferent about how their daughters would make their livelihoods and expected that they would get married and be taken care of by their husbands. Taira Hiroshi, an Issei man with seven children (four daughters and three sons), told me that he had expanded his farmland before retirement so that he could divide it into three lots for his three sons to inherit. When I asked him about his four daughters, he said, “I always told them: ‘You won’t get any land from me. So you will have to find somebody to get married to.’ Women are supposed to marry, so I encouraged them to find good ones, not lazy ones [laugh].” If a Nisei woman intended to live in Colonia Okinawa, therefore, she was left with two choices: find a job in the extremely small paid labor market within the Colonia or marry a Nisei man who owned a farm. While there was an explicit communal norm to prevent women from running farming operations, there was also a more subtle “separation of spheres of influence” (White 2002, 57) that secluded women from certain sectors of the paid labor market in Colonia Okinawa. The Okinawan-Bolivian community drew on the Japanese government’s koseki (family and domicile registration) system, in which male household heads played the role of mediator between the state and individual citizens. As women and children were registered only


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as dependents of the male household heads, female and nonadult household members were connected to the state only through their husbands or fathers, and the state intervened in the domestic affairs of individual households by controlling the male household heads. The membership of Colonia Okinawa’s principal political and economic organizations, Nichibo Kyōkai and CAICO, consisted only of male-headed households, except for women members who were widowed, divorced, or married to non-Nikkei Bolivian men.1 As a result of this systematic exclusion of women, no woman had ever occupied a leadership or management position in these institutions. Since their inaugurations in 1971 and 1978, respectively, both organizations have had only male presidents and board members, and have employed no women except in administrative assistant positions. The majority of Nisei women who graduated from high school and returned to live in the Colonia became wives of Nisei farm owners. When I asked Arakaki Natsumi, a Nisei housewife in Colonia Okinawa, what Okinawan-Bolivian women did during their husbands’ absence during the day, she pondered for a while and said, “Well, they have a lot of time [laugh].” She said that she normally spent her time with her Nisei friends, who were also housewives and mothers of young children, at each other’s houses; visiting her parents’ house; or chatting with female friends on the phone. As seen in the ethnographic snapshot of the Kuniyoshi family presented in Chapter 2, however, the lives of Okinawan-Bolivian housewives were typically much busier than Ms. Arakaki portrayed them to be. Housewives were usually in charge not only of household chores, such as cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, but also of bookkeeping and catering meals for non-Nikkei Bolivian employees at their farms. These tasks, performed in the dusty rural environment of Colonia Okinawa, could easily keep the housewives occupied for much of the day. Furthermore, during the sowing and harvesting periods, when extra field laborers worked in two shifts, these wives had to spend longer hours preparing a larger amount of food. The housewives’ work, therefore, differed from their husbands’ mostly in kind rather than in the amount of time and energy the work required, and the housewives arguably contributed equally to the successful operation of their family businesses. Other Nisei women continued to work in Colonia Okinawa, usually on a part-time basis, in a few positions within the paid labor market: as secretaries at community institutions, such as schools, hospitals, and Nichibo Kyōkai, as Japanese-language teachers at the schools, and as nurses at the Colonia Okinawa Hospital. While women in these positions were structurally subordinate to

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Okinawan-Bolivian men, the women nonetheless possessed a certain amount of authority over other employees, such as younger Nisei women and nonNikkei Bolivian employees at the institution. The Nichibo Kyōkai headquarters employed several women as administrative assistants to the secretary general, who directly assisted the association’s president, and to a JICA youth volunteer (replaced by JICA every two years). The secretary general was always a man, who took on the association’s bureaucratic tasks, such as proposing the budget for the association and its affiliated community organizations and communicating with the Japanese Embassy, Consulate General, and Okinawa prefectural government. The JICA youth volunteer, meanwhile, assisted the secretary general in specialized areas, such as formulating budget proposals, bookkeeping, and publishing community newsletters. Okinawan-Bolivian women typically filled two or three administrative assistant positions. They primarily handled routine tasks at the front desk, such as receiving and sending mail for the association members, handling the electricity and telephone bill payments for the members, posting community notices in front of the building, and lending members the Japanese books and videotapes that the community library owned.2 Not unlike female clerical workers, or “office ladies,” at Japanese corporate offices (Ogasawara 2002), the women also served tea or coffee to the president, the secretary general, and visitors, and prepared pots of coffee and snacks for the various committee meetings held in the conference room. These staff members also handled face-to-face communications and transactions with the association’s Okinawan-Bolivian members and with non-Nikkei Bolivian local residents such as clerks from the local electricity and telephone company offices who brought bills. While these administrative assistant positions were the lowest tier within the organizational structure, they were not responsible for menial tasks such as cleaning rooms and maintaining the plants around the building. The security guards, janitors, and gardeners at the headquarters were non-Nikkei Bolivian employees, whom the female Okinawan-Bolivian secretaries directly managed. When these non-Nikkei Bolivian staff members came to work on weekday mornings, they first came to see the secretaries at the front window to receive detailed instructions for the day, such as which rooms to clean, which bathrooms to fix, which trees to trim, which part of the yard to mow, or when to lock up the front gate. Verbal communication between them was kept to a minimum, and the non-Nikkei Bolivian employees never entered the main office. In fact, the secretaries rarely stood up from their desks to talk with these workers when giving them work assignments through the front desk window.


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Despite the women’s subordinate positions within the organization, therefore, these Okinawan-Bolivian women’s status and roles were also clearly distinguished from those of non-Nikkei Bolivians. In addition to gender and ethnicity, seniority and amount of work experience defined the Okinawan-Bolivian women’s positions at their workplaces. Ms. Nakada Mineko, an Issei woman who immigrated to Bolivia when she was young and was raised in Colonia Okinawa, had worked at the headquarters as an administrative assistant for more than a decade, much longer than the secretary general or the president. Because she had worked at the association for a long time and knew the individual Okinawan-Bolivian residents much better than the rotating JICA volunteers, she was widely regarded as the cornerstone of the association’s administration. For instance, when Nichibo Kyōkai was looking for a replacement for another female administrative assistant, the priority set by the Nichibo Kyōkai president was to keep Ms. Nakada happy. The president explained: “The next employee must be someone who would be below [shita ni naru hito] her. . . . If we hire someone above [ue no hito] her, she would hate her work and quit.” For example, hiring an Okinawan-Bolivian man, who would be placed “under” her within the association’s bureaucratic structure, could create a problem. The president continued: “For instance, we considered [an Issei man], the former CAICO factory manager, as a potential candidate [for the vacant administrative position]. But he had had twice as much experience in office work as [Ms. Nakada]. He was too good [for the position], because [Ms. Nakada] wouldn’t be able to hold him off [osaeru]. Had he been hired, she would have quit the job.” The president believed, therefore, that unless the man was much younger and clearly less experienced than Ms. Nakada, no Okinawan-Bolivian man should be hired to work alongside her as an administrative staff member. Thus, the president concluded, “A young unmarried woman [señorita] who will be below [Ms. Nakada] would be the best [person for the position]. Then, [Ms. Nakada] can teach her how to do the job.” Thus, the open position was eventually filled by a Nisei woman who was much younger than Ms. Nakada. To satisfy the community’s ideal gender and status roles, Okinawan-Bolivian women in Colonia Okinawa’s paid labor market were to be placed under Okinawan-Bolivian men who had decision-making power and received higher salaries but above the non-Nikkei Bolivian workers who handled menial tasks or younger Okinawan-Bolivian women who had less work experience. As wellentrenched insiders, these women also provided particular types of service, such as dealing with non-Nikkei Bolivian employees of the associationÂ� and

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community residents, which the better-educated and better-trained staff members from outside the community, such as the JICA volunteers, could not offer. These unique qualities gave the women a certain form of power and authority at their workplace, despite their low rank within the organizational structure and salary scale.

Communal Spheres: Women’s Unpaid Labor Although Okinawan-Bolivian women were largely excluded from the paid labor market, they played central roles in Colonia Okinawa’s numerous community events, which demanded an enormous amount of labor from the women. Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, community leaders, and others considered these events an instrumental part of communal solidarity. One Nichibo Kyōkai official jokingly said that planning and hosting these events were their major work assignments. Organizations such as Nichibo Kyōkai and Numero Uno School spent a considerable amount of time and resources preparing for annual events such as the harvest festival and track meet. Although no individual gained financially from them, participating in these events was akin to paid work because contributing to the public good of the community was not only praised but also practically required of all Okinawan-Bolivians in the Colonia. This quasi-public sphere of communal events was where Okinawan-Bolivian women made their presence known to the male community leaders and thereby increased their symbolic power and status—albeit in a contradictory manner—within the community. At many informal and formal occasions in Colonia Okinawa, such as welcome parties for newly arrived JICA youth and senior volunteers, Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers and their families, and annual events such as Respect for Elders Day and Carnival, Okinawan-Bolivians gathered and ate churasco (broiled beef ) and boiled yuca (cassava) together at the community’s auditorium or at Nichibo Kyōkai headquarters’ event hall. On all these occasions, there was invariably a clear division of labor between men and women. The women worked behind the scenes, preparing food in the kitchen of the auditorium or event hall, while the men played host, entertaining the featured guests. Once the women finished cooking, they came out of the kitchen and sat separately from their husbands and fathers, eating and chatting among themselves. The tables at these occasions were always clustered into three groups: adult men, adult women, and children. The gendered division of labor at communal events was as strict as the


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gendered segregation of labor at paid workplaces. As a party wound down, the women and young people (mostly teenage girls) began to clear the tables, wash the dishes, and clean the floor of the event space. Issei and Nisei men who stayed at the party kept eating and drinking even after other tables had been cleaned and stored away, while their wives were chatting and children were playing outside the building, waiting for their husbands or fathers to come out. In fact, I was once scolded by an Issei man for helping Okinawan-Bolivian women after a welcome party for the new Okinawa Prefecture Program teacher. Because I was then a teacher at the school that hosted the event, I, alongside the women, began cleaning the tables after finishing my dinner. Then an elderly Issei, who appeared somewhat drunk, yelled at me: “Hey, you! What do you think you are doing? Are you a woman or what?” In his eyes, my behavior clearly violated the gendered division of labor in the communal sphere in Colonia Okinawa.3 Some Okinawan-Bolivian women were unhappy with the gendered division of labor at communal events, which put a disproportionate burden on women. At Nichibo Kyōkai’s Christmas party in 1997, an elderly Issei man declared to the women at the occasion: “In Okinawan tradition, women were supposed to serve men and elders. Things might be changing in Japan today, but it won’t happen in Colonia [Okinawa].” Some Issei and Nisei women at the occasion immediately responded by saying that he was “archaic” (furui) and that things should change in Colonia Okinawa. On another occasion, some Nisei members of the mothers’ associations in Colonia Okinawa even questioned the raison d’être of their group if its female members were regarded by the Nichibo Kyōkai leaders simply as an exploitable source of labor to carry out community events. Except for a few outspoken women, however, Okinawan-Bolivian women were generally reluctant to express their dissatisfaction with the unfair division of labor at communal events publicly, claiming that the contribution of women’s labor to the events was their custom (shūkan) and that it should be respected and maintained. At the aforementioned welcome party for the Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers at the Colonia Dos Community Center, I ran into a Nisei woman who was waiting outside for her husband to finish drinking and go home with her and their young children. I jokingly asked her why she could not just leave without him. She smiled at me and said, “Well, he is having fun there, isn’t he? Sometimes, our fiestas continue until after midnight [laugh]! . . . Are you already leaving, Sensei [teacher]? Why don’t you stay longer with them?” To her and many other Nisei women, these events were too important for the community’s unity to complain about the sacrifices the women had to make.

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Their contribution to community events, even if the women were asked to work more than men yet to stay in the background, and even though their labor was not monetarily compensated, developed a strong sense of solidarity among Okinawan-Bolivian women. Okinawan-Bolivian women who were not always participating in the mothers’ association’s activities and chores were often quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) accused of being selfish, and the members I met were very proud that their association garnered strong commitment from the wives and mothers in the Colonia. Furthermore, these women knew that their contribution was regarded as indispensable for successful community events. At community events, the Nichibo Kyōkai president never failed to thank the mothers’ association’s contribution during his speech. The voluntary and unpaid labor of Okinawan-Bolivian women on communal events was, therefore, not simply exploitation of the women by the male community leaders, but also an important means for the women to assert themselves and gain recognition from the men as valuable members of the community.

The Domestic Gender Regime of Colonia Okinawa The domestic spheres of influence within the Okinawan-Bolivian community in Colonia Okinawa, such as individual households, primarily belonged to women, whereas men spent most of their time supervising their employees in the fields, congregating at places like the CAICO or Nichibo Kyōkai offices, or running errands in or outside the Colonia. Within each household, there was also a division of labor along the lines of ethnicity, class, and gender. Since most Okinawan-Bolivian women were housewives, their roles and status were defined in relation not only to their husbands, but also to their non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers, whose perceived “cultural” attributes were essentialized and naturalized through stereotyping. Non-Nikkei spouses of intermarried couples also played key roles in the domestic gender regime. Various stereotypes of non-Nikkei Bolivian men and women as spouses and lovers, narrated by Okinawan-Bolivians (especially Issei), provided points of reference for Okinawan-Bolivians against which they defined and embodied their gendered and sexual self-images. Individual households of OkinawanBolivians were, in other words, critical social sites in which gender roles and status, as well as sexual and marital norms, were articulated, contested, and performed in reference to racialized Japanese and Bolivian cultural differences.Â�


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Divisions within Household Labor: Non-Nikkei Bolivian Domestic Workers Okinawan-Bolivian households with three generations living together typically employed one or two non-Nikkei Bolivian women as housemaids, helping with cleaning, laundry (including ironing), and, less commonly, cooking. The employment patterns varied considerably, and there were no available statistics about non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers in Okinawan-Bolivian homes, but from my conversations with Okinawan-Bolivian families and my own observations at their houses, the families usually employed middle-aged non-Nikkei Bolivian women as full-time domestic workers and high-school-aged girls as part-time helpers. Most lived in the Colonia and commuted to their employers’ houses, but a few lived in a separate house built next to their employers on the same property. This arrangement was a legacy of the finca system in Santa Cruz Prefecture, a version of the hacienda, in which farm owners employed farm and domestic workers inexpensively, while providing them with housing, education, and medical care (Stearman 1985, 28–29; also see Chapter 1). The division of labor and status differences between Okinawan-Bolivian women and non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers in Colonia Okinawa were similar to the differences observed between Italian women and Filipina domestics in Italy (Parreñas 2001) or Taiwanese women and Filipina or Indonesian domestics in Taiwan (Lan 2006), marked and normalized through micro-scale spatial arrangements and what sociologist Judith Rollins (1985), who researched domestic workers in Britain, called the unspoken principle of deference. The spatial separation and the principle of deference were apparent in the relationship between the Tsukamotos, a wealthy Okinawan-Bolivian family, and Noemi Vargas and Juanita Delfino, two non-Nikkei Bolivian women who worked for the family as domestics. Both twenty-five years old, they had worked for the family for seven years, usually from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, and were paid 20 bolivianos (US$3) a day in 2001. Their main tasks were cleaning the floors and doing laundry, although they occasionally helped Mrs. Tsukamoto with the cooking.4 Despite the large amount of time they spent in the same house, Ms. Vargas and Ms. Delfino had few verbal interactions with the Tsukamotos. When there was interaction between the Tsukamotos and Ms. Vargas or Ms. Delfino, the two women evidently deferred to their employers; they rarely initiated a conversation with the Tsukamotos, except when the women needed directions for a task, they hardly spoke to each other when Mr. or Mrs. Tsukamoto was nearby, and, while cleaning the

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house, they avoided the rooms where Mr. or Mrs. Tsukamoto was. Whenever they had idle time, they retreated to a small (approximately six by eight feet) laundry room behind the kitchen, which connected to both the kitchen and the outdoor staircase. The room had no door and had two large refrigerators, a washing machine, two cabinets that stored cleaning supplies, and a small table with two chairs. There, the two women ate lunch they had brought from home. These patterns of spatial separation from and avoidance of contact with their Okinawan-Bolivian employers were extended to their friends and guests. When I, a house guest of the Tsukamotos at the time, tried to speak with Ms. Vargas or Ms. Delfino, as with another domestic worker at the home of another Okinawan-Bolivian family I stayed with, they were visibly startled and kept our conversations to a minimum before hurrying back to their duties. From my observations, cooking was one task that non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers and Okinawan-Bolivian wives did together, if not frequently. Mrs. Tsukamoto and Ms. Vargas and Ms. Delfino, for instance, worked side by side when they prepared lunch for Mr. Tsukamoto and his guests (my wife and me, in this case), but the maids quickly left the room as soon as their help was no longer needed. During the lunch, Mrs. Tsukamoto called to Ms. Vargas and Ms. Delfino from her seat at the dining table when she needed extra help from them. Even when Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian women shared the same task, there was a clear distinction in labor and space between the two groups. While Okinawan-Bolivian women were in charge of actual cooking, such as seasoning, frying, boiling, and baking, non-Nikkei Bolivian women were assigned preparatory tasks, such as washing and peeling vegetables, tenderizing and cutting meat, and removing guts and scales from fish. When helping their employers, the non-Nikkei Bolivian women usually used outdoor sinks and water basins to work on these tasks, and the women entered the kitchen only to deliver the prepared materials. As other studies on domestic workers have demonstrated, by relegating physically taxing and demeaning tasks to paid domestics, employers could visually demonstrate and psychologically confirm their socioeconomic power over their employees (Lan 2007; Parreñas 2001; Rollins 1985; Romero 1992). Ritualized practices of deference were also observed in the retail transactions between the wives of Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners and their nonNikkei Bolivian employees’ wives that commonly took place at the doorsteps of the farm owners’ houses. From my observations, the non-Nikkei Bolivian employees’ wives never entered their Okinawan-Bolivian employers’ houses unless the employers needed help with domestic chores. The wives of non-


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NikkeiÂ�Â� Bolivian farm workers, for instance, always waited outside the Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners’ houses when the wives needed to purchase food and daily necessities on credit from their employers’ wives. While I was staying with the Kuniyoshis, the wives of Mr. Kuniyoshi’s employees daily came to the back door in the morning and early evening. They cried out, “¡Señora!â•›” from outside to call Mrs. Kuniyoshi at the door. After receiving the women’s orders, Mrs. Kuniyoshi went to the storage room of the house to bring the requested items to the women, who were kept waiting outside. This form of paternalistic relationship between affluent housewives and poor domestic workers, separated by both class and ethnic differences, was not unique to Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa. In western Bolivia, indígena (indigenous women) domestic workers were often regarded as “dependent” and “childlike” by upper-class (and Spanish or mestizo) women, who felt obligated to provide their employees with material and moral assistance (Stephenson 1999, 28–29). The daily interactions between the wives of Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners and the wives of non-Nikkei Bolivian farm laborers through retail transactions embodied and normalized the unequal relationships between “benevolent” Okinawan-Bolivians as employers and creditors, and “dependent” non-Nikkei Bolivians as employees and lenders.Â� By employing non-Nikkei Bolivian women, managing their work within their houses, and maintaining spatial distinctions between the domestics and themselves, Okinawan-Bolivian women shaped their roles and status as “not maids” and as “not (non-Nikkei) Bolivians.” Just as in the fields, where the class and ethnic differences between Okinawan-Bolivian patrones and non-Nikkei Bolivian trabajadores were defined, perpetuated, and naturalized through everyday practices, within the domestic sphere of individual households, Okinawan-Bolivian señoras and non-Nikkei Bolivian empleadas were differentiated through division of labor, spatial segregation, and unspoken codes of deference during their interactions.

Ambiguous Insiders: Intermarriages During a Japanese class at Numero Uno School, a teacher asked her students to write a sentence with the expression they had just learned: “It is very likely that . . .” One student, a Sansei girl, raised her hand, and read aloud her sentence: “It is very likely that all people in Colonia [i.e., Okinawan-Bolivians] will become relatives in the future.” Indeed, the vast majority of Nisei residents in Colonia

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Okinawa had married Nisei, as strongly preferred by their Issei parents (Anbo et al. 1998, 252).5 The community’s general disapproval of intermarriages, seen as a transgression of impermeable ethnic (and, frequently, class) boundaries, illuminated what sociologist Nazli Kibria (2002) called “ethnic aspirations” among Okinawan-Bolivians, especially Issei elders, in Colonia Okinawa. Their views on intermarriages implied their “wishes and desires about the developing form and character of ethnic identity in their lives” (Kibria 2002, 159), expressed through their sexualized stereotypes of “Bolivian,” “Japanese,” and “Okinawan” men and women.

Oversexualized Non-Nikkei Bolivians Issei’s condemnation of Nisei intermarriage always pointed to what they regarded as the questionable qualities of “people here” (non-Nikkei Bolivian men and women) with regard to fidelity and child rearing. Issei most feared that their Sansei grandchildren would be morally corrupted by a non-Nikkei Bolivian parent. Takara Masahide, an Issei, put it this way: “I think 90 percent of [intermarriages] have failed. People here [kocchi no hito] are good talkers [kuchi ga umai], so we [Okinawan-Bolivians] often are enticed by their talk. . . . But their [mixed-heritage] kids tend to become Bolivians [Boribiajin]. . . . They don’t keep their promises, aren’t punctual, and lose empathy [ninjō].” In addition to their concern about the “Bolivianization” of mixed-heritage grandchildren, Issei often cited sexual irresponsibility and material extravagance, which they claimed to find commonly among non-Nikkei Bolivians, as the main reason for their opposition to Nisei intermarriages.6 Issei whose daughters were or had been married to non-Nikkei Bolivian men all told me that they had initially disapproved of their daughters’ marriages. Maeda Akira, whose daughter had married and divorced an Argentine man and had then married a non-Nikkei Bolivian man, didn’t hide his bitterness over her decisions. He insisted, “People here [koko no ningen], especially Spanish men, were unfaithful. If a husband is Nikkei-jin and his wife is a local [genchi-jin], it would be okay, but the opposite combination is not good. We Issei often talk about this. . . . Even [my daughter’s] second marriage, we opposed it, because we were worried that he might have an extramarital affair.” This stereotype of oversexualized and unfaithful non-Nikkei Bolivian men, and South American men in general, might have originated in the earlier days of Colonia Okinawa, when several Okinawan-Bolivian women suffered sexual assaults by non-Nikkei Bolivian trespassers, and the community had to protect its female


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members withoutÂ� much help from police. The deep distrust of non-Nikkei Bolivian men in Colonia Okinawa (and South American men in general) lingered among Issei, which made it difficult for them to accept their daughters’ intermarriages. Unions between a Nisei husband and a non-Nikkei Bolivian woman were slightly more likely to be accepted than the opposite, partly because Issei men have been sexually involved with non-Nikkei Bolivian women since the early settlement period. An elderly Issei man told me that during the early settlement period, single Okinawan men often went to brothels in the city to “buy [non-Nikkei Bolivian] women” and that they welcomed new settlers by taking them to whorehouses in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Perhaps owing to these experiences among the Issei settlers, they tended to view non-Nikkei Bolivian women in general as promiscuous and, therefore, unfit to become the wives of their sons. Taira Hiroshi, an elderly Issei, told me that Issei parents generally discouraged their sons from intermarrying with non-Nikkei Bolivian women. He said: “There are many Issei who warn their sons not to marry a local woman [genchi no onna]. . . . [Nisei] guys who can’t tolerate their wives’ infidelity shouldn’t marry them, because [non-Nikkei Bolivian] men and women are very carefree about infidelity, saying, ‘Even if you have [extramarital sex], nobody will notice after you wash yourself ’ [laugh].” Many Issei’s stories pointed out the alleged “cultural” differences between “Japanese” and “Bolivian (or South American)” attitudes toward sexual fidelity as a red flag for intermarriages between the two groups. Issei also deemed non-Nikkei Bolivian women to be undesirable as their sons’ wives because of their alleged materialistic and extravagant tendencies. Rather than being frugal and providing for their husbands and children, nonNikkei Bolivian wives were stereotyped as spending all their husbands’ income for themselves and their birth family members. Shinjō Yoshi, whose Nisei son married a non-Nikkei Bolivian woman, explained: “If you have a [non-Nikkei] Bolivian wife, your family can’t survive because she wastes money. [My son] always gives money to his wife’s siblings. [My daughter-in-law’s relatives] take advantage of a relative who has money.” Despite being unfamiliar with her daughter-in-law’s actual intentions or her birth family’s financial circumstances, Mrs. Shinjō seemed to regard her daughter-in-law’s management of the household income as an example of non-Nikkei Bolivian women’s “natural” tendency to waste. Nisei who married non-Nikkei Bolivians, therefore, had to fend off their Issei parents’ stereotypes of their husbands as being unfaithful and irresponsible or their wives as being promiscuous and extravagant.

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Intermarried Couples and Their Children: Between Nikkei and Non-Nikkei Nisei who married non-Nikkei Bolivians struggled to overcome not only the Colonia Okinawa community’s prejudice against their union, but also their mixed-heritage children’s ambiguous position within the sharply divided social world of Colonia Okinawa along class and ethnic lines. Nakaima Yūko (Yūko hereafter), a Nisei woman, married Ricardo Ortiz in Japan soon after they together moved from Colonia Okinawa to Yokohama. Like many Nisei women, she decided to go to Japan in 1990, after graduating from high school and “staying home for a while and working in the hospital for a while” in Colonia Okinawa. Yūko and Ricardo had known each other since high school, but Yūko’s parents were against their marriage. Nakaima Sumiyo, Yūko’s mother, explained: “We were opposed to Yūko’s marriage. We were so worried about the language problem [kotoba no mondai], that we wouldn’t be able to understand each other. . . . Right now, we have grandchildren, and things have been smoothed over.” According to Yūko and her parents, Ricardo talked to her parents in “rudimentary Japanese,” and they managed to communicate with each other. When they went to Japan together, Ricardo entered Japan on a tourist visa, and after they married in Japan, he switched to a work visa. Their first daughter, Erika, was born in Yokohama and grew up there until 1996. The family decided to return to Colonia Okinawa and, with the money they had saved during dekasegi, opened a store that sold hardware, machinery parts, and construction material to farmers and builders. In early 1999, when an economic recession began to affect Colonia Okinawa, their store suffered from decreasing demand from Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners, their main clients. In April 1999, Ricardo again left for Japan “to make money to keep the store open,” according to Yūko. Yūko considered moving with him to Japan, but the recession in Japan made her think twice about the decision: “If we can manage to keep the store open with remittances from Japan, we would rather stay here.” Although Yūko said that she did not feel particularly uncomfortable living in Colonia Okinawa despite her mixed family being a minority within the Okinawan-Â�Bolivian community, she had concerns about the discrimination that Erika, her mixed-heritage and Japanese-born daughter, had experienced at kindergarten and at Numero Uno School: “When Erika heard that we might join my husband in Japan, Erika was happy. [Suzuki: Why?] Because, at [Numero Uno School], her classmates sometimes say things like, ‘I don’t want to play


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with you because your father is Bolivian [Boribiajin].’ . . . Although I heard that things have improved lately, there were some [divisions] among the students [based on their parents’ ethnicities].” After the family returned from Japan, Erika went to both the Methodist Church–operated kindergarten, which most Okinawan-Bolivian children attended, and San Francisco Xavier kindergarten, where almost all the pupils were non-Nikkei Bolivians. Erika had difficulty adjusting to both kindergartens, but for different reasons. At the Methodist kindergarten, Erika’s mixed heritage and her background as Japanese-born gave other Okinawan-Bolivian kids reasons to pick on her. Yūko said: “At the Methodist kindergarten, [Erika’s] friends said to her, “Your Japanese is weird,” because it had a mainlander’s [i.e., non-Okinawan] accent. Erika tried to change her speech to fit in. . . . They picked on such trivial differences! For example, they made a big deal when Erika was wearing an undershirt underneath the school uniform. Also, whenever she says, ‘In Japan . . . ,’ her friends don’t like it and pick on her.” She attributed the Okinawan-Bolivian children’s rejection of Erika to what she viewed as a typical Okinawan attitude. She said, “Okinawans [Okinawajin] are closed-minded. Even in Bolivia, that characteristic has remained.” At San Francisco Xavier kindergarten, bullying was never a problem. Yūko believed that it was because Erika was a fast learner of Spanish and was “seen as Bolivian” by other non-Nikkei Bolivian children. The problem there was, instead, the considerable gap in socioeconomic status between Erika’s family and her classmates’, which resulted in frequent thefts of Erika’s belongings by other students: “Her belongings were frequently stolen. Her snacks, lunches, school supplies. . . . As a parent, it is difficult to talk to your children about thefts at school, you know?” Even though Yūko understood that the class difference between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians was the root of the problem, it was too complex for her to explain a causal relationship between poverty and children’s misbehavior to a small child like Erika, much less help her cope with it. Perhaps because of the visible class divisions she had witnessed at San Francisco Xavier kindergarten and in Colonia Okinawa in general, Yūko said, Erika seemed to consider herself “Japanese” (Nihonjin) rather than “Bolivian” (Boribiajin), despite her mixed heritage and her trouble fitting in with other Nisei and Sansei children. To justify her Japanese identity, Yūko said, Erika even claimed that her father was more “Japanese” than other non-Nikkei Bolivians.Â� According to Yūko:

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Erika prefers playing with Nikkei kids [to playing with non-Nikkei Bolivian kids]. She says, “[Non-Nikkei Bolivian kids] have different customs [shūkan],” even though I always tell her that’s wrong. . . . We parents keep telling her that she is both Japanese and Bolivian, but she has a strong self-awareness of being Japanese. . . . When asked about her [non-Nikkei Bolivian] father, she insists, “Dad is Japanese, because he speaks Japanese. He has a Japanese face [Nihonjin no kao], too.” She says that her uncles—her father’s brothers—have a different kind of face [from other non-Nikkei Bolivian men]. . . . She also told me, “If you have to go to Japan [to join my dad] without me, I would rather stay with [my maternal] grandma [than with my paternal grandparents].”Â� One reason Erika had these feelings about being Japanese might be that she had a much easier time fitting in at preschool in Yokohama than in Colonia Okinawa. Yūko said, “[Erika] seemed to have enjoyed her nursery school in Japan more than the Methodist kindergarten [in Colonia Okinawa]. . . . She was born in Japan and grew up surrounded by Japanese, so she had no idea that she was half [hāfu] or Nikkei-jin when she was in Japan. That’s why she socialized with everybody without prejudice. Children who grew up here since they were babies see the difference [between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians] from an early age, but Erika was oblivious to it.” Once the family moved to Colonia Okinawa, however, Erika quickly discovered the socioeconomic gap between non-Nikkei Bolivians and Okinawan-Bolivians in the village and longed to return to Japan, where Erika believed that socioeconomic stratification was less severe. Yūko recalled that Erika had told her: “Japan is better than here, isn’t it? There are fewer people in misery [kawaisōna hito] over there.” Yūko was not optimistic that Erika would find it as easy to adjust to Japan the next time she was there, however. She worried that as a grade school student, rather than a preschooler, Erika, as a “half ” Japanese, would have much more difficulty fitting in with her peers in Japan. She sighed: “Even we [Nisei] are seen as foreigners in Japan, so I am worried that Erika, as a ‘half,’ would have a very difficult time.” Soon after her father’s departure for Japan in 1999, Erika began to suffer from recurring headaches, which were diagnosed as being caused by psychological stress. When I returned to Colonia Okinawa in July 2000, Yūko and Erika had already moved to Japan to join Ricardo. Nisei men who married non-Nikkei Bolivian women also had to grapple with their Issei parents’ prejudice against their wives and their children’s sense of alienation among Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa. Nomura Satoshi


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Â� (Satoshi hereafter), a Nisei man, had been married to Marta Estes, a non-Nikkei Bolivian woman, since 1992, and they had a daughter, Sayaka, and a son, Mamoru. Like the Nakaima-Ortiz couple, Satoshi, Marta, and their children struggled to gain acceptance by Satoshi’s Issei parents and the Okinawan-Bolivian community at large. The intermarriage had a negative effect on his family’s relationship with other Okinawan-Bolivians. Satoshi said: I personally think that [Marta] shouldn’t worry about being [nonNikkei] Bolivian within this [Okinawan-Bolivian] community, but she does. We have no reason to be ashamed of ourselves; I mean, we don’t have to be extremely outspoken, but we can just be normal. We had a formal wedding ceremony and a banquet; actually, we were the first to have a wedding ceremony as a Nikkei-jin and a local person [koko no hito; i.e., non-Nikkei Bolivian]. There are other Nikkei people [who are married to non-Nikkei Bolivians], but they normally just cohabited and then [legally] married afterwards without having a wedding. . . . After marrying, they kind of began to disengage [hazurechau] from the [Okinawan-Bolivian] community. Earlier, I was the same, too. My parents opposed our marriage, you know? So, I began to think, “Maybe they don’t want to be bothered by us,” and I started to dissociate from [other Okinawan-Bolivians]. After I married my wife, I thought that we wouldn’t be able to live here and would have to move to a city and live and work among local people [koko no hito]. But some [friends] told me, “She is a good person, so don’t be ashamed.” Satoshi added that non-Nikkei Bolivian wives tended to feel more alienated among Okinawan-Bolivian wives than non-Nikkei Bolivian men who married Okinawan-Bolivian women, because Okinawan-Bolivian women tended to socialize among fellow Nisei women and to talk almost exclusively in Japanese. Marta, too, sometimes faced indifferent, if not unfriendly, treatment from Okinawan-Bolivian women. Satoshi said, “My wife kind of understands how it is among [Okinawan-Bolivian women]. She has figured out which women think of her in what way [i.e., positively or negatively].” Satoshi was an engineer at CAICO. He tried farming on his father’s small lot of fifty hectares, but “it was difficult to do both a day job [tsutome] and farming.” He remained a rare Nisei man in Colonia Okinawa who did not farm. When I interviewed him in December 1998, he told me to my surprise that he was planning to leave for Japan for dekasegi. It was unusual that a Nisei man in

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his mid-thirties who did not own a farm, and thus did not suffer from a large amount of debt, would quit his stable job and leave for dekasegi. When I asked Satoshi about his decision to move to Japan, he told me that his motive was not solely an economic one, even though it was partly based on his prediction that CAICO might have to lay off some employees because of its sagging profits and his ambition to turn his small farm into an apple orchard in the future. He wouldn’t really call his move to Japan dekasegi, because his objective was “not to make money but to live in Japan as a family.” He decided to move when he learned that his daughter Sayaka had been having difficulty fitting in with her Nisei and Sansei classmates at the Methodist kindergarten because her mother was “different” from her friends’ mothers. After a particularly difficult day at kindergarten, Sayaka said to her parents, “I want a mom who can speak Japanese.” Satoshi also realized that Sayaka was becoming more comfortable speaking Spanish than Japanese. Sayaka and Mamoru at the time were about to enter elementary school and kindergarten, respectively, so he thought it was the right time for his family to move to Japan. When I asked him what Marta thought of his decision, he said, “She kind of knew [dekasegi to Japan] was coming, because everybody around her was Nikkei. So she didn’t oppose the idea.” To Satoshi, therefore, the main purpose of the temporary relocation to Japan was linguistic and cultural “Japanization” of his non-Nikkei Bolivian wife and mixed-heritage children. During the two years spent in Japan, Marta’s Japanese communication skills had improved and she was more hopeful of better relationships with Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa. Satoshi said: [After returning from Japan,] she has not suddenly become outgoing, saying, “Hey, I have learned Japanese this much.” She is still being very careful. But however little it might be, she did learn Japanese culture there. So, she is now saying, “I am a foreigner [gaijin] in either place, after all, but I have gotten along with many Japanese and other gaijin [in Japan], so I might make friends with Japanese [i.e., OkinawanBolivians in Colonia Okinawa] here, too.” Because of Marta’s ethnicity, however, Satoshi did not expect that Okinawan-Bolivians would wholeheartedly accept her: “After all, it is all about [physical] appearance. Some [Okinawan-Bolivians] are very stubborn, and they still avoid her simply because she is a local person [koko no hito]. If you are a local, you must keep [that fact] somewhere in your mind.”


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During our conversation, Satoshi stressed how “different” his wife was from other non-Nikkei Bolivian women, telling me several times that his wife was “never extravagant” (zeitaku shinai). He told me how thrifty she was during their dekasegi in Japan: “She never even bought clothes for herself. When she had to, like when she had to go to [Sayaka’s] school [for school functions], she went to a secondhand store and bought a 500-yen piece of clothing.” His emphasis on his wife’s frugality indicated how pervasive the negative stereotype of non-Nikkei Bolivian wives as irresponsible spenders was among OkinawanBolivians. Furthermore, by stressing how “different” Marta was from the “typical” non-Nikkei Bolivian woman, rather than challenging the stereotype itself, his narrative showed that even Okinawan-Bolivians who shared the most intimate domestic sphere with their non-Nikkei Bolivian spouses were not immune to stereotyping non-Nikkei Bolivians’ morals.

Transition through Dekasegi in Japan As with many transnational migrant groups elsewhere, Okinawan-Bolivian couples and families underwent drastic reconfigurations of gendered and racialized stratifications through dekasegi migration to Japan, which transferred the families “from one system of gender stratification to another” (Zlotnick 1990, cited in Parreñas 2001, 29). When Nisei moved from rural Colonia Okinawa to Japanese cities, both men and women turned themselves into low-paid manual laborers and had to change their lifestyles by rearranging their roles in their households. For intermarried couples who could not try to “pass” as Japanese nationals (see Chapter 3), living in Japan posed additional challenges in their dealings with their employers, neighbors, and the schools their mixed children attended. These migrants had to comprehend that their gendered and racialized subject positions within urban Japan differed from those they had been accustomed to in Colonia Okinawa and make necessary adjustments.

Women’s Paid Work and Encounters with Others Most couples who went to Japan intended to save as much money as possible, so wives’ participation in the paid labor market was not regarded negatively by their husbands. The biggest change that Okinawan-Bolivian couples experienced during dekasegi was, therefore, the women’s active participation in the labor market as paid workers. In contrast with the lack of jobs in Colonia Okinawa, where there were only a small number of non-farming-related jobs, in

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urban Japan, Nisei women could find jobs in the service and manufacturing sectors, such as on factory assembly lines, and, less frequently, clerical positions at offices and cashiers jobs at retail stores. With increased earning power and participation in a larger social sphere, Okinawan-Bolivian women often felt more empowered in urban Japan. Nisei women, who had grown up speaking Japanese more frequently than Spanish, generally had an easier time fitting in with their Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers than their male counterparts. As discussed previously, devoting oneself to academic study and to learning Japanese was considered to be essentially a “feminine” (or, more accurately, “unmasculine”) act by Okinawan-Bolivian boys in Colonia Okinawa, a farming community where physical toughness was esteemed as a sign of masculinity. In such an environment, it was perhaps no surprise that female Okinawan-Bolivian students generally did better than male students in school and especially in Japanese classes.7 Female OkinawanBolivian students’ stronger commitment and higher achievement in school, and Japanese language classes in particular, gave female students an advantage after they graduated and decided to move to Japan. Nisei women interviewees in Colonia Okinawa who had lived in Japan invariably told me that they had never had a problem communicating in Japanese and often found it quite easy to “pass” as Japanese nationals. Like men, Nisei women did not enjoy working on fast-paced factory assembly lines for long hours and being expendable laborers with unstable employment and fluctuating incomes. They added, however, that their jobs at least enabled them to earn extra money to supplement their husbands’ income to pay for their increased living expenses in Japan and to have active daily lives, which was not always possible back in the rural farming village in Bolivia. As a result, despite the many difficulties they had faced during dekasegi, most of my female Nisei interviewees who had returned to Colonia Okinawa said that their work experience in Japan had been “fulfilling” (yarigai ga aru) and that they found their lives in rural Bolivia a little boring after such experiences. In fact, during my interviews with Nisei couples in Colonia Okinawa who had returned from dekasegi in Japan, most, if not all, told me that the wives had wanted to continue to live in Japan, whereas their husbands had been eager to return to Bolivia. I met two Okinawan-Bolivian women in the Tsurumi Ward of Yokohama who owned restaurants in the Ushioda-Nakadōri neighborhood after living in Japan for several years. Shingaki Reiko, who was an Issei but had been raised in Colonia Okinawa since she was six, owned a small restaurant that served Okinawan and South American dishes, and was


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also the bookkeeper for her Nisei sons’ electric installation firm located in the same neighborhood. She explained to me her busy schedule: Right now, I work at the restaurant six days a week. On Mondays, when the restaurant is closed, I keep the books for my sons’ company. When I tell that to my friends back in the Colonia on the phone, they say, “You sound so busy! Are you okay?” [laugh] I think I have become accustomed to the fast pace of life here. When I went back to the Colonia three years ago, I became kind of restless after ten days or so. After driving a pickup truck to a grocery store, cleaning my house, doing laundry, and taking care of the garden, there was nothing else to do. I started feeling bored [laugh]. No wonder so many [OkinawanBolivian] mothers there practice sanshin [The Okinawan musical instrument] and Eisā [dance]. They need things to do to keep themselves busy. Many Nisei women who had returned to Colonia Okinawa from Japan similarly said that although they were happy to have returned home, they also felt somehow unfulfilled in rural Bolivia. Nakaima Yūko said: “I do think my home is here, and I like living here, because, after all, this is where I was born and raised. But there just aren’t any jobs for women, so I don’t find much motivation in my daily life [seikatsu ni hariai ga nai]. Every day, I feel like I am missing something [Mainichi nanika monotarinai].” Their nostalgia for life in urban Japan, however, should not be mistaken as fondness for Japanese society in general. Nisei women who had worked on assembly lines of manufacturing factories recalled how hectic their work had been and how lonely they had felt among their Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers. Social psychologist Masahiro Tsujimoto quotes a Nisei woman who found that Naichi-jin Japanese would “suddenly change their attitudes when they found out that [she was] Nikkei-jin” (Tsujimoto 1998b, 7). Nakaima Yukō, who worked in a window frame manufacturing factory in Yokohama, was afraid to ride the city bus for a while after a bus driver had rudely and repeatedly asked her whether she had paid the proper fare. Other Nisei women I interviewed also remembered that Japanese Naichi-jin looked puzzled when the women asked for directions in Japanese cities; because of the Nisei dekasegi migrant women’s “Japanese” physical appearance and their largely flawless Japanese speech, local Japanese Naichi-jin expected the women to be able to read Japanese maps and street signs to navigate by themselves. These uncomfortable moments during

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dekasegi, in turn, made the women regard Naichi-jin Japanese as unfriendly and “cold.” Despite the abundance of work and earning power they had gained during dekasegi in Japan, therefore, they often concluded that it was not a good place to live for good. The increased employment opportunities in the paid labor market were the most dramatic change in the public gender regimes that Okinawan-Bolivians underwent when they moved from Colonia Okinawa to urban Japan. This transition helped them not only to gain a new sense of empowerment and satisfaction that had been unattainable back in Colonia Okinawa, but also to reinterpret their roles, status, and identities in relation to Naichi-jin Japanese in urban Japan as well as Okinawan-Bolivian men and non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers they had interacted with in Colonia Okinawa.

Changing Natures of “Community” While the communal events in Colonia Okinawa functioned as a quasi-public sphere where Okinawan-Bolivian women played indispensable roles, there were few occasions in urban Japan in which a large number of dekasegi migrants gathered. Their communities in Japan were neither geographically concentrated nor was there a centralized organization like Nichibo Kyōkai to host large-scale communal events. The character of the Okinawan-Bolivian community, in other words, dramatically changed from a structured and quasipublic sphere in Colonia Okinawa to more spontaneous and private networks among personal friends and relatives in Yokohama.8 This changing character of the Colonia Okinawa community transformed Okinawan-Bolivian women’s roles in communal events as well, from key contributors to event preparation as a voluntary (unpaid) labor force to casual participants in the events. An Okinawan-Bolivian migrant woman who lived in Tsurumi described her social life: “There are so many relatives and friends here that you really don’t have to socialize with anyone other than your own relatives from the Colonia.” The largest socializing occasions they had were occasional barbecues on the river banks of the Tsurumi River in Yokohama or the Hiratsuka River in Hiratsuka, and soccer games in Hiratsuka city parks. Unlike Nichibo Kyōkai– organized communal events in Colonia Okinawa, which required a significant amount of voluntary labor, these sporadic events required little work by Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrant women to prepare. They could take advantage of a wide variety of premade foods available at convenience stores and supermarkets to bring to the events, and, more important, their participation


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in these occasions, unlike those in Colonia Okinawa, was completely voluntary. Moreover, because the Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrant women were active participants in the public sphere of the paid labor market and made a significant contribution to the household income, the women were neither expected nor obligated to prove their value to their husbands and other Okinawan-Bolivian men through voluntary labor contribution to these communal events. As the communal events changed from being quasi-public in Colonia Okinawa to being largely private in urban Japan, the significance of these events and the degree of the division of labor between Okinawan-Bolivian men and women were dramatically reduced.

Convenient Yet Alienating Family Lives Another change that profoundly affected the roles and status of OkinawanBolivian women during dekasegi in urban Japan, in addition to the increased opportunities in the paid labor market and the reduced demand for unpaid labor for communal events, was the abundance of educational, medical, and recreational facilities that their families could take advantage of. However welcome this difference was for Nisei women, who were in charge of their family members’ well-being, they also realized during dekasegi that their families, including children, would remain culturally and psychologically marginalized in Japanese society. For Nisei dekasegi migrant women, their families’ lives in urban Japan were at once enjoyable and unpromising. The women’s household chores became much easier when they moved to urban Japan with their families. While in Colonia Okinawa, the women had to clean large houses in a dusty rural village; their small apartments in urban Japan required much less care. They also enjoyed the convenience of urban life, such as the ability to purchase food and other necessities at supermarkets and convenience stores, many of which were open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Uehara Keiko, a Nisei returnee to Colonia Okinawa from dekasegi in Japan, most missed the amenities available in Japanese cities. Knowing that I am originally from Japan, she said: “Compared to [Colonia Okinawa], isn’t Japan better? I mean, there are crimes and accidents because it is so urban, but it is so convenient over there. Whenever our child became sick, for instance, we could just run to a convenience store or a pharmacy nearby, even at midnight. You can’t do it here, because health insurance and medical services are inaccessible in Bolivia. I like living in the Colonia, but sometimes I think life was much easier when we were in Japan.”

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Nisei women also expressed their preference for living in urban Japan when they brought up their children’s social lives and education. To these women, urban Japan offered a more structured school system than rural Bolivia and a wide variety of recreational facilities for children and families, such as neighborhood parks and playgrounds, amusement parks, and zoos. Many Nisei women fondly recalled family excursions on weekends and how their children enjoyed nursery school or kindergarten in Japan. Ms. Uehara told me how her son, Kenta, had difficulty adjusting to life in Colonia Okinawa when the family moved from Japan: For the first few years after we came back here, [Kenta] insisted, “I’m Japanese, not Bolivian,” and he didn’t like playing with other [Okinawan-Bolivian] kids. He loved playing in a sandbox when he was in preschool in Japan. But when we came back, the kids here didn’t play with sand, so they just destroyed the things he had made, like buildings, railroads, or cakes. Then, he got into a fight with them [laugh]. . . . For educating children, Japan is much better. Children at school learn a work ethic and [why they need to make] an effort to accomplish their goals. That’s why I wanted to give him an education over there for a few years to build a foundation, even though I knew we would come back [to Bolivia] soon. For her, school education meant not only acquiring academic skills and knowledge but also learning self-discipline and developing moral character, which she and other Nisei women who had returned from dekasegi in Japan felt were not a part of Bolivian school education. Nevertheless, most Nisei migrant women I met told me that they never planned or wanted to live in Japan for good because they realized that they would permanently remain “foreigners” in the society. A Nisei dekasegi migrant woman living with her Nisei husband in Yokohama said that she did not want to raise their children in Japan because they would continue to be seen as foreigners (gaikokujin) by Naichi-jin Japanese (Tsujimoto 1998b, 7). Nakaima Yūko recalled that socializing with her neighbors in Yokohama was difficult at times. When she brought Erika, her then-preschool-age daughter, to a nearby playground, other Japanese Naichi-jin children and their mothers avoided them. She said: “It might not have anything to do with us being Nikkei-jin from South America, but these mothers [who brought their children to the same playground] didn’t want their children to play with Erika. It seemed really hard


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for a newcomer to join a circle of friends among Japanese wives.” Fear that their children would be alienated or even ostracized among their peers in their school or neighborhood discouraged these Nisei women from permanently settling in urban Japan. With a plan to return to Bolivia in the future, Nisei mothers were worried that their children might not be able to adjust to the Colonia Okinawa community. Ms. Uehara returned from Japan with her children when they were preschoolers. She told me that the main reason that she and her husband had decided to return to Bolivia was to help their children learn Spanish with relative ease. As a Nisei woman, Ms. Uehara bitterly remembered how difficult it was for her, after primarily speaking and reading Japanese within the insulated domestic sphere of Colonia Okinawa, to catch up with urban non-Nikkei Bolivian classmates at high school in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. She, therefore, wanted to make sure that her children returned to Bolivia when they were young enough to learn Spanish quickly so they were able to compete with urban Bolivians (“not the rural Bolivians,” she added) when they advanced to high school. Charged with the “feminine” domestic domain of child rearing, Nisei women evaluated the pros and cons of living in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan, and tried to deal with the changes their children underwent through dekasegi migration to Japan and the return to Bolivia by carefully managing what they viewed as their children’s cultural and linguistic “Japanization” and “Bolivianization” processes in the two environments they lived in.

Intermarried Couples Changing gender roles and statuses were differently experienced among the intermarried couples who moved to Japan compared to the endogamous Nisei dekasegi couples, and intermarried couples were often required to make dramatic adjustments in domestic relations and divisions of labor. These intermarried couples during their dekasegi stints in Japan felt a stronger sense of alienation in the new environment than the endogamous Nisei dekasegi migrant couples, because the intermarried couples were easily recognized as “foreigners” owing to the non-Nikkei Bolivian spouse’s physical appearance. Non-Nikkei Bolivian spouses’ visible Otherness forced Nisei migrant men and women to transgress the gendered boundaries in the public and domestic spheres that they had been accustomed to in Colonia Okinawa. Nisei migrants had to actively help their non-Nikkei Bolivian spouses at work and their mixed-heritage children at school, who frequently suffered psychological stress

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duringÂ�their dekasegi stints in urban Japan because of the language barrier and overt and covert prejudice from Japanese Naichi-jin peers. As a result, these Nisei spouses and parents had to take on greater roles in matters in and outside their households while they were living in Japan, even as they themselves had to adjust to life as migrants. Nisei women who were married to non-Nikkei Bolivian men often found jobs where their husbands worked, because their husbands needed their wives’ help to communicate with coworkers and supervisors. Additionally, these women were responsible for finding their family’s apartment. They visited a number of real estate agencies by themselves, because, as Nakaima Yūko said, “If a non-Nikkei [husband] goes to a real estate agency, they would turn him down just by looking at his face.” In contrast, Nisei men with non-Nikkei Bolivian wives took on roles that had previously belonged to the “feminine” domain in their family lives, such as parenting and schooling, after they moved from Colonia Okinawa to urban Japan. When Nomura Satoshi, whose wife was a non-Nikkei Bolivian, attended his daughter’s elementary school functions in Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa, he often felt overwhelmed by the number of women at the PTA meetings and at parent-teacher conferences (“I was stunned at the PTA assembly; they were all mothers! There were literally no fathers at all!”). Although his daughter didn’t suffer from serious bullying at her school, he said, she still struggled to make friends with her classmates. When she had trouble, it was he, not his wife, who had to take measures to help her. He described his efforts to help his daughter: We went [to Hiratsuka] in January, and [my children] hadn’t gone to preschool or kindergarten over there, so they had no friends at all. They, of course, didn’t understand the [Japanese] language, either. [My daughter] is not an outgoing type, so she didn’t go out and mingle with others. . . . Soon she started to say, “My head hurts.” For the first six months, or a year or so, she was always like that. So I took her to T University [hospital] to see a doctor and received some medicine. . . . Then, the doctor said to us, “[Your daughter’s headache] was caused by [psychological] stress.” . . . So, after I accompanied her to all her sessions with the doctor during the first year, the number of visits [to the doctor] finally began to decrease. He had to deal with his daughter’s emotional and physical troubles, while his non-Nikkei Bolivian wife struggled with her own adjustment in a foreign


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land. She took a few different part-time jobs at supermarkets and other retail stores in the span of two years, but she had difficulty finding stable employment. Given an extremely tight job market across various industries in Japan, Mr. Nomura believed that his wife’s inability to find and retain jobs had less to do with her “foreigner” status and lack of fluency in Japanese than the fact that she had two young children, which made it difficult for her to work flexible hours. Mr. Nomura recalled his wife’s problems: While she was working at a store, when she heard difficult [Japanese] expressions, like “storewide inventory count” [tanaoroshi], she called my cell phone and asked me what they meant. . . . She was rejected at some job interviews not when they found out that she was gaijin, but after they asked her, “Do you have children?” . . . It was so stressful for my wife when she didn’t have a job, because she would have to stay home all the time. It was so different [from being at home in Colonia Okinawa]. If she was at home here, she could go outside and take care of the garden and do other things, but in Japan, our apartment only had a kitchen, a room, and a closet [so she had few household chores to do]. In addition to child rearing and his daughter’s schooling, Mr. Nomura had to help his wife with household labor more than he had in Bolivia, because his wife was unable to read the rules regarding such matters as waste collection and recycling. He tried hard to follow the detailed city ordinances because he was aware that he and his “foreigner” wife would be under their Japanese Naichi-jin neighbors’ microscope. He said: “We were so careful at first. I mean, how was I supposed to know how to sort our trash? Here, we just burn it all [laugh]. It was much stricter over there. . . . There were some [Naichi-jin Japanese] neighbors who were not doing it the right way, but it was always gaijin who would be blamed. . . . So we couldn’t do anything bad.” He was, therefore, more aware of his family’s outsider status in Japanese society, which was embodied by his wife, than the endogamous Nisei dekasegi migrant couples were. He added, “Had I been there by myself, people might not have noticed that I am from South America. But I had my [non-Nikkei Bolivian] wife with me, and [his neighbors] saw our [South American] friends who were visiting us speaking Spanish. Then, they would realize [that I was a South American Nikkei-jin].” Intermarried Nisei dekasegi migrants had not only to renegotiate household duties in the drastically different living environment in urban Japan, but

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also to play their gender roles more flexibly and to be even more careful not to cause trouble in their neighborhoods than endogamous Okinawan-Bolivian couples in Japan. In so doing, the intermarried Nisei migrants also became more aware of their own ambiguous subject positions as cultural and linguistic mediators between their “foreigner” spouses and Naichi-jin Japanese, the same roles they had assumed back in Colonia Okinawa between Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian families and communities.

Dating and Intermarriage with Naichi-jin Japanese Most single Nisei who migrated to Japan dated or married other OkinawanBolivians or other South American Nikkei-jin from Brazil, Peru, or Argentina, while only a small number of them married or dated Japanese Naichi-jin partners. While it was slightly more common for Nisei women to meet and marry Naichi-jin Japanese men, the norm remained the same as for their male counterparts. The ways in which Nisei dekasegi migrant men and women described the differences between “Japanese” and “Bolivian/South American” men and women in explanations of their preferred partners in courtship and marriage and their often difficult relationships with Japanese Naichi-jin partners revealed how the racialized “Japanese” and “Bolivian/South American” differences were also sexually embodied. While Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, particularly Issei, projected a racialized image of a sexually carefree “Bolivian” culture and behaviors, Nisei migrant men and women in Japan presented a different set of sexualized images of “Japanese” culture and behaviors as cold, uptight, and awkward, reflecting the sense of local nonbelonging and transnational longing that Nisei dekasegi migrants felt in urban Japan. Among my seven or so Okinawan-Bolivian coworkers at T Denki (the number constantly fluctuated; see Chapter 2), only one was dating a Japanese Naichi-jin woman, who had once lived in the Dominican Republic as a JICA youth volunteer, while the rest were dating or married to women from Colonia Okinawa or other South American countries.9 Tomonaga Hiroshi, an unmarried Nisei, gave an explanation of why intermarriages between Nisei dekasegi migrants and Japanese Naichi-jin were infrequent: “Frankly, we [dekasegi migrants] don’t have much time to socialize. We are here to work, save money, and go back [to Bolivia]. So most of us work overtime and go home just to sleep. There aren’t many chances to meet [Japanese Naichi-jin women].” The lack of opportunities to meet Japanese Naichi-jin women was not the only reason there have been few cases of intermarriage. Nisei migrant men


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who had dated Japanese Naichi-jin women in the past told me that the stereotypes the women and their parents held about Bolivia scared them away. Yara Tomohito, a Nisei man in his late twenties who had worked in Chiba Prefecture in Japan for three years before returning to Colonia Okinawa, recalled his relationship with a Japanese Naichi-jin girlfriend. Before leaving Japan for Bolivia, he asked his girlfriend to come to Bolivia with him “just to see how things are” there, but she refused: “She thought that Bolivia is all [covered with] jungle. She didn’t know how it really is.” His experience was not unique among Nisei men who had dated Naichi-jin Japanese women during their dekasegi stints in Japan. Some male Nisei interviewees who had returned to Colonia Okinawa from Japan told me that breaking off a relationship with a Japanese girlfriend was one of the reasons they decided to leave Japan. If it was not the Japanese Naichi-jin women themselves, then their parents got in the way of their marriage or courtship with Nisei men. Takara Naoko (Naoko hereafter), one of the few Japanese Naichi-jin women who married Nisei men, met Takara Wagner (Wagner hereafter) when he was working in Japan as a dekasegi migrant. They faced strong opposition from Naoko’s parents, who, according to Naoko, “were afraid that their daughter would move to a faraway place for good” if she ended up marrying him. Naoko expected that she would eventually move to Bolivia with Wagner, but her parents were unhappy about their daughter’s decision. When the Takaras decided to move to Bolivia, Naoko’s parents were further distressed. Naoko and Wagner were still trying to talk Naoko’s parents into visiting Colonia Okinawa and hoping that “time [would] cure their [bitter] feelings” about their marriage. The possibility of relocating to Bolivia, a country viewed as being backward that is also thousands of miles away from their family and friends in Japan, discouraged Naichi-jin Japanese from marrying Nisei dekasegi migrants. Japanese Naichi-jin women and their parents were not the only ones who were reluctant to date and marry Okinawan-Bolivians. Tokashiki Ken, my Nisei colleague at T Denki, was dating a Nisei woman whose father used to work at T Denki as an electrician. I asked him why Okinawan-Bolivians seemed to date or marry among themselves: suzuki: Why do you guys [Nisei dekasegi migrant men] all seem to date girls from Bolivia? I mean, you guys speak Japanese well, so I don’t think the [fluency in Japanese] language is a hang-up. tokashiki: Hmmm, I don’t know why. Most guys from Bolivia are dating South American women, like Brazilian. . . . Bolivian or Brazilian

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guys are not having any success picking up Japanese girls. suzuki: So, which do you prefer to date, Japanese [Nihonjin] or South American girls? tokashiki: I think . . . hmmm . . . compared with South Americans, Japanese girls seem too delicate [derikēto] to me. He didn’t elaborate on what exactly he meant by the “delicateness” that he saw in Japanese Naichi-jin women. Nevertheless, this image of Naichi-jin women seemed to be contrasted with what Mr. Tokashiki and other Nisei men at T Denki considered the easygoing personality and abundant sexual appeal of South American women, the stereotype that, ironically, was precisely what made many Issei in Colonia Okinawa view non-Nikkei Bolivian women as unsuitable marital partners for their Nisei sons. If the “delicateness” of Japanese Naichi-jin women partly reflected Nisei dekasegi migrant men’s sense of nonbelonging in urban Japan, the voluptuous and oversexualized body images of South American women were the main objects upon which they projected their sexualized transnational longing. At the T Denki office (President Tonoshiro’s apartment), there were a number of pictures of nude Brazilian (white or a white-black mixed race, referred to as mulatta) female models, color-photocopied from an imported Brazilian magazine, posted on the walls. Aniya Akira, a Nisei electrician in his early twenties, was often teased by his colleagues because whenever he saw a voluptuous woman with large hips on the sidewalk, he whistled and yelled at her, “¡Hoy, Brasilera!â•›” (Hello, Brazilian girl!) from the car’s window, without even knowing if she was Brazilian. Nisei dekasegi migrant men’s stereotyping of South American women as sensual and carefree, represented by their physical bodies, seemed to encourage the men to seek South American women instead of Japanese Naichi-jin women. In reality, though, the number of non-Nikkei South American immigrants in Japan remained significantly smaller than the number of South American Nikkei-jin dekasegi migrants. Nisei dekasegi migrant men, consequently, mostly dated and married South American Nikkei-jin women, even though they might or might not fit the men’s idealized body images of South American women. The men’s apparent obsession with the oversexualized bodies of South American women, then, was less a sign of the Nisei dekasegi migrant men’s carnal desire for these body figures than a reflection of their yearning for the casualness and affection in Bolivian (South American) society that the men believed they had left behind. While there were no reliable data available, I was often told by my Issei


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interviewees in Colonia Okinawa that more Nisei women married Naichi-jin Japanese men than Nisei men married Naichi-jin women. Sociologist Ikuno Eriko has suggested that this gender imbalance partly reflected the fact that it was typically during JICA-sponsored training programs, when Nisei and Japanese Naichi-jin studied and worked at vocational schools and on-the-job-training sites, that the courtship between Nisei and Naichi-jin Japanese started (2000, 301). Thanks to the aforementioned achievement gap between Nisei women and men in academics in general and in Japanese language skills in particular, more Nisei women than men were qualified for these training programs. Once the women moved to schools and other training institutions in Japan, these Nisei women from Colonia Okinawa studied and worked mostly alongside Japanese Naichi-jin, and with their excellent Japanese communication skills, they interacted daily with Japanese Naichi-jin men. Furthermore, intermarriages between Japanese Naichi-jin men and Nisei women were less likely to be opposed by the parents on either side than those between Nisei men and Japanese Naichi-jin women. The parents of Naichi-jin men assumed that their sons would continue to live in Japan after marriage, and the Issei parents of the Nisei women surmised that their daughters would be more financially secure if they continued to live in Japan with their Naichi-jin husbands than if they relocated to Colonia Okinawa with their husbands, who would have a hard time establishing a livelihood in rural Bolivia. Despite these differences, though, the vast majority of Nisei dekasegi migrant women in Japan socialized only with other Okinawan-Bolivians and South American Nikkei-jin, and preferred Okinawan-Bolivian men to Japanese Naichi-jin men as boyfriends and husbands. Tsujimoto Masahiro (1998b), who interviewed several Nisei women migrants in Japan, found that those women, like their male counterparts, found Japanese Naichi-jin of the opposite sex unapproachable and “cold.” One of his interviewees, who married an OkinawanBolivian man, felt that she could never completely pass as Japanese and was “exposed” (barechaimasu) as a foreigner (gaikokujin) by a Japanese Naichi-jin once she formed a close relationship with him (ibid., 7). Another female interviewee who lived in Japan (her marital status was not revealed) told Tsujimoto that she thought “the way Japanese men [Nihon no dansei] treat women is a little lousy [chotto hetakuso],” unlike Bolivian men, whom she considered “very kind” (totemo shinsetsu) (ibid., 8). Although it was unclear whether by “Bolivian men” she meant Nikkei/Okinawan-Bolivians or non-Nikkei Bolivians, it was apparent that she viewed men from Bolivia and South America as possessing more desirable qualities for courtship than Japanese Naichi-jin men. These

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stereotypes of unkind and awkward Japanese Naichi-jin men in contrast with kind and affectionate Bolivian men prevented Nisei migrant women from dating or marrying Japanese Naichi-jin men during their dekasegi stints in Japan. These examples of mutual stereotyping of Japanese Naichi-jin and Bolivians (South Americans) suggest that the intimate domestic sphere of courtship and marriage was a critical site in which Nisei dekasegi migrant men’s and women’s sexual and emotional characteristics were defined and interpreted vis-à-vis those of Japanese Naichi-jin men and women. These sexualized stereotypes, mutually projected upon Nisei migrants and Naichi-jin Japanese, reflected Nisei’s ambivalent sense of belonging in Japan and Bolivia (and South America in general). Like Nisei’s intermarriage with non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, which remained controversial within the Okinawan-Bolivian community, Nisei dekasegi migrants’ intermarriage with and courtship of Japanese Naichi-jin often created a sensitive situation for Nisei and their families in Colonia Okinawa. In the migrants’ efforts to deal with these difficult situations, Nisei dekasegi migrants were forced to face their own ambiguous subject positions suspended between Japan and Bolivia.

Change and Lack of Change after Dekasegi After undergoing significant changes in gender roles and responsibilities in and outside individual households through dekasegi in urban Japan, Nisei men and women went back to Colonia Okinawa. Although there seemed to be little lasting change in the gender regimes of Colonia Okinawa after many Nisei men and women returned from Japan, some, particularly Issei fathers of Nisei daughters who had returned from urban Japan, were perplexed, if not disturbed, by the changes they saw in their daughters. To them, the Nisei women returnees from Japan appeared to have become too materialistic and careeroriented after their dekasegi experiences. When I asked Maeda Susumu, an elderly Issei father of three Nisei daughters, why many Nisei women seemed to like living in urban Japan while their husbands seemed eager to come back to Colonia Okinawa, his answer was: “Women prefer a more extravagant lifestyle than what the Colonia can offer.” Some of the other Issei men also complained that “today’s young mothers” (i.e., Nisei women) had become lazy after tasting the conveniences of urban life in Japan. Some Issei fathers were seriously concerned about their Nisei daughters’ changed lifestyles and attitudes. Tonoshiro Yoshio, whose Nisei daughter had recently returned from Japan, complained that she was not yet married at the


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age of twenty-nine, which he considered too old for a woman to remain single. After working in a computer manufacturing factory in Kawasaki City for ten years, she returned to Bolivia and started a wholesale business in Santa Cruz de la Sierra with the money she had saved in Japan. Mr. Tonoshiro said with a sigh: “I am urging her, ‘You are already twenty-nine years old. It’s about time to get married.’ But she told me that many of her friends in Japan were single after thirty. She says, ‘So I am still a joven [youngster].’ . . . Besides, she had never drunk alcohol before she had gone to Japan, but now that she has been totally Japanized [Nihon-ka], she drinks a lot.” As I have portrayed with regard to festive occasions in Colonia Okinawa, in which men dined and drank with the guests of honor, drinking was regarded among Okinawan-Bolivians as a man’s, but not a woman’s, habit. Mr. Tonoshiro thought that his daughter’s newly acquired drinking habit was yet another bad outcome of his Nisei daughter’s dekasegi in urban Japan. Nisei dekasegi migrant couples in urban Japan had to alter the strictly gendered divisions of household labor, because both husband and wife had to work to save money and cover the increased cost of living in the city. These experiences, however, did not seem to enable the Nisei dekasegi returnees to challenge and transform the public, communal, and domestic gender regimes in Colonia Okinawa, owing to its stagnant paid labor market and the strong hold of communal norms. There were, nonetheless, some signs of change. Traditionally, the New Year’s festivities, beginning on New Year’s Day and lasting three days, had been extravagant in Colonia Okinawa. Women in each household had to cook a variety of dishes and provide abundant liquor for the visiting guests, mostly young men, who went from house to house in the community. Although the occasions were jovial and regarded as important annual rites, many Nisei women had long complained about the amount of work the festivities entailed. Onaga Tokiko, a Nisei woman, told me: “It is too much work for women! The guests come and go incessantly and randomly, so women have to serve the food on the table, then put it away, only to put it on the table again before long for the next visitor.” When I was conducting field research from 2000 to 2001, the 2001 New Year in Colonia Uno was celebrated at the newly completed gymnasium next to the Nichibo Kyōkai headquarters, where Okinawan-Bolivian families gathered for lunch and dinner. While the women still had to prepare a large amount of food in the headquarters’ kitchen, they were also able to celebrate New Year’s Day by enjoying the food, chatting with their friends, and playing volleyball or cheering at futsal (floor soccer) games that were also played at the gymnasium.

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The official explanation given for this change was that the community wantedÂ� to celebrate the completion of the new gymnasium, but it also reportedly resulted from a considerable number of informal requests from Colonia Uno residents, especially Nisei women, for Nichibo Kyōkai to host a communitywide event so that the financial burden on each household and the amount of labor the women had to put into the festivities would be reduced.10 This change might seem insignificant within the larger scheme of public, communal, and domestic gender regimes in Colonia Okinawa, but it might be an example of the subtle transformations in Okinawan-Bolivian communities initiated by the drastic changes in gender roles and status that a large number of Nisei men and women had undergone while transmigrating between rural Bolivia and urban Japan. Okinawan-Bolivians’ gendered subject positions in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan were inevitably linked to their unique class and ethnic formations in each location. Okinawan-Bolivian women’s roles and status were defined by the everyday division of labor in public spheres, where women’s functions and positions were defined in relation to those of Okinawan-Bolivian men and non-Nikkei Bolivians. Once Nisei couples moved to Japan, the gendered divisions of labor in public spheres were radically challenged. The women’s urgent need to earn and save money as dekasegi migrants and Nisei women’s generally superior command of Japanese pushed the women into the paid labor market and enabled them to make a significant financial contribution to their households, which strengthened the women’s positions vis-à-vis their husbands. Okinawan-Bolivian women’s roles and status in communal spheres, semipublic social domains yet defined by neither financial reward nor official decision-making power, also differed between Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan, because the nature of the community itself changed drastically. In Colonia Okinawa, where communal events were considered to be extremely important for community members, women had to donate a significantly larger amount of labor than men, and in so doing, the women tried to prove their value within the community to the male leaders. Once the women moved to Japan, in contrast, there was neither a sense of coherent community among Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants nor regularly organized large-scale communal events. Furthermore, unlike in Colonia Okinawa, Nisei dekasegi migrant women made significant contributions to their households’ income, so they had little need to demonstrate their importance to their male counterparts by providing unpaid labor for communal occasions. Consequently, Nisei migrant women in Japan,


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like men, were involved in small-scale and spontaneous leisure activities as casual participants along with their family members, relatives, and friends. The roles and status of Okinawan-Bolivian women within individual households were also differently defined in the two locales. In Colonia Okinawa, although household chores were primarily women’s responsibility, Okinawan-Bolivian women also took advantage of their ethnic and class privilege by outsourcing some of their tasks to non-Nikkei Bolivian women of lower socioeconomic status. By introducing the larger Colonia Okinawa community’s ethnic and class hierarchy into their private households and by enforcing spatial separation and unspoken codes of deference between the non-Nikkei Bolivian domestics and themselves, Okinawan-Bolivian women defined their status and performed their roles and status apart from those of non-Nikkei Bolivian women. Living in Colonia Okinawa, where ethnic and class divisions influenced many facets of the community and individual lives, households with Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian spouses faced difficulties. Okinawan-Bolivian spouses often felt compelled to protect their Okinawan-Bolivian spouses, upon whom various stereotypes, including those about sexual morality, were projected by other Okinawan-Bolivians and to prove that they, too, belonged to the same Okinawan-Bolivian community. After Nisei families moved to Japan for dekasegi, urban amenities significantly lessened the amount of the women’s domestic labor and the gendered division of labor within households. Among these Nisei dekasegi migrants, intermarried Nisei men who moved to Japan with non-Nikkei Bolivian wives and mixed-heritage children frequently had to take on domestic tasks, such as dealing with neighbors’ complaints and meeting their children’s healthcare and educational needs, which had been primarily their wives’ duties in Colonia Okinawa. These men also strongly felt their families’ profound Otherness within Japanese society, because the men, even as outsiders themselves, were often forced to play the role of a linguistic and cultural interpreter for their nonNikkei Bolivian spouses and mixed-heritage children. Nisei dekasegi migrants’ often unsuccessful, and always difficult, intermarriages with and courtships of Japanese Naichi-jin revealed various gendered and sexualized stereotypes mutually projected onto Japanese Naichi-jin and Bolivians (and South Americans in general), through which Nisei dekasegi migrants located their own ambiguous subject positions within Japanese society. The sense of alienation in a foreign land and the yearning for the idealized Bolivian home that many Nisei dekasegi migrants felt while living in Japan were projected onto the stereotypes of sensual and affectionate Bolivians/South Americans and sexually and

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emotionallyÂ� reclusive Japanese Naichi-jin. In the eyes of the Nisei migrants, these perceived gendered and sexualized differences between the OkinawanBolivian Selves and their Japanese Naichi-jin Others were “natural” evidence of their belonging in Colonia Okinawa and nonbelonging in urban Japan. Okinawan-Bolivian women’s ethnic and class privilege as Nikkei and disadvantage as women in Colonia Okinawa positioned them in the public sphere as being inferior to Okinawan-Bolivian men but superior to non-Nikkei Bolivians and in the domestic sphere as being more sexually responsible individuals than non-Nikkei Bolivians. In urban Japan, Okinawan-Bolivian migrant women and men, both as blue-collar laborers, were granted equal status in the public sphere, which prompted married Okinawan-Bolivians to assume more equal roles and responsibilities within the domestic sphere of their households. The far-reaching changes in gender roles and status that Okinawan-Bolivians underwent through dekasegi migration to urban Japan, however, appeared to have minimum impact on gender relations in Colonia Okinawa at large when migrants returned from Japan. The overwhelming communal ethos and drastically different labor market in rural Bolivia limited the scale of the changes. With generational transitions from elderly Issei to younger Nisei and their Sansei children, many of whom have lived in urban Japan at some point in their lives, however, there may be more profound changes in Okinawan-Bolivians’ gender roles and status formations in Colonia Okinawa’s near future.

[ conclusion ]

Embodiment of Local Belonging

By portraying various situations faced by Okinawan-Bolivians at workplaces, homes, and schools in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan, I have attempted to highlight the fluid and situational senses of belonging they experienced in the places they lived and worked. It is tempting to explain away their sense of entitlement in Colonia Okinawa and of disenfranchisement in urban Japan, as well as in the larger Bolivian society, as either a matter of “cultural” adjustment and maladjustment, or an implication of their higher and lower class statuses in these locations. Okinawan-Bolivians’ complicated subject positions as an ethnic minority group in Bolivia and as nonnative “nationals” in Japan make it difficult to reduce their transnational subject formation processes to either a cultural or a class phenomenon. To capture more vividly the intersection of the cultural and class transformations that Okinawan-Bolivians underwent, I directed my attention to the ways in which they explained these transformations through terms and images of overgeneralized and naturalized, in short, racialized, notions of “Japanese,” “Okinawan,” and “Bolivian” psychological characteristics and behavioral patterns. Amidst changing socioeconomic and cultural environments, OkinawanBolivians were identified by their Others and identified themselves as embodying manifestations of certain racialized cultures in each of the places they lived. Allegedly inherent (“true”) attributes of non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, “white” power elites in urban Bolivia, Naichi-jin Japanese in Yokohama, and Okinawans in diaspora were perceived through their habitual actions and 183

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physical appearance in the eyes of Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others in Bolivia and Japan. These narratives and performances of racialization provided Okinawan-Bolivians with an interpretive tool to make sense of the complex and often contradictory subject positions that they occupied in the transnational social field they lived and worked in. Racialized “Japanese,” “Bolivian (South American),” and “Okinawan” psychological and behavioral characteristics also helped Okinawan-Bolivians to explicate the shifting sense of belonging they felt in different local environments, such as rural Bolivia and urban Japan. Their power and control over non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, for instance, were understood as a “natural” manifestation of their Japanese national character, while their lack of power and control in the larger Bolivian society was seen as a consequence of having Japanese ancestry. Okinawan-Bolivians also attributed their success as large-scale farmers in Bolivia to their Okinawan heritage, with a characteristically physical and competitive nature that allegedly distinguished Okinawan-Bolivians from Japanese Naichi-jin. Similarly, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in urban Japan interpreted and performed their subject positions in relation to racialized images of Naichi-jin Japanese, other South American Nikkei-jin immigrants, and Bolivians/South Americans in general. The fluctuating values and competing meanings of their racialized Selves within different surroundings clarified, in Okinawan-Bolivians’ view, the different degrees and forms of affinity Okinawan-Bolivians felt with rural Bolivia, urban Bolivia, and urban Japan. The racialized belonging of Okinawan-Bolivians portrayed in this study, characterized by its ambiguity and fluidity, is a historical product of the modern Okinawan diaspora. Their peculiar subject positions as colonial subjects under imperial Japan and nationless subjects under United States military rule were narrated through generalized and naturalized cultural differences from Japanese Naichi-jin. The Japanese government’s designation of Okinawans as incomplete (and, therefore, suspect) imperial subjects and the United States government’s suspicion of Okinawans as potential communists and troublemakers justified these governments’ treatment of Okinawans as partially legitimate and, therefore, exploitable subjects. Okinawan immigration to Bolivia before World War II and during the 1950s and 1960s, against these historical backdrops, were an attempt to overcome the profound uncertainty imposed on Okinawans and to counteract exclusion from the economic, political, and cultural boundaries of Japanese or U.S. citizenship. Okinawans’ racialized yet ambiguous belonging to Japan and the United States, in short, was a key factor in the formation of the Okinawan diasporic communities in Bolivia.

EMBODIMENT OF LOCAL BELONGING

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Local demographic and economic changes in Santa Cruz Prefecture from the 1950s to the 1980s created a drastically different social backdrop against which Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject positions were defined and redefined. Their changing socioeconomic status from small-scale, self-sufficient farmers to an affluent ruling class in rural Santa Cruz as large-scale, capital-intensive, commercial farm owners was also a process of their subject positioning as “Japanese” vis-à-vis non-Nikkei Bolivians (camba and kolla) in Colonia Okinawa, many of whom became a subordinate class of farm laborers employed by Okinawan-Bolivians. Through the process of becoming a powerful upper class in rural Bolivia, in other words, Okinawan-Bolivians also became as much the embodiment of racialized “Japanese” national subjects as “Okinawan” diasporic subjects. The dekasegi migration from Colonia Okinawa to urban Japan beginning in the 1980s added a crucial dimension to the Okinawan-Bolivians’ racialized belonging in multiple locales: transnationalization. The subject positions of Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa were no longer a product of exclusively local processes that defined themselves along the dichotomy between racialized Bolivianness and Japaneseness embodied by Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others. Multiple group categories of Others in Colonia Okinawa, urban Bolivia, and Japan were invested with various stereotypes about the groups’ psychological, behavioral, and physical characteristics, which provided Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others with tautological explanations for economic disparities and social segregation among these groups. In my ethnographic portrayals of Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa and Yokohama in several critical social sites of subject-making, such as workplaces, schools, and family and gender relations, I have attempted to illuminate the different “citizenship” processes (i.e., socioeconomic and cultural inclusion in and exclusion from local communities) that Okinawan-Bolivians underwent. The drastically different socioeconomic classes they occupied in the two places manifested differently in their everyday practices. In farm fields, for instance, Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners represented and performed their power over non-Nikkei Bolivian farm laborers through a strict division of labor and various gestures of paternalism, while attributing the power differentials between them to the “natural” disparity between the “Bolivian” and “Japanese” national characters, bolstering the symbolic value of their racialized transnationality. In the larger Bolivian society, where “domestic” personal and family connections were valued more than the real or imagined transnationality of the group, however, the Japanese-state-sponsored power and privilege that Okinawan-Bolivians enjoyed in rural Bolivia were no longer helpful for them

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to achieve individual success. Struggling to succeed academically in schools and universities, and to compete for scarce professional jobs in Bolivian cities, Okinawan-Bolivians viewed their “Japanese” background as a detriment, not an advantage. Excluded from affluent and politically connected “white” Bolivians, who possessed abundant social and cultural capital that was valued in urban Bolivia, the same embodied transnationality of Okinawan-Bolivians came to symbolize deficiency in cultural and social capital. Once moved to urban Japan, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants, most of whom were Nisei, were confronted with different values of their racialized “Japanese,” “Bolivian/South American,” and “Okinawan” characteristics as bluecollar manual laborers. As electricians and assembly line workers, the dekasegi migrants were regarded by their Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors as the embodiment of racialized “South American” characteristics, shown through the migrants’ behavior and demeanor, such as their buoyant Spanish speech and easygoing attitudes. The dekasegi migrants, too, saw their Japanese Naichi-jin coworkers and superiors in a highly racialized light; to them, “Japanese people” were either workaholics or lazy, depending on the situations the migrants encountered during their lives in Japan. Meanwhile, Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants in Japan distinguished themselves from other South American Nikkei-jin dekasegi migrants by proclaiming Okinawan-Bolivians’ superior linguistic and cultural familiarity with Japan, promoting their embodied values as workers. Racialized “Okinawan” characteristics, such as accented Japanese speech and an allegedly darker skin complexion, helped Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants mediate the seemingly impermeable boundaries between racialized “Japanese” and “Bolivian” national cultures and characters. As Okinawans have long been racialized as “not quite” authentic Japanese subjects by Japanese Naichi-jin, many dekasegi migrants from Colonia Okinawa managed to be included, if marginally, in the racialized domain of “Japanese” cultural boundaries by passing as “domestic” Okinawans. These racialized and racializing interpretations and actions by Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi migrants and their Others in Japan indicate that their embodied transnationality, which benefited Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, amounted to little socioeconomic or symbolic value for them in Japan. No matter how the differences among Okinawan-Bolivians, Naichi-jin Japanese, other South American Nikkei-jin migrants, and domestic Okinawans were racialized in their narratives and performances, therefore, Okinawan-Bolivians highlighted their uneasy and ambiguous sense of belonging in Japan.


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Schools and related educational institutions in Colonia Okinawa were other critical sites in which racialized belonging of Okinawan-Bolivians was formulated. The official objectives of institutions such as the schools in Colonia Okinawa were to make Nisei and Sansei children and youth “good” Nikkei Bolivians, who were equipped with essentialized and naturalized “Japanese” moral characters and mannerisms, such as self-discipline and a strong work ethic, along with a distinct awareness of their Okinawan heritage. In an effort to instill these qualities in children, racialized images of “Japanese/Nikkei,” “Bolivians,” and “Okinawans” were articulated and performed in various settings. Because of the many different groups involved in this process of shaping “good” Nikkei and Okinawan diasporic subjects, such as non-Nikkei Bolivian students and teachers, Naichi-jin Japanese teachers, and Okinawan teachers, as well as Okinawan-Bolivian teachers and parents, these racialized images and ideals were often contradictory and contested. These educational interventions into shaping “good” Nikkei and Okinawan diasporic subjects often resulted in forming Nisei and Sansei children and youth as transnational subjects who could achieve ambiguous and often limited socioeconomic success and a sense of belonging in either Japan or Bolivia. The racialized “Japanese” (and, to a lesser extent, “Okinawan”) behaviors and mannerisms the children were expected to learn and embody helped them gain direct and indirect benefit within Colonia Okinawa but did not help them thrive, socially or economically outside of it. Gender relations, both among Okinawan-Bolivians and between Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others in Bolivia and Japan, were also a key factor in Okinawan-Bolivians’ racialized belonging in the different places they lived. Okinawan-Bolivian women’s roles and status in the paid labor market, community events, and individual households in Colonia Okinawa were defined as those occupied neither by Okinawan-Bolivian men nor by non-Nikkei Bolivians. Women were encouraged to work as administrative assistants at major community institutions, where they worked under the male leadership and supervised non-Nikkei Bolivian employees. In numerous communal events in Colonia Okinawa, women arguably provided more labor than their male counterparts to prepare for the events, but the women remained in the background, cooking meals and cleaning dishes for the male hosts and guests at the festivities. The women’s unpaid labor contribution to these important community events, however, was a crucial means by which women could make their importance known to community leaders, thereby increasing the women’s power vis-à-vis their male counterparts in the community. Domestically, Okinawan-Bolivian

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women’s roles and status were defined in relation not only to their husbands, who were in charge of income-generating work (for many, farm management), but also, frequently, to their non-Nikkei Bolivian domestic workers, who were hired by Okinawan-Bolivians to take care of cleaning and laundry. Separated from each other through spatial arrangement and through a tacit code of deference, Okinawan-Bolivian women defined their positions by forming gendered and class/ethnic boundaries within their households. During dekasegi in Japan, despite their struggles as low-wage laborers, Okinawan-Bolivian women felt some sense of empowerment from their active participation in the paid labor market, while men suffered a decline in their privileged roles and status as the sole income earners. The sense of alienation that both male and female dekasegi migrants felt in urban Japan owing to the subtle and overt prejudice they faced in their daily lives was narrated in their racialized stereotypes of Japanese Naichi-jin’s sexual undesirability and South Americans’ desirability as potential lovers and spouses. While dekasegi migrant men projected racialized images of oversexualized Bolivian/South American women, in contrast with what they saw as delicate and uptight Japanese Naichi-jin women, dekasegi migrant women saw Japanese Naichi-jin men as being uncaring and awkward, contrasted with warm and suave Bolivian/South American men. Against the backdrop of highly polarized ethnic and class relations in Colonia Okinawa and of socially and culturally alienating environments for dekasegi migrant workers in urban Japan, the small number of intermarried Okinawan-Bolivian couples and their children struggled to locate roles and status within individual households. In Colonia Okinawa, they had to fight sexualized stereotyping of non-Nikkei Bolivians as being promiscuous, irresponsible, and materialistic, projected upon their spouses by other Okinawan-Bolivians, to gain the community’s acceptance. Meanwhile, in urban Japan, couples struggled to compensate for the physical, cultural, and linguistic “foreignness” that their non-Nikkei Bolivian spouses and mixed-heritage children represented in the eyes of Japanese Naichi-jin residents. The couples had no choice but to stretch the boundaries of the gender roles previously defined back in Colonia Okinawa; men often helped their wives deal with their children’s troubles at school and comply with city ordinances and neighborhood norms, while women translated for their husbands and their Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors at their workplaces. The racialized and sexualized boundaries between Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others in different settings, thus, were not fixed but instead were actively worked and reworked. As both an ethnographic account of the localized experiences of


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transnationalÂ�Okinawan-Bolivians who underwent drastic class transitions between Bolivia and Japan and an attempt to understand the contradictory processes of forming a sense of belonging in a transnational social field, this book has tried to present a perspective on why transnational subjects achieve only partial and often ambivalent belonging, and why they continue to be portrayed and to portray themselves as the physical embodiment of essentialized and naturalized national cultures and characters in the places they live. I believe my inquiries into the racialized belonging of transnational subjects in their quest to accumulate cultural, social, and economic capital in a global arena has demonstrated the paradoxes of individual agency within a local-global nexus. Racialized demeanors, behaviors, and physiques of transnational subjects function as reasons for and indications of the subjects’ socioeconomic power and powerlessness, and cultural belonging and alienation within a particular local setting. Thus, racialized belonging as a social process is a mechanism in which transnational subjects’ socioeconomic power (or lack thereof ) is localized and visualized in and through narration of their bodily and psychological features and practices.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Any effort to refer to Okinawa in relation to the rest of Japan proves to be tenuous. “Ryūkyū” is more commonly used than “Okinawa” when signifying geographic and cultural phenomena before the forced annexation of the islands by the Japanese government in the late nineteenth century (discussed in Chapter 1). Because “Ryūkyū” was preferred by the U.S. military administration during the postwar occupation in their effort to justify the legal separation of the islands from the rest of Japan, many Okinawans today seem uncomfortable with the term with reference to their homeland (Molasky 2003, 186). Many Okinawans resort to Okinawan dialectic terms, Uchināguchi for the Okinawan language and Uchinanchu (or Uchinā, Uchinānchu) for Okinawan people, as opposed to Yamatoguchi for “standard” Japanese and Yamato or Yamatonchu for the people of mainland Japan. In this book I use Naichi, literally meaning “inner land,” the nondialect term commonly used by Okinawans, to refer to the four major islands of Japan. Although the term is often used to refer to the residents of Naichi (Toyama and Ikeda 1981), I use the term Naichi-jin, “people of Naichi,” to refer to the Naichi residents of Japan in order to distinguish the geographic areas and demographic groups. 2. Dekasegi literally means one who “goes out” to earn money, with the intention of returning home in the future. The term originally referred 191

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to workers from rural areas of Japan who domestically migrate to cities in search of work (Tsuda 2003, xii). See Tsujimoto 1999 for a comprehensive study of the dekasegi migration of Okinawan-Bolivians from Colonia Okinawa to Japan. 3. There are several studies on the concept of race in Japanese society (Russell 1991; Wagatsuma 1967; Wagatsuma and De Vos 1966; Takezawa 2005), in addition to the literature on the “race” concept in relation to modern Japan’s nationalism and colonialism (Oguma 1995, 1998; Siddle 1996; Weiner 1997) and to the neonationalism, or “cultural nationalism,” of Japan today (Yoshino 1992; Kitada 2005; Oguma 2002). The studies of South American Nikkei-jin dekasegi migrants, however, have been surprisingly reluctant to engage these discussions. Some have viewed Nikkei-jin as an “ethnic minority” in Japan (Tsuda 1998; Yamanaka 1993, 1996), while others have examined Nikkei-jin’s acculturation into Japanese society (Adachi 2004; Lesser 2003; Linger 2001; Roth 2002; Takenaka 1999; Tsuda 1998, 1999, 2003). Some have addressed racialization of Nikkei-jin in South America (Adachi 2004; Lesser 1999; Takenaka 2004; Tsuda 2003). Among them, Nobuko Adachi’s “diasporic racialization,” which she defines as the “racialization as ‘strangers’ by the mainstream societies of both host and ancestor nations” (Adachi 2004, 71), is similar to what I propose here as racialized belonging, though for Okinawan-Bolivians, the nation-states of Japan and Bolivia never self-evidently represented their “host and ancestor nations.” In addition, Adachi neither offers clear definitions of race and racialization nor attends to local (subnational) diversity and nuance of race and racialization. 4. Tsuda argues that the “ethnic prejudice” that Brazilian Nikkei-jin experience in Japan was due to their cultural ambiguity within Japanese society. Drawing on Mary Douglas’ famous thesis on purity and danger, he contends that Brazilian Nikkei-jin are “polluted” subjects because they violate the symbolic boundary in Japanese society between insidepurity and outside-impurity by being “liminal beings,” simultaneously of Japanese descent and culturally foreign (Douglas 1966; Turner 1969; Tsuda 2003, 131–135). Tsuda admits, however, the insider-purity and outsider-impurity binary cannot fully account for the differences in Japanese attitudes toward Japanese-Brazilians versus, say, JapaneseCanadians (Tsuda 2003, 134). 5. Anthropologists have steadily moved away from the race concept duringÂ�

Notes to Pages 6 –7

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the twentieth century. While Franz Boas and his students discredited eugenics as “bad science” and race as an unscientific category during the first half of the twentieth century, as Roger Sanjek pointed out, they also helped create an intellectual climate among cultural anthropologists in which race is “nonexistent” and “a dangerous fallacy” (Sanjek 1994, 6–7). Another, but related, legacy of Boasian anthropology is the separation of culture from race, effectively establishing race as given, unchangeable, and biological (Visweswaran 1998, 72). The demise of the race concept in cultural anthropology was accelerated by the emergence of ethnicity studies in the 1960s. Instead of physiological characteristics, ethnicity is socially defined by a community of language, religion, social institutions, and other cultural traits (Montagu 1962; van den Berghe 1967). As anthropological studies of “cultural” ethnicity have flourished since the 1970s (Banton 1983; Barth 1969; Cohen 1974; DeVos 1975; Isaacs 1975; Keyes 1981; Light 1981; Nash 1989; Waters 1990), the ideological separation between race as biology and ethnicity as culture was widened, and, in some cases, race was relegated to a subcategory of ethnicity as only one visible “marker” for ethnicity (Mukhopadhyay and Moses 1997, 523). As a result, as many concerned anthropologists have argued, the anthropology of ethnicity has tended to underestimate the continuing salience of race in forms of physical appearance in the real world and to “disembody” their concrete material conditions (Alonso 1994; Harrison 1995; Shanklin 1994; Williams 1989). 6. Paul Gilroy proposes the concept of “ethnic absolutism” to explicate the relationship between race and culture in Britain, where the “confluence of ‘race,’ nationality, and culture” is a driving force for xenophobia (Gilroy 1990, 114). He defines ethnic absolutism as “a reductive, essentialist understanding of ethnic and national difference which operates through an absolute sense of culture so powerful that it is capable of separating people off from each other and diverting them into social and historical locations that are understood to be mutually impermeable and incommensurable” (ibid., 115). 7. Numerous studies of ethnic groups in the United States have demonstrated how these groups, who had previously been considered nonwhite, came to identify themselves and be perceived as members of the “white” race through upward socioeconomic mobility and social dissociation from African-Americans (Brodkin 1998; Ignatiev 1995; Jacobson 1998; Loewen 1988).

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Notes to Pages 7– 9

8. Sociologists Paul Willis (1977) and Dick Hebdige (1979), for instance, theorized working-class youth subcultures as both a symbolic expression and a formative process of their class-defined life situations. 9. Numerous studies of ethnic groups of non-European descent have shown the symbolic racial whitening and blackening processes they experienced in the United States (Koshy 2001; Ong 1996; Warren and Twine 1997; Winant 1994), while others have exposed the gap between socially assigned “face values” of racial whiteness and the actual pale skin color and/or European heritage (Frankenberg 1993; Hartigan 1999; McClintock 1995). 10. Along with Takezawa (2005), Cornell and Hartmann (1998, 38) are vocal critics of the parochial (i.e., Eurocentric and North American–centric) paradigm of race concepts, advocating a truly global—not merely “comparative”—scope in theorizing race. 11. Anthropological studies on ethnic and racial violence (Das 1990, 1995; Feldman 1991; Hayden 1996; Jeganathan 1998; Malkki 1995) demonstrate how acts of violence effectively identify, isolate, and exterminate Others from the Self and thereby produce the racialized Self and in-group intimacy by creating “persons out of what are otherwise diffuse, large-scale labels that have effects but no locations” (Appadurai 1998, 241). 12. While most previous studies of racial performances have examined theatrical presentations by professional artists and entertainers (Case et al. 1995; Muñoz 1999; Manalansan 2003), Urciuoli (1996), Fordham (1996), Hartigan (1999), and Ho (2002) ethnographically treated racializing performances in mundane everyday situations. 13. While Takezawa recognizes the importance of attending to the local nuances of race, she insists that “if none of us explores how to speak of race in the common language, and all of us instead are preoccupied with the differences” among local racial formations, “we could neither understand the historical significances of current racial phenomena in various parts of the world, nor predict their future implications” (Takezawa 2005, 11–12). 14. Renato Rosaldo has proposed the concept of cultural citizenship, defining it as “the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity, or native language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national community, without compromising one’s right to belong” in a nationstate (Rosaldo 1994, 57). Lisa Lowe, along with Stuart Hall (1996) and Evelyn Glenn (2002), highlights the state-capital alliance that prevents


15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

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particular subjects from belonging in a culturally defined national citizenry, arguing that a nation-state is at once “juridically legislated, territorially situated, and culturally embodied,” and it is through “the terrain of national culture” that the individual subject becomes a citizen (Lowe 1996, 2). Criticizing Marx’s notion of “abstract labor” in a market that underwrites the rights of an “abstract citizen” in a political state, Lowe argues that in a liberal capitalist state like the United States, nonwhites have never been “abstract” labor or citizens but have always been placed outside its national citizenry bound by race, language, and culture (Lowe 1996, 13). As will become apparent in the book, Okinawan-Bolivians’ subject position in Colonia Okinawa, Yokohama, and other locales cannot be simply categorized into either full belonging or nonbelonging. Rather, the book will portray the different modes and degrees of their social belonging. Lok Siu critiques Ong’s definition of citizenship for its underestimation of individual subjects’ agency in defining their cultural belonging in a nation-state (Siu 2002). As indicated by her discussion of “flexible citizenship,” Ong recognizes individual subjects as active participants in this process of citizenship. However, Ong, in the Foucauldian fashion, does not view individuals and structural forces as being at odds with each other; instead, they are considered as co-contributors in the process of subject-making. As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, I also view Okinawan-Bolivians as “subjects,” a fluid locus where multiple and often conflicting social relations intersect, rather than autonomous beings whose agency is formed independently from structural forces. When I conducted long-term fieldwork in 2000, I had lived in the United States for a total of six years as an undergraduate and a graduate student. Although it is beyond this book’s scope, Santa Cruz Prefecture is currently (2007) striving to gain greater political autonomy, even secession, from the La Paz national government. The movement has been led by the agricultural and industrial capitalists’ group called Nación Camba de Liberación (Camba Nation of Liberation) amidst criticism of the group’s overt and covert racial prejudice against the indigenous populations in the altiplano (Forero 2004, 2005).

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Notes to Pages 12–15

20. Some Issei were born during the 1930s and 1940s in the former overseas territories of imperial Japan, such as the South Pacific islands and Manchuria. I will discuss the colonial backgrounds of Issei further in the next chapter. 21. There are numerous studies and reports on the early Japanese and Okinawan immigration to Bení Prefecture before World War II, most in Japanese. For publications in English on Japanese and Okinawan immigration to Bolivia, see chapter 3 of Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas (Kikumura-Yano 2002), Tigner 1963, Amemiya 1999b, Hiraoka 1980, and Thompson 1968. For Japanese publications on the prewar Japanese and Okinawan immigrants in Bolivia, see Boribia Nihonjin 100-shūnen-shi Hensan Iinkai 2000, Nihonjin Boribia Ijū-shi Hensan Iinkai 1970, Ishikawa 1992, Kunimoto 2000, Ono 1970, and Otsuka 1992. For studies on postwar Japanese immigration to Bolivia in general, see Wakatsuki 1987. On Colonia San Juan de Yapacaní, Kunimoto’s 1986 study and the settlers’ own publications are available (San Fan Ijūchi Nyūshoku 30-nen Kinen Jigyō Suishin Iinkai 1986; San Fan 15-nenshi Hensan Iinkai 1971; San Fan Nichibo Kyōkai 1997). For overviews of Japanese-Bolivian communities in Bení, La Paz, and Bolivia in general, see Kunimoto 1984, 1989; Furuki 2000; Oshikawa 2000; and Shioiri 2000, all of which are in Japanese. 22. See my other writings (Suzuki 2006, 2007) for the symbolic currency of imagined or real “Japaneseness” within the social context of Colonia Okinawa. 23. I will discuss the female and male social domains in the community in Chapter 5. 24. Whether Okinawan is a dialect of Japanese or a linguistically distinct language has long been debated among scholars. Although the Okinawan language remains virtually incomprehensible to the mainlanders of Japan, most of the words used are the same (Molasky 2003, 165); it is the intonation and particular pronunciation of words that make the Okinawan language sound different from mainland Japanese. The major difference in pronunciation is the number of vowels used. In Japanese, there are five vowels: a, i, u, e, and o; in the Okinawan language, only three are used: a, i, and o. As a result, words are pronounced differently in the two languages (e.g., te [hand] in mainland Japanese is ti in Okinawan). In addition, many consonants used in the Okinawan language do not exist in modern Japanese, some verbs have a unique


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set of conjugations that differ from their mainland counterparts, and some Okinawan adjectives are not found today in mainland Japanese. The Okinawan language itself has a wide variety of dialects throughout the Ryūkyū Islands. The off-lying islands show the widest diversion from what has been considered “standard” Okinawan, which is used in the Shuri area of Okinawa Hontō Island (Barrell and Tanaka 1997, 135; Kerr 1958, xvii, 34). 25. According to a survey conducted in 1996, 66 percent of the Issei respondents said they were very confident in their listening comprehension of the Japanese language, while 56 percent considered themselves very competent speakers. As for Spanish, only 1 percent of the Issei respondents were confident in their listening competency in Spanish, and none considered themselves able to speak Spanish very well. In the same survey, 62 and 53 percent of the Nisei respondents were very confident in their listening comprehension and speaking abilities in Spanish, respectively, while only 28 and 21 percent expressed strong confidence in their listening comprehension and speaking abilities in Japanese. Nisei appeared to be more comfortable with the Okinawan language than with Japanese: 64 and 34 percent of the Nisei respondents were very confident in their listening comprehension and speaking abilities in Okinawan, respectively (Anbo et al. 1998, 241–243, 246). Differences in language use between Issei and Nisei in Colonia Okinawa and urban Japan and between men and women will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. Chapter 1: Modern Okinawan Transnationality 1. Yamawaki Chikako wrote about a similar anecdote regarding the dekasegi immigrants from Peru in Japan (1996, 204), where the majority of the Nikkei-jin population possesses Okinawan heritage. 2. It was common, for instance, for a merchant household to adopt a talented store clerk as a member of the household and to treat him and other family members alike. 3. Linda Angst argues that Okinawa has been represented as “a sacrificed or prostituted daughter” (2003, 152) within the Japanese family state. Analyzing the media portrayals of the Himeyuri Student Nurse Corps, groups of Okinawan female students who accompanied Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, and the rape of a schoolgirl

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by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, she argues that the male elites of Okinawa exploited the symbolic image of Okinawa as “an innocent maiden” who has been repeatedly violated by Americans (foreigners) in order to accuse the “father” of the Japanese family state, the Naichijins’ government, of failing to protect his daughter (Angst 2003). 4. This ambiguity of Okinawans as Japanese national subjects, it is believed, led to numerous tragic deaths of Okinawans during the Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II. Japanese Naichi-jin soldiers in Okinawa suspected Okinawans as potential spies and killed Okinawan civilians (Tomiyama 1995; Allen 2003), by direct execution and by means of what Norma Field calls “compulsory group suicide” by Okinawans themselves (Field 1993; see also Ota 1999). Many argue, and I agree, that Okinawans today still are not given the same political and economic rights within Japan. The prefecture of Okinawa remains home to 75 percent of the U.S. bases and the majority of U.S. forces in Japan, which occupy 20 percent of Okinawa’s Hontō Island. Per capita income was around 70 percent of the national average during the 1990s, and Okinawa’s unemployment rate has constantly been the highest among all prefectures (Hein and Selden 2003a, 5–6). For recent studies on the struggles of Okinawa against the Japanese government and the U.S. military, see the volumes edited by Chalmers Johnson (1999) and Laura Hein and Mark Selden (2003b). In recent work, Nomura Kōya (2005) also offers a compelling argument for “unconscious colonialism” by Japanese Naichi-jin that continues to victimize Okinawans. 5. Bhabha’s original formulation of colonial mimicry represents both the moments of grave predicament and of potential resistance for the colonized in the face of the colonizers. In the context of Okinawa under the Japanese imperial regime, however, it is problematic to highlight the resistive potential in Okinawans’ ambiguous subject positions. 6. The massive exodus of Okinawans to Japan proper took place in the 1920s, when the drop in sugar’s international price hit the monoculture agricultural economy of Okinawa hard. The resulting recession was called “Sotetsu Palm Hell” because Okinawans who suffered from famine reportedly opted to eat poisonous Sotetsu palm leaves. See Mukai 1992 and Tomiyama 1990 for the causes of the recession and subsequent Okinawan emigration to cities of mainland Japan, such as Osaka, Kawasaki, and Yokohama.


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7. Okinawan immigrants’ experiences in Hawai‘i during the early years offer an interesting case. Although Naichi-jin immigrants on the islands held a strong prejudice against Okinawans, the two groups also formed distinct and often segregated residential communities when they worked on the same plantation. Even after they left plantation farms and moved to urban areas, relatively segregated Okinawan communities maintained and nurtured many Okinawan customs (Miyasaki 1981). 8. In contrast, Yamawaki reports, in rural Nikkei-jin communities in Peru, where Okinawan immigrants vastly outnumbered their Naichijin counterparts, Okinawans neither organized a “Lifestyle Reform Movement” nor viewed the Naichi-jin lifestyle as the authentic “Japanese” ethnic heritage. Instead, the Okinawan language and food have come to represent “Japanese” ethnic heritages for all Japanese-Peruvians in these villages. 9. It was not until the 1970s, Mori writes, when cultural relativism began to influence Brazilian society and second- and third-generation Okinawan-Brazilians had achieved economic stability, that Okinawan-Brazilians began to reassert their Okinawan cultural uniqueness and revitalize their traditional arts, such as folk songs written in Uchināguchi, karate, and traditional dance (Mori 2003, 59). 10. The Okinawans’ effort to “become Japanese” through lifestyle reforms and discrimination against the local Others, however, had contradictory consequences. Tomiyama argues that the Okinawans, through self-inspection and erasure of embodied Okinawanness, inevitably identified themselves as the colonial Other, who could see themselves only through the eyes of their colonizers, the Japanese Naichi-jin. Moreover, through mimicking the Naichi-jin’s abuse of native Micronesians, Okinawans helped legitimize the overall colonial power hierarchy (Tomiyama 1997). 11. While there is no official record of the first Japanese immigrants to Bolivia, it is commonly believed that they were among the first 790 contract laborers sent by the Morioka Emigration Company (Morioka Shōkai)—which had been shipping contract workers to Hawai‘i from Japan—to British sugar plantations in coastal Peru in 1899 (Tigner 1963; Kunimoto 2000). Among those who fled the plantations in Peru were ninety-one men who entered the Bolivian Upper Amazon region across the Andes to work on rubber farms. The national border

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12.

13.

14.

15.


betweenÂ�Peru and Bolivia was not finalized until 1909, so it is doubtful that the early Japanese Naichi-jin and Okinawan immigrants realized that they actually had crossed the national border. Because of the prospering rubber industry, Riberalta attracted a number of foreigners. Germans, French, British, Turks, Greeks, and Japanese were among the immigrant population in the city during the 1910s (Kunimoto 2000, 118). Responding to a request by the government of the United States, Bolivia’s ally, the Bolivian government captured twenty-nine Japanese immigrants and sent them to internment camps in Crystal City, Texas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1943. The Bolivian government also seized the assets of Japanese immigrants and restricted their commercial activities as part of its cooperation effort with the United States. The freezing of assets by the government severely damaged the retail businesses of Japanese Naichi-jin and Okinawans until the end of World War II (Furuki 2000, 140). Among the twenty-nine internees, twenty-two chose to repatriate to Japan after the war, while seven returned to Bolivia. In 1999 the survivors of the internment received a letter of apology and US$5,000 from the United States government as compensation for the mistreatment (Manabe 2000). During the 1930s and 1940s, Okinawans in La Paz were largely successful retail business owners and professionals. It was reported that “the outstanding characteristic of [Okinawans’] occupation pattern [was] the dominance of urban business pursuits among inhabitants of the Altiplano” and that there had been virtually no discrimination against Okinawans by Bolivians (Tigner 1954, 484). In contrast, Okinawan and Naichi-jin communities in rural areas in the Upper Amazon region struggled to gain economic capital and social prestige. Responding to a Japanese researcher, one Nisei in Riberalta, who was not identified as either Naichi-jin or Okinawan, recalled that while a few Japanese in the area were affluent, local non-Nikkei Bolivians did not take the Japanese seriously because Japan at the time was dismissed as “only a small country in the margin of Asia” and often mistaken as “part of China” (Shioiri 2000, 168). Out of shame, some Issei tried to assimilate into Bolivian society by changing their family names to Spanishsounding ones and by refusing to teach Japanese to their children. In 1952 there were thirty-six Okinawan men in Riberalta of Bení Prefecture, among whom thirty-four were married to Bolivian women


16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

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(Kunimoto 2000, 30; Shioiri 2000, 164). Fifteen Okinawan men lived in Santa Cruz Prefecture, and all were married to Bolivian women. In contrast, among the eighteen Okinawan men who lived in La Paz, only five married Bolivian women (Tigner 1954, 471, 485; Furuki 2000, 134–135). Another account of the intermarriages in rural Bolivia stated that Issei Okinawan men who married rural Bolivian women complained about their wives’ “poor housekeeping, and neglect of their children” and accused them of causing “discord in the family” by indulging themselves with frequent “dancing, house parties and fiestas” (Tigner 1954, 484). “Uruma” is an ancient name for the Ryūkyū Islands in the Okinawan archaic language. Uru means coral reef, while ma means “in between.” The first four chiefs of the Ryūkyū government were nominated by USCAR, but the fifth chief, Yara Chōbyō, was elected by the Okinawan people. Chief Yara was the last Ryūkyū government chief before Okinawa’s repatriation to Japan in 1972. While the United States government facilitated the speedy, export-oriented growth of the mainland Japanese economy by setting a high and fixed currency exchange rate (at one U.S. dollar to 360 Japanese yen) and reducing the mainland’s military burden, the United States government deliberately made the Okinawan economy heavily dependent on the United States military presence by setting a considerably lower exchange rate (at one U.S. dollar to 120 local “B-yen”) and concentrating U.S. installations and staff in the islands (Yoshimi 2003, 442). It is reported that the minimum wage for American employees at United States bases was fourteen times higher than those of Okinawan workers (Oguma 1998, 504). Amemiya also writes that “nearly all” Issei were employed at one time or another by the military bases before leaving for Colonia Okinawa. Amemiya’s informants also expressed their disdain for “military labor,” or gun sagyō, because they were placed under American superiors in terms of both pay scale and rank (Amemiya 1999b, 58–59). Among them was Mr. Tamashiro, a former driver for the United States military police, who later immigrated to Colonia Okinawa when he was twenty-eight years old. He recalled that there was “always discrimination against locals [Okinawans] at work,” and working for the military made him feel like he “was a second-class, third-class citizen.” Under the agreement between USCAR and the Ryūkyū government

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23.

24. 25.

26.

27.


made in 1952, the landowners were contracted with the chief of the Ryūkyū government, and the chief subsequently rented the land to the United States military. Since the rent the Okinawan farmers received from USCAR for their land was extremely low, only 2 percent of the landowners agreed to the contract with the Ryūkyū government. Hence, USCAR had to resort to the Compulsory Land Expropriation Act in 1953 (Miyagi 1968, 217). In 1937, Ramón Retamoso L, a researcher working for the Ministry of Agriculture, Colonization, and Immigration, and Juan Silva V, the head of the National Office of Immigration, made strong recommendations for immigrant settlements in the eastern lowlands (Retamoso L and Silva V 1937, 87). In 1952, food imports accounted for 41 percent of all imports and 21 percent of the country’s total food supply (Gill 1987, 31). The U.S. government played a significant role in promoting the development of agricultural enterprise in Santa Cruz Prefecture. The United States hoped the new Revolutionary Nationalist Movement–led Bolivia would be reformist, rather than leftist, and sought to maintain Bolivia within its sphere of influence in the face of potential communist influence in South America (Gill 1987, 36). Bolivia was the recipient of the largest amount of financial aid from the United States among all South American countries from 1945 to 1964 (Uehara 1981, 67). It was no coincidence, therefore, that the USCAR-led search commission chose Bolivia as a favorable destination for Okinawan immigrants to develop commercial agriculture. For more information regarding the Bolivian government’s intentions and local political and economic factors with regard to the Okinawan settlement program, see Gill 1987, Hiraoka 1972, Amemiya 1999b, Tigner 1954, and Mori 1998b. Yoko Sellek cites a similar case where Okinawan settlers, who were carrying Ryūkyū government–issued certificates of identity, were denied entry into Bolivia on the grounds that the certificates were not internationally recognized passports (2003, 85–86). The Japanese government did not help the settlers reenter Bolivia, claiming that they had originally immigrated to Bolivia under the United States government’s sponsorship. Ryūkyū government officials ended up having to ask the United States government to persuade the Bolivian authorities to permit the settlers to enter Bolivia (ibid.).


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28. Okinawan settlers’ dissatisfaction with the lack of assistance from the Bolivian, United States, and Japanese governments was exacerbated when the Japanese government sponsored Naichi-jin immigration and settlement in Santa Cruz Prefecture in 1957. The Naichi-jin settlement, Colonia Japonés San Juan de Yapacaní, located approximately 120 kilometers west of Colonia Okinawa, was assisted by the Japanese government from the beginning (Kunimoto 1986; Boribia Nihonjin 100-shūnen-shi Hensan Iinkai 2000). 29. Naichi-jin Japanese settlers in Colonia Japonés San Juan de Yapacaní and Okinawan settlers in Colonia Okinawa had few contacts until the 1990s, when the highway between Colonia Okinawa and the village of Yapacaní, near Colonia San Juan, was paved, and both Colonias were equipped with telephone lines. Though there had been several attempts to create a pan-Nikkei-jin organization in Bolivia, it was not until 1996 that Boribia Nikkei Kyōkai Rengōkai (Federación Nacional de Asociaciones de Boliviano-Japonesas, or FENABOJA), the national federation of all regional Nikkei-jin associations in Bolivia, was formed, in the hope of facilitating interactions among various Nikkei-jin communities in the country. In 2000, approximately 14,000 Nikkei-jin lived in Bolivia, among whom 2,300 resided in Santa Cruz Prefecture (Boribia Nihonjin 100-shūnen-shi Hensan Iinkai 2000). 30. As I noted, the first settlers arrived in Colonia Okinawa in August 1954. After struggles with epidemics and poor hydration of the soil in the first two locations, the settlers finally moved to the current Colonia Okinawa location in June 1956. Hence, the “second anniversary” of the foundation of Colonia Okinawa was held in 1958 (Ijū 1987, 253). 31. In fact, many mixed-heritage individuals, or mestizos, in the twentieth century have attempted, and succeeded, in “passing” as blancos by learning to speak Spanish, wearing Western clothing, and emulating modern capitalist ideals, thereby claiming their blanco-ness through “not being Indian” (O. Harris 1995, cited in Stephenson 1999, 3, emphasis original). 32. While only 14.6 percent of the Bolivian national population was considered white in 1952, some 30 percent of the Santa Cruz population self-identified as white (Hiraoka 1980, 26). 33. A large number of domestic migrants from the altiplano have moved to the lowlands since the 1950s, when the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement government’s insufficient agrarian reform produced a large

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34.

35. 36.

37.

38.


group of landless farmers, or campesinos, and mismanagement of the national mining corporation created thousands of unemployed miners in Potosí and Sucre prefectures (Stearman 1985, 30). Jobless former miners and the land-hungry peasants from the altiplano moved to the eastern lowland and started small-scale horticulture enterprises. In the late 1950s, owing to the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement government’s further effort to promote agricultural development in Santa Cruz Prefecture, several voluntary settlements (colonias) emerged, which in effect provided Okinawan settlers with an abundant workforce pool for seasonal labor. Nearby laborers commuted to the Okinawans’ farms, while others lived in huts, built by their employers on the farm, until their tasks were completed. By the early 1960s, the Okinawan settlers began to handpick workers whom the settlers considered the most reliable and let them live on the settlers’ property (Mori 1998b, 38–39). The devastating flood of the Río Grande river in 1968 spurred the OkinawanÂ�-Bolivians’ emigration from the Colonia. In Colonia Uno, the percentage of cotton production of total agricultural production jumped from 0 percent in 1968 to 74.7 percent in 1974, while rice production dropped from 74.4 percent to 0 percent in the same period (CAICO 1993, 74). It is estimated that during the 1960s and 1970s, 1,000 Okinawan-Bolivians migrated from Colonia Okinawa to São Paulo, Brazil, and 600 left for Buenos Aires, Argentina (Tsujimoto 1998a, 280). It must be noted, however, that Bolivian—Nikkei or otherwise—migration to Argentina was an ongoing trend from the 1950s. During the 1950s and 1960s, more than 122,000 Bolivians migrated to Argentina, and from 1970 to 1974, another 39,100 moved to Argentina (Marshall 1981, 246). The term kolla is taken from kollasuyo, a Quechua word for the Bolivian sector of the Inca Empire (Stearman 1985, 20). The kolla category encompasses not only highland Indian groups, such as Quechua and Aymara, but also potentially non-Indian European-Bolivians. I heard a camba refer to a European-Bolivian from La Paz as kolla on several occasions, in a joking manner. The vast majority of the migrants from the Andean highlands in Santa Cruz, however, are Quechua and Aymara Indians, so kolla typically refers to highland Indians. Unlike the lowlanders who have no problem self-identifying as camba, the Andean highlanders in Santa Cruz rarely refer to themselves as kolla, as they


39.

40. 41.

42.

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consider the name a derogatory one imposed upon them by the lowlanders. They instead refer to themselves as paisano, roughly meaning “countryman” (Mori 1998b, 56). These stereotypes are often extended to phenotypic characteristics of each group: kolla have darker skin with flat faces, while camba have paler skin and larger facial parts. The perceived phenotypic distinctions between camba and kolla also relate to what (mainly) camba claimed to be the differences between the two groups in the amount of European “blood” and cultural proximity to Europe. Stearman observes that many lowlanders considered themselves “racially superior” to highlanders because of a stronger European heritage, citing the history of the first Spaniards arriving in Santa Cruz from Argentina, not from the Andean highlands. She encountered many camba who proudly claimed their “pure Castilian heritage,” even though they were unable to provide any proof (Stearman 1985, 20, 208). During my fieldwork, I also heard camba making derogatory remarks about kolla in the village, such as “Those [kolla] did not even know how to speak in castellano (Spanish language) until they moved here. They are backward!”Â� I will discuss the racial category of “whites” (hakujin) in the local context in Chapter 2. From 1968 to 1984, the total number of Okinawan immigrants to Bolivia was only 143 (JICA Okinawa 1985, 27). Since the planned immigration ended in 1964, a small number of voluntary settlers have come from both Okinawa and the main islands of Japan. From 1985 to 1995, JICA also sent to Colonia Okinawa thirteen young Japanese (Naichi-jin and Okinawan) who were interested in immigrating to Bolivia through the Overseas Development Youth (Kaigai Kaihatsu Seinen) program, which was intended to help the existing Nikkei-jin communities in South America revitalize themselves. Before departure the selected participants were trained in Japan in farming or other special skills useful for living in their migratory destinations and were expected to settle permanently in the accommodating communities after a three-year trial period. Among the thirteen who came to Colonia Okinawa through this program, however, only three still lived in Colonia OkinawaÂ�in 2003. In 1997, twenty-three returned to Colonia Okinawa from Japan, while nine left for Japan. There were twenty-seven returns and sixteen departuresÂ�in 1998 and twelve returns and sixteen departures in 1999.

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43. Tsujimoto (1998b, 1998c, 1999) reports that the first group of OkinawanÂ�Bolivian dekasegi migrants went to Japan in 1983, but I met several returnees from dekasegi in Japan who claimed to have left for Japan in 1982. The disparity is likely due to the uncertain definition of the term dekasegi. See Gmelch 1980 for the difficulty in distinguishing temporary from permanent migration. 44. In 1985, in his second term, President Victor Paz Estenssoro, Siles Zuazo’s successor, implemented an aggressive “orthodox shock” with the so-called New Economic Plan, which included currency devaluation, establishment of the floating exchange rate, fiscal control of the national and local governments, tax reform, and the dismantling of nationally owned corporations and their labor unions. The immediate outcome of the economic reform was a dramatic decline in the inflation rate, but also a sharp rise in unemployment to more than 20 percent (Klein 1992, 277). 45. Tsujimoto counted at least thirty-six Okinawan-Bolivians who had worked in this factory, all of whom were from Okinawa Uno (TsujimotoÂ� 1998c, 318). 46. The oceanfront area of Tsurumi has been known for the presence of a large Okinawan population since the 1910s, as many Okinawans moved to the heavy-industrial center called the Keihin industrial zone, of which Tsurumi and Kawasaki are part, during the severe recession and famine in Okinawa during the 1910s and 1920s (Tomiyama 1990; Mukai 1992; Ikuno 2000, 305). As Japan’s heavy manufacturing industry grew dramatically from the 1950s to 1970s, the increasing number of Okinawans living in Tsurumi brought about the Okinawa Kenjinkai, or Okinawa Prefectural Association, which has organized cultural events such as the Okinawan-style sumo tournament that still continues today. Interestingly, however, the dekasegi Okinawan-Bolivians I have talked to did not consider the area’s history as an Okinawan enclave an important factor for their decision to settle in the area. 47. In 1975, the total amount of Okinawan-Bolivian farmers’ debt reached US$1.3 million owing to failed cotton production (Higa 2000, 252). 48. One Okinawan-Bolivian I interviewed boasted that he had debt (in pesos) of almost US$100,000 before the hyperinflation, but he paid it off with approximately US$2,000 in 1986. 49. According to Gushiken, US$50,000 was necessary to purchase land to build a house, and additional expenses included US$30,000 for

Notes to Pages 50 – 65

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vehicles,Â� US$150,000 for 150 hectares of farmland, and US$100,000 for farming machines and equipment (Gushiken 1998, 203). 50. An experienced Okinawan-Bolivian farmer could borrow as much as ten million yen (US$80,000), but an inexperienced farmer, such as those wishing to start a new operation, could normally receive only US$50,000 in loans. 51. For instance, in 1999, CAICO set the limit at US$171 for one hectare of soybean field, US$200 for one hectare of wheat field, and US$126 for one hectare of sunflower field (CAICO 1999). Unlike JICA’s longterm loans, CAICO’s loans had to be paid back at harvest. After the half-year period, thus, the borrowers had to pay back the loan and its 15 percent interest with their harvested crops. Chapter 2: The Making of Patrones Japonesas and Dekasegi Migrants 1. See Cornelius et al. 1994, Hing 1993, Lesser 1999, and Yamanaka 1996 on how the immigration policies of the United States, Brazil, and Japan have constructed and transformed racial and ethnic categories. 2. It was commonly known among Okinawan-Bolivian farm owners that the official figures on individual landholding were much smaller than the reality. To reduce the amount of the annual membership fee for Nichibo Kyōkai, which was based on the self-reported property value of a member, most underreported the size of their land. One Nichibo Kyōkai official told me that the actual average farm was about 300 hectares, while approximately ten farmers possessed more than 1,000 hectares. 3. It was reported that while an Okinawan-Bolivian household’s average assets were 40,416,000 yen, or US$399,367, their average amount of debt was 10,097,000 yen, or US$99,777 (JICA1994). 4. Bolivian government agencies had difficulty building and maintaining basic social infrastructure. For instance, as of 2000, only 6.6 percent of Bolivian roads were paved (World Bank 2007). 5. The project was, not incidentally, contracted to a Japanese construction firm. The state-industry congruence in overseas aid projects of the Japanese government, or, for that matter, the governments of many other advanced capitalist countries, has created controversy, but that topic is beyond this study’s scope. 6. Because of their immersion in a more competitive urban environment,

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Notes to Pages 69 – 83

Nisei who were born or raised in Santa Cruz de la Sierra appeared to have fared better in pursuing higher education and obtaining professional jobs. I have met a number of Nisei dekasegi migrants in Japan who were from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, however, and some told me of having similar struggles in finding well-paying and stable jobs in Bolivia.Â� Overseers of Okinawan-Bolivian ranches were paid less, typically around 500 to 600 bolivianos, or US$82 to $100, monthly, although it depended on their work responsibilities. One Okinawan-Bolivian interviewee paid US$100 for each of the six employees at his ranch. Another interviewee, meanwhile, paid only 150 bolivianos (US$25) per month to a non-Nikkei Bolivian family simply to live on the site adjacent to his ranch to “watch for cattle thieves.” Non-Nikkei Bolivians never entered the Kuniyoshis’ house or ate with the Kuniyoshis in the dining room. Spatial boundaries between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivian employees in domestic spaces will be discussed extensively in Chapter 5. Moreover, as an official of the Nikkei association in Santa Cruz de la Sierra told me, more overt and formal means of resistance, such as unionization of the currently nonionized non-Nikkei Bolivian farm laborers, could potentially present a serious threat to the dominance of Okinawan-Bolivian landowners in the future. Genchi-jin is less flexible than “koko/kocchi no hito” (person or people here), since the latter could and often did include Okinawan-Bolivians themselves. The “rampant sexuality” was also a common stereotype regarding nonNikkei Bolivians (especially camba). This aspect of racialization of non-Nikkei Bolivians and Okinawans will be discussed in Chapter 5.Â� Barbaros literally means “barbarians,” but it is a term commonly used by the general Santa Cruz population, Okinawan-Bolivians and nonNikkei Bolivians alike, to refer to indigenous peoples in rural Santa Cruz, usually with little intention to denigrate them.

¯ do ¯ sha Chapter 3: From Patrón to Nikkei-jin Ro 1. I have heard from Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa that Nisei who grew up in the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra were better adjusted to compete in urban educational settings and job competition than those who were raised in the Colonia until finishing middle or high

Notes to Pages 85– 99

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

209

school. I was unable to find any evidence to attest or refute the validity of this observation. I have met in Yokohama, however, a number of Nisei and younger Issei dekasegi migrants who were from Santa Cruz de la Sierra. They cited similar reasons for their decision to migrate to Japan as those given by Nisei from the Colonia: difficulty in completing a college education, lack of well-paying and reliable professional jobs, and overall economic and social instabilities in Bolivia. Although such staffing practices are prohibited by the Labor Staffing Law (Rōdōsha Haken-hō), Sano found that the vast majority of South American Nikkei-jin workers in manufacturing, construction, and specialized construction (including electrical installation) were employed through staffing (1995, 112). In the electrical installation industry, these staffing firms disguised themselves as subcontractors by providing construction materials and tools such as electric cables, nuts and bolts, and power tools. The self-supply of materials and tools made them exempt from the aforementioned law, even though the electricians from these firms worked under the supervision of the “parent” company staff at the construction site. Ken, his brother, however, disputed his brother’s claim, saying, “Oscar must have received most of his salary.” Mr. Kamikawa was born in Okinawa and migrated to Colonia Okinawa as a child. His family then moved to São Paulo, Brazil, in the 1960s. Those who worked in retail were all women. A small number of women also worked as office clerks or domestic workers, or took on piece-work manufacturing at home, such as soldering electronic board panels.Â� I will discuss intermarriages and courtships of Okinawan-Bolivians in Bolivia and Japan in Chapter 5. Unlike san, a suffix that shows general respect (the equivalent of “Mr.” “Ms.,” or “Mrs.”), kun is a suffix used for those who are considered equal or below you in terms of age or status. Tsujimoto also argues that the stereotypical image of the suffering South American Nikkei-jin worker did not quite apply to OkinawanBolivian dekasegi migrant workers. He claims that his OkinawanBolivian informants actually enjoyed physical work and were eager to learn new skills through their work (Tsujimoto 1998c, 332–333). Some of the senior members, such as Tokashiki Oscar, occasionally criticized the T Denki staff ’s tardiness, but Mr. Tokashiki himself was not always punctual.

210


10. For more detailed studies about South American Nikkei-jin workers in the manufacturing industry and their relationships with Japanese coworkers and supervisors, see Tsuda 1998, 1999, 2003, and Roth 2002. 11. Coincidentally, Mr. Hokama’s vocabulary for “hidden” discrimination in Japanese workplaces is used in Tsuda 1998. See also Doi 1985 for ura versus omote distinctions in Japanese mannerisms. 12. See Nakane’s famous theorization (1970) of the “vertical relationship” as a central characteristic of Japanese social relationships. 13. Tsuda (1999) argues that Brazilian Nikkei-jin workers’ “subjective experience of ethnic discrimination” in Japan was not necessarily caused by discriminatory treatment or prejudice by their Japanese coworkers or supervisors. Instead, Brazilian Nikkei-jin workers’ subordinate positions vis-à-vis Japanese supervisors, the simple and menial work assigned to them as an inexperienced and often temporary workforce, and Japanese polite and distant mannerisms were interpreted by Brazilian Nikkei-jin as Japanese ethnic discrimination and racism against them. 14. Tsujimoto also observed that there were few interactions between Okinawan-Bolivian immigrants and “domestic” Okinawans in Tsurumi (1999, 82). He reported persistent anti-Okinawan discrimination in housing and food service services in the area (Tsujimoto 1998c, 320). Chapter 4: Educating “Good” Nikkei and Okinawan Subjects 1. To avoid redundancy, I focus on school education in Colonia Uno, which I researched extensively during my fieldwork. I draw on Kasuya’s research (1998) on Nueva Esperanza as many of her findings at the school are relevant. I do not discuss training, or kenshū, programs sponsored by the JICA, the Okinawa prefectural government, and other state and nonstate institutions through which many Nisei travel to Japan for short periods of time. These programs are intended to provide technical training for Nikkei-jin abroad and descendants of Okinawan émigrés who live in developing countries, in hope of helping them contribute to the improvement of Nikkei communities. 2. In 2000, the school charged US$30 a month for students who attended the morning Spanish classes only and US$50 for those who took both Spanish and Japanese language classes.


211

3. The percentage of Okinawan-Bolivian students at Numero Uno steadilyÂ� decreased from 1988 (84.5 percent) to 1996 (64.9 percent) during the “dekasegi fad” (see Chapter 1), owing to the emigration of families with school-age children. Nikkei Bolivian students occupied, however, the overwhelming majority of the student population (86.8 percent) in 2001 (Okinawa Daiichi Nichibo Gakkō 2001, 7). 4. In the special class, designed for non-Japanese speakers, non-Nikkei Bolivian students, and the children of intermarried parents, a bilingual Nisei teacher used JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) instruction materials. Since Numero Uno students’ Japanese proficiency was somewhat behind that of Japanese students in Japan, the textbooks used were also behind by one year (for example, a Japanese fourth grade textbook was used for Numero Uno’s class 5). Some of these textbooks, relatively new editions, were donated by past JICA volunteer teachers or Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers. 5. The position description for the 2004–2006 senior volunteer for Colonia Okinawa stated: “The main duties of the senior [volunteer] will be training Nikkei Japanese language teachers, acting as an advisor to the school administration, and instructing students in the Japanese language and other related subjects. Also, [the volunteer] is expected to fulfill an advisory role in community education activities that [Nichibo] Kyōkai has been emphasizing and to instruct basic computer software operations ([Microsoft] Excel, Outlook, Express, etc.) for beginners (including students and teachers)” (JICA 2003). 6. From 1995, JICA’s philosophy toward its relationship with overseas Nikkei communities changed from the active promotion of Japanese emigration overseas and settlement assistance to supporting existing Nikkei communities as part of its “international cooperation” effort (JICA 1998, 154). As a result, the Nikkei Society Youth Volunteer program came to emphasize volunteers’ service to Nikkei communities rather than their eventual settlement in the assigned countries as permanent residents. 7. Nueva Esperanza School in Colonia Dos was desperate to find Japanese language teachers in 2001. The school employed me for three months as a replacement and then asked Mr. Satō, the JICA senior volunteer teacher at the time, to recruit two Japanese teachers from his home prefecture in Japan. Responding to the local newspaper advertisement posted by Mr. Satō, two young women came from Japan in March 2001

212

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.


to fill the two vacancies in the Japanese classes at Nueva Esperanza for the remainder of the 2001 school year. Though infrequent, thefts and robberies of Okinawan-Bolivians by non-Nikkei Bolivians did take place during my fieldwork in Colonia Okinawa. According to Issei, the recent perpetrators were increasingly violent, often robbing victims at gunpoint. Because of their limited writing and speech skills, the special class students had a choice of reading a short essay from their textbook instead of essays they had written. A winner was chosen from each class, and the best four among them would advance to the speech contest sponsored by the Japanese Language Education Learning Committee of Bolivia (Boribia Nihongo Kyōiku Kenkyū Iinkai, or Bo-Nikken) in November, joined by the winners of similar contests in other Japanese language schools throughout Bolivia. In fact, taikai does not necessarily mean a “competition”; it literally means a “convention.” Mr. Satō was trying to highlight the difference between the pursuit of excellence in writing and speaking in Japanese by the contestants and merely a series of presentations by them. For instance, many Colonia Uno residents resented the Nichibo Kyōkai’s policy of distributing an equal amount of the community activity budget to the three Colonias despite Colonia Uno’s much larger population. Meanwhile, the residents of Colonia Dos and Trés were bitter about the fact that Nichibo Kyōkai and CAICO headquarters and Numero Uno School were all located in Colonia Uno. Before they were built, Colonia Dos residents had insisted that these facilities should be located in their district, the geographic center of Colonia Okinawa, rather than in Colonia Uno (Mori 1998b, 111; 1998c, 98). Eisā was originally performed during the bon period (a week in July when people remember and honor the souls of their dead relatives), and each village on the islands of Okinawa has its own version of Eisā dance and music. Every summer, villagers dance and sing for a dayand-a-night-long celebration. Most Okinawa Prefecture Program teachers had taught Eisā dance before coming to Colonia Okinawa because the dance was not only widely practiced throughout the communities in Okinawa Prefecture, but also incorporated into physical education classes in the prefecture’s public schools. Mr. Gushiken’s performance team incorporated various karate moves


213

(karate was also from Okinawa) into Eisā dance and became popular among youth in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan proper, and abroad. It has chapters in the United States, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, where a large number of members of the Okinawan diaspora live. Chapter 5: Gendering Transnationality 1. Women could also become temporary household heads while their husbands were away in Japan for dekasegi if the rest of the family stayed in Colonia Okinawa. 2. There was no mail delivery system to individual houses. Nichibo Kyōkai has a mailbox at the central post office of Santa Cruz de la Sierra that served all members of the association. A Nichibo Kyōkai staff member went to the central post office once a week to mail outgoing letters from the association’s members and retrieve incoming letters to the members. 3. At public occasions that I attended during my field research in Colonia Okinawa, the only women who frequently sat at “men’s” tables and socialized with them with ease were two Japanese Naichi-jin women who had lived in the Colonia for a long period. One was particularly vocal about women’s status in Colonia Okinawa. She observed that many Okinawan-Bolivian women, especially young Nisei women, were timid and put up with their oppressive situations (Terui 1997, 17). 4. On an irregular basis, the Tsukamotos also employed three non-Nikkei Bolivian men who performed numerous odd jobs, such as cutting the grass on their property, assembling doghouses, or planting trees in the garden. These men’s employment, unlike the female domestics’, was unstable; none of the male workers at the Tsukamotos I talked with had worked for the family longer than three months. 5. In a survey conducted by Japanese researchers in 1996, 55 percent of Issei considered it was “very desirable” for their Nisei children and Sansei grandchildren to marry their fellow Nisei and Sansei, while only 2 percent said the same about non-Nikkei Bolivians (Anbo et al. 1998, 252). 6. This view was shared among Nikkei Peruvians, too. See Miasato (2002) on intermarriages and courtships among Nikkei Peruvians in Lima. 7. One of the goals of Japanese classes at Numero Uno School was to help the students pass the grade 2 test of the Japanese Language Proficiency

214


Examination (Nihongo Nōryoku Kentei Shiken), administered by the Japan Foundation (a government foundation that promotes Japanese studies overseas), before graduating from the school. When the school had a mock exam during a Japanese class, the average scores of the female students were consistently higher than their male counterparts in the same class. Among those students who took the mock grade 2 exam, for instance, the average score of the male students was 232 out of a possible 400 points, while female students scored 241 on average (Okinawa Daiichi Nichibo Gakkō 2000). 8. Tsujimoto (1999) notes that in 1994 Boribia Shinboku-kai (Bolivia Friendship Association), a community association among OkinawanBolivian dekasegi migrants, was founded in Tsurumi for recreational purposes. When I conducted fieldwork in Yokohama in 2000, however, I was told that the association was defunct. There were also baseball and soccer games primarily participated in by Okinawan-Bolivians, but these activities were neither formally organized nor consistently held. I often found out about the games by word of mouth. 9. Ikuno Eriko stated that it was also common among Nikkei Bolivians to marry other foreign immigrants in Japan (2000, 302). I heard about only one such case of intermarriage, a Nisei Okinawan-Bolivian man from Colonia Uno with a Thai wife. They met through JICA’s technical training program for foreigners. 10. This change, however, had taken place only in Colonia Uno before I left Colonia Okinawa in 2001. When I told this news to a male resident of Colonia Trés, he snickered: “I heard about [the change in Colonia Uno], but [Colonia Trés] hasn’t changed and will not change. [Hosting guests at individual homes] is how it is supposed to be [on New Year’s Day].”

GLOSSARY

JP: Japanese; SP: Spanish; OK: Okinawan altiplano blanco CAICO

(sp) Andean highland in western Bolivia. (sp) White.

(sp) Cooperativa Agropecuaria Integral Colonias

Okinawa,Â�or Colonia Okinawa Integral Agricultural Cooperative. (sp) Lowland natives of eastern Bolivia. (sp) An agricultural collective settlement. (jp) Sojourning. Literally means “going out” to earn money, with the intention of returning to home in the future. (jp) Electronics or electricity. (jp) Aboriginals. (ok) See dojin. (ok) Popular Okinawan folk dance that is traditionally performed during the summer in conjunction with the annual obon, a ceremony that honors the ancestral spirits. (sp) Foreigner. (jp) Foreigner. (jp) Construction site. (jp) Local person or people.

camba colonia dekasegi

denki dojin dojinā Eisā

extranjero gaijin genba genchi-jin 215

216

GLOSSARY

hakujin indio

(jp) White person or people.

Issei JICA

(jp) First generation.

(sp) Indian, often used derogatorily (cf. indigena for in-

digenous person).

Japan International Cooperation Agency of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. kitsui (jp) Difficult, strenuous. kolla (sp) Highland natives of central and western Bolivia. Also colla. mestizo (sp) Mixed-heritage descendant of Spanish and indigenous peoples. Naichi (jp/ok) Mainland Japan or Japan proper (the four major islands of Japan). Naichi-jin (jp/ok) People of mainland Japan. Also Yamatonchu, Yamato, or Naichā.” Nichibo Kyōkai (jp) Okinawa Nihon Boribia Kyōkai. Asociación Boliviana-Japonesa de Okinawa, or Japanese-Bolivian Association of Okinawa. Nikkei-jin (jp) Descendants of Japanese immigrants overseas (e.g., Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Peruvians, and so on). Also Nikkei. Nisei (jp) Second generation. Nueva Esperanza (sp) Colegio Mixto “Nueva Esperanza,” or Nueva Esperanza Joint (Elementary and Middle) School. Numero Uno (sp) Colegio Particular Mixto Centro Boliviano Japones Okinawa Numero Uno, or Okinawa Numero Uno Japanese-Bolivian Joint (Elementary and Middle) Private School. Okinawa Kenjinkai (jp) Okinawa Prefectural Association. ouen (jp) Literally means “support.” Labor staffing. Also haken. patrón (sp) Literally means “employer.” Large-scale farm owner who employs field laborers. rōdōsha (jp) Laborer. Sansei (jp) Third generation. sanshin (ok/jp) Three-stringed plucked lute. Shamisen in “standard” Japanese. (ok) Okinawan drum. shimedaiko trabajador (sp) Worker.

GLOSSARY

Uchināguchi Uchinanchu ukeoi USCAR Yamatoguchi Yamatonchu zene-kon

217

(ok) Okinawan language.

(ok) People of Okinawa. Also Uchinānchu or Uchinā. (jp) Subcontracting.

United States Civil Administration of the Ryūkyū Islands. (ok) “Standard” Japanese language. (ok) People of mainland Japan (Japan proper). Also Yamato. See also Naichi-jin. (jp) General construction firm.

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INDEX

agriculture: Bolivian agrarian reform (1953), 33–34, 38, 61; British-owned sugarcane plantations in Peru, 26, 199n11; cotton production, 40, 41, 47, 206n47; Hawai‘i, 199n7; Okinawa, 31, 32, 198n6, 202n22; soybean production, 42–43, 47, 50–51, 67f. See also CAICO; farm laborers; farm owners altiplano, 10, 200n14; agrarian reform, 33–34, 38; ethnoracial categories, 37, 76, 195n19; migration to Colonia Okinawa from, 39–42, 203n33 Amemiya, Kozy, 25, 201n21 Argentina, Okinawan-Bolivians migrating to (1960s–1970s), 40, 204n37 autonomy: Okinawan-Bolivian laborers in Yokohama, 98–101; Ryūkyū kingdom, 24 barbaros, 80, 208n12 Bhabha, Homi, 76, 198n5 blanco, Bolivian, 37–38, 41–42, 81, 203n31 bodies. See embodiment; racialization; sexuality Bolivia, 11map; agrarian reform (1953), 33–34, 38, 61; economy, 27, 33, 45, 47,

245

62, 200n12, 206n44; migration from Peru to, 26, 199n11; Naichi-jin, 27t, 36, 39, 119, 122–126, 128, 174–178, 199n11, 203nn28,29; Okinawan migration to (before 1950s), 22–23, 26–29; racialized categories, 37–38, 41, 74–82, 125–132, 139–140, 144; Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, 33, 60–61, 202n25; rubber industry, 26–27, 199n11, 200n12; social infrastructure, 207n4; yobiyose to, 27, 27t, 28. See also farm aid; migrations; nonNikkei Bolivians; Okinawan-Bolivians; population; Santa Cruz Prefecture Bolivianization, 119–120, 139–140, 144, 158, 171; embodiment, 121, 122, 173. See also stereotypes Boribiajin, 75–79, 111, 120, 158, 160–161. See also non-Nikkei Bolivians Boribia Shinboku-kai/Bolivia Friendship Association, 17, 214n8 boundaries, 9; cultural, 9, 184, 186; employers and workers, 9, 65, 102, 155– 157, 181, 188, 208n8; gendered, 20, 171, 188; inside-purity and outsideimpurity, 192n4; spatial/deference, 5,

246

INDEX

20, 155–157, 181, 188, 208n8. See also racialized boundaries Brazil: Nikkei-jin in Japan, 5–6, 103, 107– 108, 174–175, 192n4, 210n13; Okinawans in, 25–26, 40, 199n9 CAICO/Cooperativa Agropecuaria Integral Colonias Okinawa/Colonia Okinawa Integral Agricultural Cooperative: centro office, 68–69, 212n11; employees, 12, 58, 76, 116, 163–164; farm laborers sought by, 40–41; farm production reports, 42–43; loans, 47–51, 207n51; membership of male-headed households, 149; men congregating at, 68, 154; Okinawan-Bolivians’ landownership, 61 camba, 37, 38, 74, 75, 79–80, 185, 204n38; stereotypes, 41–42, 205n39, 208n11 capital, symbolic, 7, 14, 17–18, 38, 42 capitalism, 44 Catholic school, Colegio San Francisco Xavier, 114–115 cattle ranchers, 12, 55, 66, 70, 75, 208n7 children: dekasegi in Japan, 170; mixedheritage, 160–165, 171–172. See also schools citizenship, 5, 8–9, 20, 195nn14–17; Japanese, 39–40, 44, 63, 108, 184; nationless, 23, 29, 35, 52, 178, 184, 186, 194n14, 198n4; Okinawan, 32, 39– 40; Okinawan-Bolivian, 35–36, 44, 63, 108, 185; “racialized belonging,” 2–10, 19–20, 53, 55, 183–189, 192n3, 195n16; U.S., 184. See also transnationalization class: in domestic sphere, 155–157; racialization of, 5–9, 37–39, 41–42, 65–82, 161–162, 185; transnational transitions, 4, 83–112, 188–189. See also labor/ laborers; patrones; socioeconomics Colegio Evangelica Metodista Colonia Okinawa, 114–116, 115t, 123f

Colegio San Francisco Xavier, 114–115 colonialism: embodiment of colonized, 7, 23, 76–77; Japanese, 23, 24–26, 30, 198n4, 199n10; unconscious, 198n4 Colonia Okinawa, 3, 10–16; dekasegi migrating to Japan from, 3, 8, 16–18, 22– 23, 42–53, 43f, 63, 83–112, 146–147, 163–182, 186, 188, 209n1; Dos, 34, 56–57, 212n11; economy, 41, 45, 47, 50; farm laborers, 35, 38–42, 57–58, 65–82, 68f, 156–157, 185; floods and droughts, 39, 40, 58–59, 114; Hospital, 73; housing, 54–55, 55f; Issei, 3, 12, 30–31, 33, 40, 41, 45–48, 52–53, 111–145; non-Nikkei Bolivians migrating from altiplano to, 39–42, 203n33; Okinawan-Bolivian socioeconomics, 39–42, 45, 53–58, 57t, 62–82, 185; Okinawan enclave, 55, 56f; Okinawan migrations to (1950s– 1970s), 22–23, 28–34, 201n21; patrones, 18–19, 35, 38–39, 42, 54–82, 139–140, 185; returnees from Japan to, 22, 31, 49, 51–52, 75, 103, 146, 149, 161, 166–182, 205n42, 206n43; second anniversary of the foundation of, 36, 203n30; Trés, 34, 56–57, 60–61, 212n11; Uno, 2f, 34, 56–57, 58, 114– 145, 212n11; USTAM, 39–40. See also farm owners; gender relationships; labor/laborers; population; racialization; schools communist threat: East Asia, 29, 30, 32, 184; South America, 202n25 community events: Colonia Okinawa, 36–37, 48, 64, 118–119, 125, 127, 132–133, 136–138, 137f, 140–142, 152; gender roles, 152–165, 168, 179– 180; Japanese culture in Bolivia and, 130–131; Okinawan-Bolivian in Japan, 17, 168–169, 180, 214n8; school’s roles in, 118–119, 125, 127, 132–133, 140–142, 152; track meet, 136–138, 137f; young Nisei, 48, 64

competitiveness: Okinawan values, 133, 136–138, 139, 144; speech contest, 134– 136, 138; track meet, 136–138, 137f construction: Okinawan-Bolivian labor in Japan, 83–112; subcontracting in Japan, 84–86. See also electricians Cornelius, Wayne, 44 cotton production: in Colonia Okinawa, 40, 41, 47, 206n47 cultural capital, symbolic, 7, 14, 17–18, 38, 42 dance. See Eisā dance debt: farm owners, 50–51, 52, 57, 79, 206n47, 207n50; Okinawan-Bolivian household, 207n3 deference/spatial boundaries, 5, 20, 155– 157, 181, 188, 208n8 dekasegi, 15, 191n2, 206n43; community events in Japan, 168–169, 180, 214n8; gender relationships, 146–147, 165– 178, 188; interactions with “domestic” Okinawans, 210n14; labor, 8, 45–53, 83–112, 165–176, 186, 209nn2, 8; marriage with other foreign immigrants in Japan, 214n9; migrating from Colonia Okinawa, 3, 8, 16–18, 22–23, 42–53, 43f, 63, 83–112, 146– 147, 163–182, 186, 188, 209n1; passing as “domestic” Okinawans, 108– 112, 186; returnees from colonies of Japan, 31; returnees from Japan, 22, 31, 49, 51–52, 75, 103, 146, 149, 161, 166–182, 205n42, 206n43; socialization in Japan, 17, 168–169, 174–178, 180–181, 210n14, 214n8 discrimination: Bolivian Okinawans vs. non-Nikkei Bolivians, 29; Micronesian Okinawans vs. native Micronesians, 26, 199n10; toward mixedheritage children, 160–161; Naichijin vs. Okinawans, 25–28, 105–106, 110, 199n10, 210n14; Naichi-jin vs. South American Nikkei-jin, 105–106,

INDEX

247

210n13; non-Nikkei Bolivians vs. Okinawans, 200n14, 201n21; Okinawan émigrés vs. non-Japanese/Okinawans, 26; U.S. vs. Okinawans, 30–31. See also Others; racialization; stereotypes disease, Uruma, 34 dōka policies, 25, 30 domestic workers, 155–157, 213n4 Douglas, Mary, 192n4 drinking: camba, 41; gender and, 179; stereotype of Okinawans in Micronesia, 25 drum. See shimedaiko drum economics: Japanese aid to Colonia Okinawa, 39–42, 47–51, 58–62, 59t, 65, 78, 207n51; schools, 114, 115–116, 210n2, 212n11; transportation costs from Okinawa to Bolivia, 34; U.S. aid to Bolivia, 33, 202n25. See also debt; economy; farm aid; labor/laborers; socioeconomics; wages economy: Bolivia, 27, 33, 45, 47, 62, 200n12, 206n44; Colonia Okinawa, 41, 45, 47, 50; Japan, 45–46, 49, 52– 53; Okinawa, 25, 30, 201n19. See also economics education. See schools Eisā dance, 141–144, 142f, 212nn12–14 electricians, South American Nikkei-jin in Japan, 17–18, 84–108, 174–176, 209nn2, 8 embodiment: Bolivian characteristics, 121, 122, 173; of colonized, 7, 23, 76–77; gendered and sexual, 147, 154, 174, 176; Japaneseness, 14, 126, 185–186; Okinawanness, 128, 129, 141, 185– 186, 199n10; “racialized belonging,” 2–10, 19–20, 53, 55, 183–189, 192n3, 195n16; socioeconomic, 55, 81, 84, 157; South American, 176, 186. See also racialization “ethnic absolutism,” 6, 193n6 eugenics, 6, 193n5 extranjeros, Bolivians, 38, 42

248

INDEX

family, 20; dekasegi in Japan, 169, 171– 172; mixed-heritage children, 160– 165, 171–172; patrilineal succession to family property, 148. See also children; gender relationships; household unit; marriage “family state,” Japanese multiethnic, 24– 25, 197n3 farm aid: from Japan to Okinawan-Bolivians, 39–42, 47–51, 58–62, 59t, 65, 78, 207n51; from Okinawa to OkinawanBolivians, 58, 59t; from U.S. to Bolivia, 33, 202n25 farm laborers: Colonia Okinawa, 35, 38–42, 57–58, 65–82, 68f, 156–157, 185; exploited, 69–71, 78; hazards, 70; Micronesia, 26; non-Nikkei Bolivians, 57–58, 65–82, 68f, 156–157, 185; Peru, 26; resistance by, 73–74, 78–79, 208n9; rotated, 70–71; theft by, 73–74, 78–79; wages, 69, 207n7; wives, 156–157 farm owners, 32–82; Bolivian agrarian reform (1953), 33–34, 38, 61; Britishowned sugarcane plantations in Peru, 26, 199n11; cotton production, 40, 41, 47, 206n47; debt, 50–51, 52, 57, 79, 206n47, 207n50; everyday production, 65–69; expenses, 206n49; exploitation of laborers, 69–71, 78; finca system, 38, 71, 72; income, 57, 57t; Nichibo Kyōkai membership fee, 207n2; non-Nikkei Bolivian, 71–72, 139; Okinawa, 31, 32, 202n22; OkinawanBolivian, 8, 12, 18–19, 35, 38–39, 42, 54–82, 156–157, 184, 185; patrones, 18–19, 35, 38–39, 42, 54–82, 67f, 139–140, 185; semisubsistent farming, 34–39; size of farm, 207n2; soybean production, 42–43, 47, 50–51, 67f; wives, 156–157. See also farm aid; farm laborers females, 213n3; community events roles, 152–165, 168, 179–180; dekasegi in

Japan, 165–182, 188; domestic workers, 155–157, 213n4; household roles, 147, 149, 154–157, 179, 181, 182, 187–188, 213n1; inheritance by, 148; intermarriage issues, 158–159, 163– 165, 172, 177, 201n16; interviews with, 15, 146; Japanese-language class students, 166, 214n7; in paid labor market, 148–151, 165–168, 169, 179, 180, 209n5; public gender regime, 147, 148–152, 165–168, 180, 182 finca system, 38, 71, 72 floods, Colonia Okinawa, 39, 40, 58–59, 114 food supply: in Bolivia, 33, 202n24; for farm laborers, 72–73. See also agriculture Foucault, Michel, 5, 7, 8, 195n17 genchi-jin, 75–79, 208n10. See also nonNikkei Bolivians gender relationships, 20, 148–182, 187– 188; communal gender regime, 147, 152–165; domestic spheres of influence, 154–157, 181; public gender regime, 147, 148–152, 165–168, 180, 182; returned dekasegi, 146, 149, 161, 166– 182. See also females; males; marriage Genovese, Eugene, 72 Gilroy, Paul, 6, 193n6 “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diasporic subjects, 20; education for, 4, 19, 20, 113–145, 187 Gushi Kanchō, 28 Gushiken Kōtei, 48–49, 206n49 hakujin, 75, 79–82 Hawai‘i: Naichi-jin, 199n7; Okinawan émigrés, 25, 27, 199n7 Herzfeld, Michael, 9 household unit, 24, 148; debt, 207n3; women’s roles in, 147, 149, 154–157, 181, 182, 187–188, 213n1 housing: Colonia Okinawa, 54–55, 55f. See also Okinawan enclaves

identities, 1–15, 26; fieldworker, 1–2, 9, 14– 15; government-issued certificate of, 202n27; of interviewees, 21; OkinawanBolivian transformations, 22, 37; Okinawan/Japanese, 4, 23, 25, 110–111; schools shaping, 3–4, 19, 20, 113–145, 187. See also Bolivianization; embodiment; Japaneseness; Okinawanness; racialization; “subject positions” Ikuno Eriko, 177, 214n9 immigrants. See migrations Inca Rubber Company, U.S., 26–27 income: Okinawan-Bolivian, 57, 57t. See also wages indio, 37–38 interviews, 13–17; with women, 15, 146 Issei, 28–29, 31, 196n20; in Bolivia (1952), 27; citizenship, 36; in Colonia Okinawa, 3, 12, 30–31, 33, 40, 41, 45– 48, 52–53, 111–145; languages, 15, 197n25; in Okinawa (prewar and wartime), 23 Japan: colonialist, 23, 24–26, 30, 198n4, 199n10; constitution, 25; construction, 83–112; dōka policies, 25, 30; economy, 45–46, 49, 52–53; governmentsponsored settlement programs, 11, 29, 35–36; imperial rule over Okinawans, 23, 24, 25, 30, 35–36, 184, 191n1; labor deficit, 45–46, 49–50; manufacturing, 45–53, 83, 89–112, 166–167, 206n46; multiethnic “family state,” 24–25, 197n3; Naichi-jin in, 25, 101–112, 174–178, 181–182, 199n10; nationality law, 44; Okinawan-Bolivian aid from, 39–42, 47–51, 58–62, 59t, 65, 78, 207n51; Okinawan-Bolivian community events, 17, 168–169, 180; Okinawan migration to (1920s), 198n6; Okinawan rights in, 25, 198n4; Okinawa’s repatriation to (1972), 29, 40; Overseas Migration Agency, 39– 40; Plaza Agreement (1985), 46; service

INDEX

249

industries, 90; U.S. relationship, 36; World War II surrender to Allies (August 15, 1945), 29. See also dekasegi; Japanese language; Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); South American Nikkei-jin in Japan; Yokohama Japanese Association, La Paz, 28 Japanese language, 197n25; “standard” Japanese, 15–16, 17–18, 22, 36, 83, 191n1. Japanese-language classes, 114–115, 117– 118, 211n4, 213n7; female students, 166, 214n7; parents’ view of, 140–141; speech contest, 133–136, 138, 212nn9, 10; teachers, 12–13, 15, 17, 113, 119, 120–126, 130 Japanese Language Education Study Group of the Region of Santa Cruz, 130 Japanese mainlander. See Naichi-jin Japaneseness: boundaries with Okinawanness, 26, 186; embodied, 14, 126, 185– 186; Japanese Naichi-jin teachers in Bolivia, 124; Okinawan-Bolivian, 52, 65, 102–103. See also racialization Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), 39, 177, 211n6; Colonia Okinawa’s education, 117, 119, 123–125; Colonia Okinawa’s labor relations, 56; financial assistance for Colonia Okinawa, 47, 48–49, 50, 58–62, 79, 207n51; senior volunteer, 121, 123– 124, 152, 211nn5, 7; youth volunteer, 150, 152, 205n41, 211n6 japoneses, patrones, 38–39, 54–82 kenjinkai, 28, 206n46 Kibria, Nazli, 158 kolla, 41–42, 75, 80, 185, 204n38, 205n39 Kondo, Dorinne, 79 labor/laborers, 19, 23; abstract, 195n15; availability of work in Japan, 88–89; Bolivian rubber industry, 26–27, 199n11; CAICO employees, 12, 58, 76, 116, 163–164;

250

INDEX

construction in Japan, 83–112; dekasegi in Japan, 8, 45–53, 83–112, 165–176, 186, 209nn2, 8; domestic workers, 155–157, 213n4; electricians, 84–108, 174–176, 209nn2, 8; gendered division of labor, 152–168, 179–180, 187–188; household, 147, 149, 154–157, 181, 182, 187–188; Japan’s deficit in, 45–46, 49–50; manufacturing in Japan, 45–53, 83, 89–112, 166–167; Nichibo Kyōkai employees, 12, 76, 150–151; Nisei educated, 62–64, 207n6, 209n1; Okinawa under U.S., 30, 31; physical and mental hardships, 70, 91–97; U.S. military bases in Okinawa, 31, 201nn20–21; women in paid labor market, 148–151, 165–168, 169, 179, 180, 209n5; younger Nisei, 64. See also farm laborers; teachers; wages land ownership: Bolivian agrarian reform (1953), 33–34, 38, 61; Colonia Okinawa, 60–62; Okinawa, 30–32. See also farm owners languages: interview, 15–16; Issei, 15, 197n25; Nisei, 15–16, 197n25; Spanish, 15–16, 17–18, 171, 196n25. See also Japanese language; Okinawan language La Paz: Japanese Association, 28; Okinawans marrying non-Nikkei Bolivians (1952), 201n15; Okinawan socioeconomics, 28, 29, 200n14 laziness: Bolivian, 77–79, 139, 144; camba, 41; Naichi-jin, 103–105 “Lifestyle Reform Movement,” Brazil, 25–26 Louie, Andrea, 15 males: community events roles, 152–165; dekasegi in Japan, 146, 165–182, 188; domestic workers, 213n4; inheritance by, 148; intermarriage issues, 159, 162–165, 172, 174–177, 201n16 Malik, Kenan, 8 Malkki, Liisa, 23 manufacturing, Japan, 45–53, 83, 89–112, 166–167, 206n46

marriage: disapproval of intermarriage, 147, 157–158; Okinawan-Bolivians and Naichi-jin, 28, 147, 174–178, 181; Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians, 20, 28, 116, 146, 158–165, 171–174, 201nn15–16, 213n5; Okinawan-Bolivians and other foreign immigrants in Japan, 214n9; women’s livelihood, 148 Massay, Douglass, 44 medical care, for farm laborers, 73 Meiji Colonization Company, 26 mestizos/mixed heritage, 37, 160–165, 171–172, 203n31 Methodist Church, 13, 119; Colegio Evangelica Metodista Colonia Okinawa, 114–116, 115t, 123f Micronesia: Issei, 31; Okinawans, 25, 26, 27, 199n10 migrations: gender, 146, 180; Naichi-jin to Bolivia, 203n28; non-Nikkei Bolivians from altiplano to Colonia Okinawa, 39–42, 203n33; Okinawan-Bolivians to Brazil/Argentina/Okinawa (1960s– 1970s), 40, 204n37; Okinawans to Bolivia (1968–1984), 205n41; Okinawans to Colonia Okinawa (1950s– 1970s), 22–23, 28–34, 35t, 201n21; Okinawans to Japan (1920s), 198n6; Okinawans to overseas destinations (1899–1927), 25; Okinawans to western Bolivia (before 1950s), 22–23, 26–29; U.S.-sponsored Okinawans to Bolivia, 29–36, 202nn25, 27. See also dekasegi; returnees military, U.S. See U.S. military in Okinawa morals: “Japanese” culture, 117, 132, 144– 145; non-Nikkei Bolivian, 120, 158–159, 165; Okinawan-Bolivian, 79, 141; stereotypes about, 120, 144–145, 158, 165 Mori Kōichi, 25, 199n9 Naichi-jin, 1–2, 191n1; Bolivia, 27, 27t, 36, 39, 119, 122–126, 128, 174–178,

199n11, 203nn28–29; Brazil, 25–26; discrimination vs. Okinawans, 25– 28, 105–106, 110, 199n10, 210n14; discrimination vs. South American Nikkei-jin in Japan, 105–106, 210n13; Hawai‘i, 199n7; internment camps in U.S., 200n13; Japan, 25, 101–112, 174–178, 181–182, 199n10; marriage with Okinawan-Bolivians, 28, 147, 174–178, 181; Nihonjin, 101–112, 174–178, 181–182; Okinawa, 24–25; Okinawan-Bolivian dekasegi and, 105–112, 166–168, 170–172, 174– 178, 181–182, 186; pan-Nikkei organizations, 28, 203n29; stereotypes of, 103–108, 128, 147, 174–178; teachers, 119, 122–126; women’s status, 213n3 nationality, 23, 44, 198n4; nationlessness, 23, 29, 35, 52, 178, 184, 186, 194n14, 198n4. See also citizenship; colonialism; nation-states; transnationalization nation-states: Bolivia, 3, 192n3; citizenship, 9, 44, 195nn14, 17; Japan, 3, 24–25, 44, 192n3; “transmigrants” in multiple, 3–5, 9. See also transnationalization Nichibo Kyōkai, 11, 16, 54, 56; community events, 152, 153; employees, 12, 76, 150–151; farm aid from Japan, 58, 60, 61; mail, 150, 213n2; male-headed households as members, 149; membership fee, 207n2; school finance, 212n11 Nihonjin, 101–112, 174–178, 181–182. See also Naichi-jin Nikkei-jin, 4; pan-Nikkei organizations, 28, 203n29; population in Bolivia, 12, 27t, 203n29. See also South American Nikkei-jin in Japan Nisei, 12, 26, 27, 62–64; higher education and job opportunities, 62–64, 208n6, 209n1; languages, 15–16, 197n25; teachers, 119, 129–132. See also dekasegi

INDEX

251

Nomura Kōya, 23, 198n4 non-Nikkei Bolivians, 1–2; Boribiajin, 75– 79, 111, 120, 158, 160–161; camba, 37, 38, 41–42, 74, 75, 79–80, 185, 204n38, 205n39; Colonia Okinawa population, 40t, 42, 52; domestic workers, 155–157; farm laborers, 57–58, 65–82, 68f, 185; genchi-jin, 75–79, 208n10; hakujin, 75, 79–82; in Japan, 171–174; kolla, 41– 42, 75, 80, 185, 204n38, 205n39; land ownership, 60–61; marriage with Okinawan-Bolivians, 20, 28, 116, 146, 158– 165, 171–174, 201nn15–16, 213n5; migrating from altiplano to Colonia Okinawa, 39–42, 203n33; patrones, 71–72, 139; racialized categories, 74–82; social divide with OkinawanBolivians, 14, 29, 41–42, 54–62, 55f, 65–82, 148–152, 185; socioeconomics, 41–42, 54–74, 76–82; stereotypes, 20, 77–82, 107, 111, 120, 131–132, 139– 140, 154, 158–165, 201n16, 208n11; students, 115–116, 119–120; teachers, 119, 120–122; thefts by, 73–74, 78–79, 115, 212n8 Nueva Esperanza School, 113, 128, 139, 210n1, 211n7 Numero Uno Japanese-Bolivian School, 116–145, 152, 211n3 occupations: military bases in Okinawa, 31, 201nn20–21; Okinawan-Bolivian in La Paz, 200n14. See also farm owners; labor/laborers; teachers Oguma Eiji, 24 Okinawa, 4, 24, 191n1; agriculture, 31, 32, 198n6, 202n22; annexation to Japan (1879), 25; Battle of (1945), 29, 30, 197n3, 198n4; economy, 25, 30, 201n19; Government of the Ryūkyū Islands (after 1952), 29–33, 35t, 201n22, 202n27; in Japanese familystate, 24–25, 197n3; Japanese imperial rule, 23, 24–25, 30, 35–36,

252

INDEX

184, 191n1; land ownership, 30–32; Okinawan-Bolivian farm aid from, 58, 59t; repatriation to Japan (1972), 29, 40; USCAR, 30–34, 201nn18, 22, 202n25. See also Okinawan language; Okinawanness; Okinawans, domestic; U.S. military in Okinawa Okinawa Kenjinkai, 206n46 Okinawan-Bolivians: as ethnic minority in Bolivia, 52, 183; farm owners, 8, 12, 18–19, 35, 38–39, 42, 54–82, 156–157, 184, 185; genchi-jin, 208n10; marriage with non-Nikkei Bolivians, 20, 28, 116, 146, 158–165, 171–174, 201nn15–16, 213n5; marriage with other foreign immigrants in Japan, 214n9; Nikkei-jin laborers in Japan, 8, 83–112, 165–174, 186; pan-Nikkei organizations, 28; passing as “domestic” Okinawans in Japan, 108–112, 186; population, 12, 27, 27t, 34, 39– 44, 40t, 44f, 52; racialized categories in Bolivia, 74–82; racialized categories in Japan, 102–112; social divide with non-Nikkei Bolivians, 14, 29, 41–42, 54–62, 55f, 65–82, 148–152, 185; socioeconomics in Colonia Okinawa, 39–42, 45, 53–58, 57t, 62–82, 185; stereotypes, 77, 82, 105–108, 125–126, 147, 174–178. See also Colonia Okinawa; dekasegi; gender relationships; Issei; Nisei; schools Okinawan-Brazilians, 25–26, 40, 199n9 Okinawan enclaves: Colonia Okinawa, 55, 56f; Hawai‘i, 27; Micronesia, 27; Tsurumi, 206n46. See also housing Okinawan language, 191n1, 196n24; in Colonia Okinawa, 35, 36–37, 39; dekasegi in Japan, 22, 36; interviews, 15–16; prohibited in Brazil, 26; teachers from Okinawa, 127–128 Okinawanness, 4, 127–129; boundaries with Japaneseness, 26, 186; embodied, 128, 129, 141, 185–186, 199n10;

values, 125–126, 133, 136–138, 139– 140, 144, 209n8. See also competitiveness; racialization Okinawans, domestic: dekasegi passing as, 108–112, 186; in Japan, 102– 112, 210n14; stereotypes, 108–112, 127–129, 186; teachers in Colonia Okinawa, 119, 126–129, 139–140, 141. See also Okinawa; Okinawan language Okinawa Numero Uno Japanese-Bolivian School, 116–145, 152, 211n3 Ong, Aihwa, 9, 195n17 Osterweil, Marc, 81 O’Sullivan, Tim, 4 Others: Bolivian racialized categories, 74–75, 82, 185, 188; dekasegi in Japan, 181; “gender regime,” 147; Japanese colonized, 24, 199n10. See also boundaries; discrimination; stereotypes Palumbo-Liu, David, 7 paternalism, patrones, 71–74, 78 patrones, 18–19, 35, 38–39, 42, 54–82, 139–140, 185. See also farm owners Paz Estenssoro, Victor, 34, 61, 206n44 Peru: British-owned sugarcane plantations, 26, 199n11; migration to Bolivia from, 26, 199n11; Nikkei-jin, 5–6, 103, 197n1, 199n8 physical skills, Okinawan-Bolivians valuing, 125–126, 138, 209n8 politics, 26; communist threat, 29, 30, 32, 184, 202n25; dōka policies, 25, 30; Japan imperialist rule over Okinawans, 23, 24, 25, 30, 35–36, 184, 191n1 population: Bolivian national/Santa Cruz Prefecture whites, 37, 203n32; Bolivian nationals in Japan, 16; Colonia Okinawa, 12, 34, 39–44, 40t, 44f, 52; Colonia Okinawa students, 115–116, 115t, 211n3; Naichi-jin in

INDEX

Bolivia, 27t; Nikkei-jin in Bolivia, 12, 27t, 203n29; non-Nikkei Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, 40t, 42, 52; Okinawa, 29, 32; Okinawan-Bolivians, 12, 27, 27t, 34, 39–44, 40t, 44f, 52; Okinawans and Japanese ordered by U.S. to return to Japan, 31; Riberalta immigrants, 12, 200n12. See also migrations race concept, 13, 194nn10; anthropological, 5–6, 192n5; Japanese, 192n3; symbolic capital, 7, 14, 17–18, 38, 42 racialization, 5–9, 19, 55–56, 183–184; Bolivian categories, 37–38, 41, 74– 82, 125–132, 139–140, 144; of class, 5–9, 37–39, 41–42, 65–82, 161–162, 185; of culture, 5–9, 41–42, 193n6; gender and, 146–147; Nihonjin in Japan, 101–112; Okinawan-Bolivians in Yokohama, 8, 102–112, 174–178, 186; Okinawans from Okinawa Prefecture in Japan, 103–112; “racialized belonging,” 2–10, 19–20, 53, 55, 183–189, 192n3, 195n16. See also racialized boundaries; stereotypes racialized boundaries, 9, 71, 103–106; colonizers and colonized, 4, 23, 24, 29, 76–77, 198n5, 199n10; Japanese and Bolivians/South Americans, 110, 192n4; Japanese Naichi-jin supervisors and Okinawan-Bolivian workers, 102; Japanese and non-Nikkei Bolivians, 14; “Japaneseness” and “Okinawanness,” 26, 186; OkinawanBolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians, 29, 65, 155–157, 188, 208n8; Okinawan-Bolivians and their Others, 74–75, 82, 185, 188; Okinawans and Japanese, 110, 186 resistance: by farm laborers, 73–74, 78– 79, 208n9 returnees: to Colonia Okinawa from Japan, 22, 31, 49, 51–52, 75, 103, 146,

253

149, 161, 166–182, 205n42, 206n43; to Japan after U.S. occupation, 31; to Okinawa from former Japanese colonies, 31–32 Riberalta: immigrant population, 12, 200n12; Okinawans, 27, 28, 29, 200n15 Roediger, David, 76 Rollins, Judith, 155 rubber industry: in Bolivia, 26–27, 199n11, 200n12 Ryūkyū, 191n1; annexation of (1879), 25; Government of the Ryūkyū Islands (after 1952), 29–33, 35t, 201n22, 202n27; kingdom, 24; USCAR, 30–34, 201nn18, 22, 202n25. See also Okinawa Sanchez de Lozada, G., 61–62 Sansei: in Colonia Okinawa, 12, 64 sanshin music, 13, 26, 141 Santa Cruz Prefecture, 10, 12, 28–29, 33– 34, 195n19; agriculture, 41, 202n25; Nikkei-jin population, 12, 203n29; Okinawan-Bolivians’ changing socioeconomic status, 185; Okinawans marrying non-Nikkei Bolivians (1952), 201n15; racialized class structure, 37; Santa Cruz de la Sierra, 10, 12, 34, 62–64, 207n6, 209n1; unpredictable local weather, 50; white population, 37, 203n32. See also Colonia Okinawa Saucedo, Diego, 37 schools, 19, 113–145, 187, 210n1; chores, 139–141; Colegio Evangelica Metodista Colonia Okinawa, 114–116, 115t, 123f; Colegio San Francisco Xavier, 114–115; in community events, 118–119, 125, 127, 132–133, 140–142, 152; dekasegi in Japan, 170; economics, 114, 115–116, 210n2, 212n11; fieldworker as postgraduate, 15, 17; Japanese culture, 3–4, 19, 117, 132; key actors, 119–132; Nisei higher education, 62–64, 208n6, 209n1; nonNikkei Bolivian students, 119–120;

254

INDEX

Nueva Esperanza School, 113, 128, 139, 210n1, 211n7; Okinawa Numero Uno Japanese-Bolivian School, 116– 145, 152, 211n3; racialized categories, 125–132, 139–140, 144; shaping “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diasporic subjects, 4, 19, 20, 113–145, 187; student populations, 115–116, 115t, 211n3. See also teachers sexuality, 147; racialized stereotypes, 107–108, 154, 158–165, 174–178, 181–182, 188, 201n16, 208n11. See also gender relationships shimedaiko drum, 141–144, 143f Shishi-Mai/Lion Dance, 142f Siles Zuazo, Hernán, 45 Skuse, Paul H., 32 Small, Stephen, 65 socialization: dekasegi in Japan, 17, 168– 169, 174–178, 180–181, 210n14, 214n8; between Okinawan-Bolivian and non-Nikkei Bolivian students, 120. See also community events; marriage; schools socioeconomics, 3, 26; Bolivia, 62; embodied, 55, 81, 84, 157; host societies, 26; Japan, 45–46, 53; non-Nikkei Bolivians, 41–42, 54–74, 76–82; Okinawan-Bolivians in Colonia Okinawa, 39–42, 45, 53–58, 57t, 62–82, 185; Okinawan-Bolivians in Japan, 46–47, 90–91; Okinawan-Bolivians in La Paz, 28, 29, 200n14; Okinawan-Bolivian urban-rural contrasts, 28, 29, 62–65; social divide between Okinawan-Bolivians and non-Nikkei Bolivians, 14, 29, 41–42, 54–62, 55f, 65–82, 148– 152, 185. See also class; economics; farm owners; labor/laborers South American Nikkei-jin in Japan, 8, 83–112, 186, 197n1, 209n2; Brazilian, 5–6, 103, 107–108, 174–175, 192n4, 210n13; Naichi-jin discrimination vs., 105–106, 210n13; Okinawan-Bolivian,

8, 83–112, 186; Peruvian, 5–6, 103, 174, 197n1, 199n8; stereotypes, 107– 108, 209n8. See also dekasegi soybean production, Okinawan-Bolivian, 42–43, 47, 50–51, 67f Spanish language, 15–16, 17–18, 171, 196n25 spatial/deference boundaries, 5, 20, 155– 157, 181, 188, 208n8 speech contest, Japanese language, 133– 136, 138, 212nn9–10 stereotypes, racialized, 144–145; of Naichi-jin, 103–108, 128, 147, 174–178; of non-Nikkei Bolivians, 20, 41–42, 77–82, 107, 111, 120, 131–132, 139– 140, 154, 158–165, 201n16, 205n39, 208n11; of Okinawan-Bolivians, 77, 82, 105–108, 125–126, 147, 174–178; of “real” Okinawans, 108–112, 127– 129, 186; sexualized, 107–108, 154, 158–165, 174–178, 181–182, 188, 201n16, 208n11 “subject positions,” 2, 4, 8, 22–23, 53, 195nn16–17; colonized, 4, 23, 24, 29, 184, 198n5, 199n10; defined, 4; education as “good” Nikkei Bolivian and Okinawan diasporic subjects, 4, 19, 20, 113–145, 187; everyday practices, 2, 8, 9, 18, 20, 53, 55, 65–69, 157, 180, 185; “gender regimes,” 147, 165, 174, 178, 180–181; nationless, 23, 29, 35, 52, 178, 184, 186, 194n14, 198n4; Okinawa-Bolivian farmers and nonNikkei laborers, 82, 185; “polluted,” 192n4; state institutions and, 55. See also citizenship; dekasegi; embodiment; labor/laborers; nationality; racialization; transnationalization sugarcane plantations: British-owned in Peru, 26, 199n11 symbolic capital, race as, 7, 14, 17–18, 38, 42 Takezawa Yasuko, 6, 8, 194n13 T Denki, 17–18, 86–88, 90, 91–108, 174– 176, 209n8

teachers, 113, 116, 117, 119–132; fieldworker as, 12–13, 15, 17, 113, 120, 124, 125, 133–134, 138, 211n7; Japaneselanguage, 12–13, 15, 17, 113, 119, 120–126, 130; JICA senior volunteer, 121, 123–124, 152, 211nn5, 7; Naichijin, 119, 122–126; Nisei OkinawanBolivian, 119, 129–132; from Okinawa Prefecture, 119, 126–129, 139–140, 141; Spanish-class, 119, 120–122 thefts, 212n8; by farm laborers, 73–74, 78–79; in schools, 115 Tigner, James L., 32 Tomiyama Ichirō, 23, 199n10 track meet, 136–138, 137f transnationalization, 4–5, 9, 29, 35, 52, 183–189; class transitions, 4, 83–112, 188–189; gender and, 146–147, 165– 182; “racialized belonging,” 3–9, 19– 20, 53, 55, 183–189. See also dekasegi; migrations Tsuda, Takeyuki, 6, 15, 192n4, 210n13 Tsujimoto Masahiro, 167, 177, 206nn43, 45, 209n8, 210n14, 214n8 Tsurumi Ward, 16–18, 46, 83–86, 166– 174, 206n46, 214n8 Uchināguchi. See Okinawan language United States: aid to Bolivia, 33, 202n25; Civil Administration of the Ryūkyū Islands (USCAR), 30–34, 201nn18, 22, 202n25; and communist threat, 29, 30, 32, 184; fieldworker time in, 195n18; Inca Rubber Company, 26– 27; internment camps for Japanese, 200n13; sponsoring migration of Okinawans to Bolivia, 29–36, 202nn25,

INDEX

255

27; Technical Assistance Mission (USTAM) in Colonia Okinawa, 39– 40. See also U.S. military in Okinawa Urciuoli, Bonnie, 8 Uruma Agricultural Society, 28–29, 34, 201n17, 203n30 Uruma disease, 34 U.S. military in Okinawa, 197n3, 198n4, 201nn19–21; occupation (1945–1972), 23, 29–34, 39–40, 52, 191n1, 201n19 wages: farm laborers in Colonia Okinawa, 69, 207n7; in Japan, 86–89, 90; U.S. military bases in Okinawa, 201n20. See also income Walby, Sylvia, 147 “whites,” 6–7, 193n7, 194n9; Bolivian blanco, 37–38, 41–42, 81, 203n31; Bolivian hakujin, 75, 79–82; Santa Cruz Prefecture/Bolivian national population, 37, 203n32 Willis, Paul, 101, 194n8 women. See females work ethic: Japanese, 104, 170; Okinawan, 127–129, 139–140, 144; OkinawanBolivian, 105, 122, 133, 136, 139 World War II: Battle of Okinawa (1945), 29, 30, 197n3, 198n4; internment camps in U.S., 200n13; Japan’s surrender to Allies (August 15, 1945), 29 yobiyose, to Bolivia, 27, 27t, 28 Yokohama, 14–15, 214n8; dekasegi, 3, 8, 16–18, 22–23, 43f, 46–53, 83–112, 160, 162, 166–176, 195n16, 209nn1, 8; Tsurumi Ward of, 16–18, 46, 83– 86, 166–174, 206n46, 214n8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Taku Suzuki received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Minnesota and is now an assistant professor in the international studies program at Denison University in Ohio. He teaches courses in introductory international studies, globalization and diversification of Japanese society, trans-Pacific Asian communities and identities, race and class formations in a global perspective, and comparative Asian immigrant experiences in the Americas.

Production Notes for Suzuki | Embodying Belonging Cover design by Wilson Angel Text design by University of Hawai‘i Press production staff â•…â•‡ with display type in Seria Sans and text type in Warnock Pro Composition by Julie Matsuo-Chun Printing and binding by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Printed on 60# EB Opaque, 500 ppi

(Continued from front flap)

self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves — as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia. Racializing narratives and performances ideologically serve as both a cause and result of Okinawan-Bolivians’ social and economic status as successful large-scale farm owners in rural Bolivia and struggling manual laborers in urban Japan. As the most comprehensive work available on Okinawan immigrants in Latin America and ethnic Okinawan “return” migrants in Japan, Embodying Belonging is at once a critical examination of the contradictory class and cultural identity (trans)formations of transmigrants, a rich qualitative study of colonial and postcolonial subjects in diaspora, and a bold attempt to theorize racialization as a social process of belonging within local and global schemes. TAKU SUZUKI is assistant professor of international studies at Denison University, Granville, Ohio.

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES/ANTHROPOLOGY

SUZUKI Embodying Belonging is the first full-length study of an Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Of related interest:

Okinawan Diaspora Edited by Ronald Y. Nakasone 2002, 216 pages Paper: ISBN 978-0-8248-2530-0

Okinawa, Japan

The first Okinawan immigrants arrived in Honolulu in January 1900 to work as contract laborers on Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations. Over time Okinawans would continue migrating east to the continental U.S., Canada, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Cuba, Paraguay, New Caledonia, and the islands of Micronesia. The essays in this volume commemorate these diasporic experiences within the geopolitical context of East Asia. Using primary sources and oral history, individual contributors examine how Okinawan identity was constructed in the various countries to which Okinawans migrated, and how their experiences were shaped by the Japanese nation-building project and by globalization. Essays explore the return to Okinawan sovereignty, or what Nobel Laureate Òe Kenzaburò called an “impossible possibility,” and the role of the Okinawan labor diaspora in Japan’s imperial expansion into the Philippines and Micronesia.

Okinawa City Cover art: “Monumento al Colono de Okinawa” sculpted by Germán Garcia Miranda Cover design: Wilson Angel

UNIVERSITY of HAWAI‘I PRESS Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888

ISBN 978-0-8248-3344-2

Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

90000

9 780824 833442 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu

TA K U S U Z U K I

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational OkinawanBolivians underwent the various racialization processes — in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and

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