Interviews

1. The Nikkei Integration into society (Spanish)

2. Is non-integration due to the distrust because of what happened in the Second World War? (Spanish)

3. Looking Inside (Spanish)

4. I’m a Japanese, Peruvian… who am I? (Spanish)

5. Being a Nikkei today (Spanish)

6. Nikkei identity (Spanish)

7. Does a Nikkei culture exist? (Spanish)

8. Necessary apologies (Spanish)

9. Japanese immigration with an Okinawan face (Spanish)

10. The Okinawan idiosyncrasies (Spanish)

11. Ambassador of Good Will (Spanish)

12. Ambassador’s job (Spanish)

13. Histories of immigrants (Spanish)

14. The myth of the sacrifice of immigrants (Spanish)

15. Paisaje terrestre [Terrestrial landscape] (Spanish)

16. Feminist, ecologist, Buddhist… activist (Spanish)

17. The poet is going to hibernate (Spanish)

Doris Moromisato

(b. 1962) Peruvian Poet, Okinawan descendant

The Nikkei Integration into society (Spanish)

(Spanish) This fusion of the Japanese with Peruvians still hasn’t taken place because even today we still have the immigrant’s mentality, do we not? We’re their descendants, us, and we still feel this sense of logic of ‘survivors of the survivors’, right? That is why we have strong ideas of saving, to surpass adversities of solidarity, do we not? It’s good in a way, but bad in another. Or sometimes, it’s just what it is: not good not bad, just what it is. And I think that is the reason it hasn’t taken place yet, because in the end, what does an immigrant think? That he’s going to return. The funny thing is that we’re not going to return, are we? Because with the dekasegi phenomenon, the experience of the massive relocation of Peruvians working in Japan, we found ourselves with the truth: We’re not from Japan, we’re from Peru. And sometimes in Peru, people like us and sometimes they don’t, and we have to live with that. But I think that is basically because of this mentality that we still think we’re immigrants.

dekasegi foreign workers identity immigration Nikkei in Japan Peru

Date: February 26, 2008

Location: Lima, Peru

Interviewer: Harumi Nako

Contributed by: Asociación Peruano Japonesa (APJ)

Interviewee Bio

Doris Moromisato Miasato (1962) was born in Chambala, an agricultural zone of Lima, Peru. She graduated with a degree in Law and Political Science at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

She has published the collection of poems Morada donde la luna perdió su palidez [Home were the moon lost its paleness] (1988), Chambala era un camino [Chambala was the path] (1999), Diario de la mujer es ponja [Diary of a Jap woman] (2004), Paisaje Terrestre [Terrestrial Path] (2007), as well as the story book Okinawa, un siglo en el Perú [Okinawa. A century in Peru] (2006). Her poems, stories, essays, and features have also been included in several anthologies and have been translated into several languages.

She is an ecologist, feminist and Buddhist. In 2006, the Okinawa Municipality nominated her as an Ambassador of Good Will. Nowadays, she is columnist for the Discover Nikkei Website, and since 2005 she has managed the organization of book fairs as Cultural Director of Cámara Peruana del Libro. (February 26, 2008)