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

Looking Inside (Spanish)

(Spanish) Look, when you ask a Jewish person why they always marry within their culture, they answer that it’s because of anti-Zionism, because of an anti-Judaism notion, and we can’t say the same. I can’t… I have 31 nephews and 31 nieces, and most of them have married between Nikkei people. And if you ask them, they’re not going to say it’s because of an anti-Japanese notion. They’ll say no, because it’s the way it is. Our cultural education is so strong that even the non-cultural, which is desire and attraction, turns into something cultural. That is to say you don’t feel a sexual appetite for someone who is not from your same race. You may feel it but you censure it.

culture families identity

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)