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

Paisaje terrestre [Terrestrial landscape] (Spanish)

(Spanish) This last book is called Paisaje Terrestre [Terrestrial Landscape], but it is also part of the strategy I set out to follow when I was 17 years old. When I was this age, I set out a life project. I am the last of 11 siblings. I was the only one that went to college, the one who walked two hours. I travelled two hours to come to Lima and two to go back. For six years I had to make a trip of four hours, and walk half an hour on a street of dirt road to study Law in San Marcos, an occupation that I never liked, never liked from the first day (laughs). But then I realized the profession I studied was going to be the same. I only wanted to read, meet people, wanted to know Peru, and in San Marcos I knew it. So, when I was 17 years old I set out three tasks, and look, I have followed the plan. That is part of my education as a daughter of the Japanese: an oath to know how to end something, culminate, and be persistence. I don’t have patience, no, but I am persistent.

identity literature Nikkei United States

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)