Interviews

1. Father’s Reason For Moving to Argentina (Japanese)

2. Nikkei Businesses in Buenos Aires (Japanese)

3. Escobar’s Immigrant Population (Japanese)

4. Popular Sports in the Nikkei Community (Japanese)

5. Great Japanese Language School in Escobar (Japanese)

6. Serving in Malvinas War and its Impact (Japanese)

7. Nikkei Signalman (Japanese)

8. Supporting Nikkei in Japan (Japanese)

9. Changes in the Nikkei Community in Japan (Japanese)

10. The Next Generation of the Nikkei Community (Japanese)

11. Nikkei Identity (Japanese)

12. Roles You Can Fulfill Being in Japan (Japanese)

13. About Escobar (Spanish)

(b. 1962) Nisei Japanese Argentinian, currently residing in Japan

Escobar’s Immigrant Population (Japanese)

(Japanese) One of Escobar’s big industries is floriculture, and so many Japanese people and Nikkei take up that line of work there. Wherever I went to school, there was always a decent percentage of us. Fortunately, besides Nikkei, there were of course Italians, and also Portuguese and Polish people, and over time there were also a good number of immigrants from Bolivia and Paraguay. So school like municipality accepted children from many different countries without any difficulties. They accepted us Nikkei even if we looked like Asian. We really were welcomed and respected.

And all of our fathers were trying hard in that regard as well, working as members of society. They contributed societies in various ways, so I never really heard about any difficult friction or issues with discrimination.

Argentina Buenos Aires Escobar multiethnicity

Date: September 22, 2019

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Juan Alberto Matsumoto was born in 1962 in the city of Escobar, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received an informal bilingual education attending the Japanese school in Escobar. While he was in college, he enlisted in the Malvinas War (Falklands War) and served as a signalman. Afterwards, he graduated from the University of Salvador in Buenos Aires with a degree in international relations. In 1990, he went to Japan as a government-sponsored student. He majored in Labor law at Yokohama National University where he received a master’s degree.

Currently he serves as a public relations legal translator, a court interpreter, and broadcast interpreter, as well as a lecturer at JICA trainee orientations. He also teaches Spanish language and Latin American politics and law at the University of Shizuoka and occasionally he gives talks on multicultural coexistence. He also provides various supports for Latin American Nikkei living in Japan. (February 2020)