Interviews

1. How he met his wife

2. Life on board the migrant ship

3. Closed Japanese community

4. Japanese language education for children

5. Proud of having been involved in human resource development

6. Brazilians with a Japanese identity

7. I want to restore my Japanese nationality

8. What is Nikkei?

9. What made your parents decide to move to Brazil?

10. From scrubbing pad factory worker to tailor

11. Occupations of early Japanese immigrants

12. My father forced me to speak Japanese at home

13. Winners and losers

14. The winners who remained at the beginning of the migration

15. The Japanese government's mistaken assumptions about Japanese Americans

16. Since childhood, he has been interpreting for his father.

17. Foreign language education was severely restricted during the war

18. From immigrant boy to doctor of Law

Professor of Law, University of Sao Paulo, Lawyer, Translator (b. 1948)

How he met his wife

I took the entrance exam for the University of Sao Paulo Japanese Language Studies Department and in my year there were two people who were not of Japanese descent. They didn’t understand any Japanese and so on the weekends we would gather at one of their places to teach a bit of Japanese. Well, not before long I began to date one of them. While we were just friends, my parents didn’t say anything. But at one point it got out that we were dating and it turned into a bit of a scandal.

But at that time, you see, I more or less decided to go to Japan. My girlfriend was at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Japanese Language Department for four years, and then did Masters Studies and Doctoral Courses at Tsukuba University. So, she was in Japan for 10 years. I also happened to be in Japan for 10 years. By the time I completed my Doctoral studies, well we were at the age where it was about time to get married.

In Japan, she taught Portuguese to people who would be stationed in Brazil. So, when those people came to Brazil and met my parents they would tell them “I met your son’s fiance, she seems really great”. So even my parents figured there was no other way.

families

Date: September 19, 2019

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Yoko Nishimura

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

Interviewee Bio

Masato Ninomiya was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1948 and moved to Brazil at the age of 5 with his family. He currently maintains a legal office in São Paulo, and in addition to working as a Law Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, also serves as Special Assistant to the President at Meiji University and as Visiting Professor of Law at Musashino University. Since its founding in 1992, he has served as President of CIATE (Center for Information and Support to Workers Abroad), Advisor to the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) for Central and South America, and also a Committee Member of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Additionally, he is considered a Nikkei community leader in Brazil, supporting various activities such as improving the working conditions of Brazilian Dekasegi, and the education of Japanese-Brazilian children. . (May 2021)