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)

Proud of having been involved in human resource development

Another thing I did was the Japan-Brazil Exchange Association. From 1981 to 2005, over the course of 25 years, we brought 750 Japanese students to Brazil where they would work and study for one year. I took on about 30 of them and gave them scholarships that allowed them to study.

Well, it was a mixed bag. Some did well and others didn’t. Out of 30 people, three went on to do doctoral degrees in Japan and three of them became university professors. Some joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some joined the Japan Foundation. If there’s anything in my life I’m proud of, I think it would probably be that I provided that education and talent development. The work I did with the Immigration Museum is also important, CIATE’s support for Brazilians going to work in Japan was also important. But I think I can take the most pride in the work related to education and talent development.

educational exchanges exchange students international education Japan student exchange programs students youth

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)