Interviews

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

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

3. How he met his wife

4. Japanese language education for children

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

6. Proud of having been involved in human resource development

7. Brazilians with a Japanese identity

8. I want to restore my Japanese nationality

9. What is Nikkei?

10. From immigrant boy to doctor of Law

11. From scrubbing pad factory worker to tailor

12. Occupations of early Japanese immigrants

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

14. My father forced me to speak Japanese at home

15. Life on board the migrant ship

16. Closed Japanese community

17. Foreign language education was severely restricted during the war

18. Winners and losers

Ninomiya,Masato

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

This page may include translations provided by Google Translate. [Original]

Brazilians with a Japanese identity

So I'm considered bilingual. I speak Japanese, so I guess everyone thinks I'm Japanese. What Japanese people find really strange is that when a phone call comes in or a Brazilian person comes in, I immediately switch to Portuguese. It's a really impressive way to switch.

As for my identity at that time, I was naturalized as a Brazilian at the age of 20. So I have been living as a Brazilian for 50 years. My Japanese citizenship was lost at that time. So, on my identity card I have Brazilian citizenship and a Brazilian passport. I have permanent residency in Japan, but I am a foreigner in Japan.

However, that is just on paper. When asked "What is your nationality?" I would answer Brazilian, but at the same time, I have a sense of identity as a Japanese person, or in some ways even more so than most Japanese people.

There are quite a few things that I think a Brazilian person wouldn't react to, but when I think about it, there are some things that are just normal for a Brazilian person speaking Portuguese.

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)