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)

What is Nikkei?

I think it’s unrelated to the Japanese language or Japanese culture. I think that to be of Japanese descent means you can speak Japanese, you know about the country and you care about it.

In Brazil, there are second- or third-generation Japanese who have non-Japanese parents and that continues. And so, gradually, the connection to Japan becomes weaker over time. And so, of course they are Japanese diaspora, but in that sense they only retain East Asian features, so you can’t really say they are Japanese descendants.

But I think being of Japanese descent means to value your lineage and roots, to have some interest in Japanese culture, whether it’s movies, anime, manga or traditional Japanese arts or literature.

What we should cherish as Japanese descendants is having an interest in Japan, not just our features or lineage.

culture identity Japanese culture Nikkei United States

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)