Argentina and Brazil, the two giants of South America, celebrate this year the first centenary of Okinawan immigration. Its programs include concerts, forums, sports tournaments and eisa or artistic marches. Coincidentally, in Peru the book Okinawa: the kingdom of courtesy and testimony of an Okinawan Peruvian by Ricardo Munehide Ganaja Kamisato has just been published, which sheds light on a common theme for the majority of Okinawan Nikkei communities: the theme of search of a Japanese-Okinawa identity and, in this case, Peruvian.
Okinawan immigration to America
It was the unbearable poverty and worsening economic conditions imposed by the expansive Japanese state that pushed thousands of Okinawans to emigrate abroad. The forced payment of high taxes no longer allowed them to survive in the rugged nature of the 160 islands that make up the Okinawa prefecture. Thus, its inhabitants freely chose various destinations, among which was the American continent. Kyuzo Toyama, called the “Father of Okinawan emigrants” and an official of emigration companies, was the main organizer of the departure of his countrymen abroad.
The most coveted destinations were the United States, Canada and Hawaii. In 1904, a group arrived in the Philippines to work on the plantations, and another group landed in Mexico to work in the mines and railroad companies. In 1906 the destination was Peru, where they worked on sugar cane farms. According to Lesley Chinen 1 , in Cuba the migration of Okinawans began in 1907. That same year a group of workers arrived in Canada. In 1908, the destination was Brazil to work on the coffee plantations. Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia, Paraguay, among other Latin American territories, would follow.
Testimony of a Peruvian Okinawan Nikkei
Many books have been written about Japanese immigration to Peru, but the book Okinawa: the kingdom of courtesy and testimony of an Okinawan Peruvian has the value that testimonies have: that of the self-construction of oneself through the story. In it, its author, Ricardo Munehide Ganaja Kamisato, tells of the process of building a community of immigrants through the experience of an individual, from his intimacies, private spaces, daily life, experiences and his expectations as a Peruvian citizen. In fact, it is the story of a human group told from within and impregnated with joy, anger, confusion, and a lot of humor.
What is valuable about this book is the sincerity of its author in describing the construction of his identity based on self-exclusion and awareness of marginalization in the Nikkei community; That is, it recounts the internal conflicts between Japanese and Okinawan descendants, showing how these differences become discriminations and hierarchies that dominate the thoughts, discourses and relationships between its members. Added to this internal conflict are racial prejudices and contempt against the Peruvian inhabitants, especially from Andean territories called mountain ranges. It is not strange, then, that Ganaja in a passage of the book asks if, because he is of Okinawan origin, he is a prestigious Japanese or a devalued Okinawan mountain man?
The most remarkable thing about his texts is that, as he narrates his life, Ganaja recognizes his different identities and, in the end, celebrates above all the idea of being the repository of an Okinawan culture characterized by joy, generosity, passion and courtesy, which is nothing more than a consequence of the warm landscapes and the permanent pacifist history of the ancient Ryu Kyu Empire, today called Okinawa.
A historical and testimonial book
What is the origin of Okinawa: the kingdom of courtesy and testimony of an Okinawan Peruvian ? In 2006, Ricardo Munehide Ganaja visited Okinawa for the first time to participate in the IV Uchinanchu Taikai, which is celebrated every five years and where Okinawan descendants scattered throughout the diaspora of history meet again to celebrate cultural persistence. from its Uchinanchuu roots. Ganaja, who was 43 years old at the time, went as a tourist but really wanted to visit his obaachan or grandmother's house, hidden in the rugged northern hills of Nago Shi. During his stay in Okinawa, he was deeply impressed by the warmth of its inhabitants.
This visit was the spark that awakened his longing for answers to the questions of his childhood and youth, and that same spark led him to the book Okinawa. The History of an Island People by George H. Kerr. Without respite, Ganaja dedicated himself to translating the monumental 600-page book, published entirely in English. A kind of historical anxiety and search for identity seemed to dominate him. Why had Ganaja, a businessman dedicated to his finances, decided to translate Kerr's work in its entirety? That single gesture revealed his need for self-construction, his need for existential certainty to answer himself the eternal questions that haunt humanity: What am I? Where did I come from? Where does my blood go? What is it? my transcendence?
Kerr's historical research and Ganaja's experiences constitute the structure of the book. Intimacy and epic, everyday life and epic, micro and macro history. A counterpoint that we clearly visualize to narrate the construction of a Peruvian identity in a non-Peruvian context ( Nikkei community) and the analogy with a symbolic world and with Japanese and Okinawan historical processes. Of course, what most attracts those who read it are not Kerr's historical texts but the sometimes tender, sometimes humorous, sometimes cruel scenes of Peruvian Nikkei, loaded with slang and popular Lima speech.
Rescuing speech or nihongo from home
As I said before, Ganaja is a prosperous businessman who had never written a book in his life. The main purpose that motivated him to this publishing adventure was to leave a legacy to his three children, so that they would know where their Okinawan ancestors had come from. The author confesses that he underwent strict discipline to transcribe on paper what was stirring in his brain and heart. Thus, they emerged from their memories and in record time, chapter after chapter. A true exercise in catharsis and a journey to the seed.
It is important to rescue in this work the work of collecting Okinawan words, written with the Spanish phonetic alphabet, which have persisted as an oral tradition and which even in Okinawa are no longer used; That is to say, they have been recovered as they sound and not as they should properly be written, since the objective has been to maintain as faithfully as possible what Ganaja calls “the nihongo of home”; that is, a reformulated language - a mixture of old Japanese, Okinawan and Spanish - like the one used - and still use - by the majority of Okinawan immigrants.
New answers to old questions
Reading Ganaja Kamisato, I completely understand his motivations. Declaring myself Peruvian a thousand times, I never disdained my Japanese culture. But questions constantly haunted my conscience.
The image of my father still remains in my memory, wrapped in the clandestine serenity of the night, singing old songs from his homeland. His voice - the broken timbre of his voice - seemed to take him back to territories of the soul where everything is filled with melancholy, where age dissipates and nothing exists except the landscape that is built with a yearning, resigned, sad heart. I was very young and I never managed to understand what their songs were saying. The same sadness covered my mother, even if she juggled to make us laugh, even if she cooked tempuras and sweet potatoes on the house's huge stove. I grew up with that melancholy and suspected that they had left something more than their towns and their families when they crossed thousands of miles to settle in the Peruvian landscape. What did they leave there so that for decades they would remember their rice fields, the beaches and the torrential summer rains? From what powerful roots did they emerge so that for fifty years they would never abandon their divinities, their language, the way of harvesting the land, of eating? , live and love like typical uchinanchuu ?
I only found out when in 2006 I also attended the IV Uchinanchu Taikai, and visited what for me was the legend and myth told by my father and my mother. Fascinated, absolutely overwhelmed by the beauty of its landscape and its people, Okinawa appeared before me and was more than Shangri-La, El dorado, Macondo, Yoknapatawpha and Comala combined, because all my questions found their answers when my fantasies met. to become a single wonder: Okinawa. Upon arriving in that beautiful territory I was finally able to confirm what sounds I came from, what colors, what screams, hurricanes, corals, leafy hills, under what overwhelming sun my relatives grew up, what rays of full moons fell on my grandmother that I never knew. , what beautiful clouds surrounded my ancestral genes. No book or science had the powerful ability to return me to myself, and find me renewed, fertile, amazed. My false and only identity, doubtful and intermittent, today has been crushed by the joy of my multiple identities and the certainty of my earthly and human roots.
Like Ricardo Munehide Ganaja Kamisato, recognizing myself as Okinawan, Japanese and Peruvian - the latter with all its multicultural traits - makes me free and, finally, I feel that I am closer to finding happiness.
Notes:
1. Chinen, Lesley. Meeting with the Cubanchu "brothers". Worldwide Uchinanchu joins Cuban Okinawans in celebrating the Centennial. Discover Nikkei. Edition of 06/18/2008.
© 2008 Doris Moromisato
