On June 18, 2008, Japanese immigration completed its first centenary in Brazil.

Japanese language teaching began in the context of immigration (Doi: 2006). In the beginning, many immigrants were sent to the interior of the state of São Paulo, as settlers, to replace slave labor on coffee farms. After fulfilling contracts and achieving a more stable economic condition, around the 1920s, Japanese groups began to emerge, made up of small land owners and tenants. Thus, many Japanese colonies were formed in rural areas along the railway lines (Noroeste, Paulista and Sorocabana) in the state of São Paulo, built at the height of coffee farming.

From the western region of the interior of São Paulo, many immigrants also headed to the north of Paraná in search of fertile land, settling there. These are the cities of Londrina, Maringá and surrounding areas, where there is also a large concentration of Japanese people and their descendants. Other colonies were also formed in the states of Pará, Amazonas, Mato Grosso do Sul, for example. And in these cities where there are Japanese, you can usually find a community school (CE).

In the book História da Educação Japonesa da Alta Paulista (1941), one of the rare records on Japanese education in the pre-war period from the perspective of teachers, there are reports of the formation of ECs in immigrant centers, in the surroundings of the city of Marilia and surrounding areas. (Paulista railway line), between the 1920s and 1930s. In these descriptions, it is possible to understand how the ECs sprouted – almost spontaneously – in each of the centers, like an informal education system in the hands of volunteers and hired teachers.

In the ECs, Japanese was taught from the perspective of the Mother Tongue (LM), remaining as a language of communication, since the majority of immigrants intended to return to Japan. Seen from a broad perspective, the ECs not only taught Japanese , but they also filled a need in the Brazilian educational system, as there were rarely schools in the locations where the immigrants had settled. Furthermore, the first Brazilian schools, called Rural Schools, served in multigrade classes (the first three years of primary school), so that anyone who wanted to continue their studies had to travel to the urban area. Many descendants ended up going to EC because it offered a longer period of study (six years), with imported textbooks.

Until there were restrictions on the teaching of Japanese, in 1938, the ECs worked from strength to strength, following a Japanese protocol, with all the rituals of the beginning of class ceremony, graduations to the sound of the Japanese national anthem, bowing to the image of the emperor and declamation of imperial edicts on education. There were also classes in moral and civic education and mathematics, all taught in Japanese.

Between 1941 and 1945, the Japanese language was banned from the social and public life of immigrants and descendants. Due to Brazil's position alongside the Allies, immigrants became enemies of the Brazilian nation. The teaching of Japanese was prohibited for children under 14 years of age, newspapers and magazines in Japanese stopped circulating; Safe passage began to be required for traffic outside the residential area. Not to mention frankly punitive measures, such as the arrest of teachers and community leaders, incineration of books and confiscation of property.

In the post-war period, the Japanese language began to be taught from the perspective of a heritage language (HL), since descendants began to continue their studies at the Brazilian school, going to increasingly advanced levels, favoring the development of bilingualism among Nikkei descendants.

In the 1950s, once the harm caused by the war had been overcome, the ECs slowly resumed their activities. Unlike pre-war, a time when teachers received direct guidance from representatives of the Japanese government, in the post-war period, there were initiatives to make ECs official, and also to prepare textbooks in Brazil. Institutionalized groups then emerged, such as the Federation of Japanese Teaching Schools in Brazil ( Nichigakuren - 1954-1988), the Brazilian Society of Japanese Culture ( Burajiru Nihon Bunka Kyôkai - 1955) and the current Brazil-Japan Cultural Alliance ( Nichibunren - 1956). Later, in 1985, the three entities will come together to form the current Brazilian Center for Japanese Language, based in São Paulo.

Until the mid-1980s, Japanese was taught as a Heritage Language (HL), a pedagogical perspective that targets descendants with mastery of oral Japanese, within the family and/or intra-community. In this case, the function of the EC was to teach literacy (phonographic and logogrammatic characters) and promote literacy. School activities carried out during this period attest to this trend, reproducing to a certain extent school life in Japan.

In the post-war period, therefore, between the 1950s and 1980s, the role of ECs was complementary, adding activities that were little explored in Brazilian (public) schools, such as the development of subjects focused on arts and music, commonly known as jôsôkyôiku (valuation classes in humanistic training). Furthermore, another strong activity that maintained the union of descendants was sports practice, which was widespread not only in the community but there were also inter-community championships, favoring intense social and cultural contact between the Japanese and their descendants, as a space for preserving the Japanese language, culture and values. This system, from the point of view of bilingualism, allowed descendants a rich experience in functionally distinct environments, with different objectives, today largely valued in bilingual education.

Although questions about foreign language teaching have been the subject of debate since the 1950s in seminars and in the editorials of Japanese newspapers published in Brazil, it was from 1980 onwards that issues relating to methodology began to be more prominent in relation to the conception of teaching. From 2000 onwards, the massive influx of students (descendants and non-descendants) without any knowledge of the language led teachers to reflect further. In this sense, the change in the profile of students brings new changes to the Japanese teaching-learning scenario in Brazil, eliminating the ethnic border for the study of language and culture, until then considered the prerogative of descendants.

In the context of public schools, USP was the first higher education institution in the country to open an undergraduate course in Japanese, in 1964, and also the only one – until now – to offer a postgraduate course (at master's level) in 1996. New undergraduate courses were then created throughout Brazil: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1979), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (1986), Universidade Estadual Paulista (1992), Fundação Universidade de Brasília 1997), University State of Rio de Janeiro (2003) and Federal University of Paraná (2009).

Since 1987, in a foreign language program implemented in public schools, some primary and secondary schools also began to offer Japanese as an optional extracurricular subject. In the state of São Paulo there are thirteen units of Language Centers (CEL), and, in Paraná, eleven Centers for Modern Foreign Languages ​​(CELEM), according to data from the Japan Foundation (2006).

Brazil, therefore, is moving towards diversity, since, even in ECs, on average, 20% of students who study Japanese are students without Japanese ancestry, while this rate can still increase to 80% when it comes to teaching public or in ECs where there is no concentration of Japanese, Japanese having achieved the status of a foreign language.
To give you an idea of ​​the current situation, Brazil occupies 13th. place in the world ranking for the number of Japanese students; nationwide, there are 21,631 students, 544 educational institutions and 1,213 Japanese teachers (Japan Foundation, 2006).

Bibliographical sources

DEMARTINI, Zeila de Brito Fabri. Oral reports from Japanese immigrant families: elements for the history of Brazilian education. In: Education and Society , year XXI, no. 72, August 2000, pp. 43-72.

DOI, ET Teaching Japanese as an immigration language. In: Linguistic Studies XXXV, 2006, pp. 66-75.

JAPAN FOUNDATION. Directory of Japanese-language educational institutions abroad (2006). http://www.jpf.go.jp/ Accessed November 10, 2007.

HANDA, T. The Japanese immigrant – The story of his life in Brazil. São Paulo: T. A Queiroz, 1987.

MORIWAKI, R. Nihongo kyôiku no hensen (The transition of the guiding philosophy of Japanese language teaching). Center for Japanese-Brazilian Studies. No. 2, 1998, p. 71-85.

MORIWAKI, R. Nihongo kyôiku no hensen II (The transition of the guiding philosophy of Japanese language teaching – 2nd part). Center for Japanese-Brazilian Studies. No. 4, 1999, pp. 43-75.

SAITO, Hiroshi. The Japanese in Brazil – study of mibolity and fixation. Editora Sociologia e Política, 1981.

SHIBATA, H. Japanese schools in São Paulo (1915 – 1945) : The affirmation of an ethnic identity. Master's thesis, FEUSP, 1997.

TERAKADO, Y. et. there. Pa Enchôsen Kyôikushi (History of Education in Alta Paulista). Nippakusha, 1941.

© 2009 Leiko Matsubara Morales