I have recently returned to Brazil after spending a year and a half in Japan for research abroad. I am writing this article at the São Paulo Institute of Humanities (commonly known as Jinbunken), where I first stayed after arriving in Brazil in 1996. Taisho Elementary School in the city of São Paulo is said to be the "oldest Japanese educational institution in Brazil," and the current Brazilian Japanese Cultural Association building stands on the site of that school building, and our Jinbunken is located on the third floor of that building.
This time, the research lasted for about a month, and we went from São Paulo to Tupan, Araçatuba, Aliança, Presidente Prudente, and Alvares Machado in the inland area of the state, and then across the state border to Londrina in northern Paraná, before returning to São Paulo. It takes less than an hour by plane from Londrina to Congonhas Airport in São Paulo. When Ujihara Hikoma, a great contributor to the development of Londrina, first traveled to this area in 1929, the train only went as far as Cambalá near the state border, and it took three days to get there from São Paulo, passing through a vast forest where "the only things to see were mountain birds and groups of monkeys" (Numata, 2008, p.6). Ujihara became the manager of the Japanese department of the British Northern Paraná Land Company, and led many Japanese immigrants to this fertile land (Photo 15-1).
Immigrants should build schools first without fail (Shinichi Numata)
Mr. Numata, who wrote this poem, was an immigrant who came to Brazil with his family in 1932 at the age of 14, and was one of the pioneers of Londrina. At that time, Japanese colonies had spread throughout the states of São Paulo and Paraná, and Japanese language education was becoming more and more popular. In the 1910s, Japanese immigrants had barely thought about educating their children, but when several families gathered together, it was common for them to build a "school" (Photo 15-2).
One of the Japanese colonies that pioneered this school education was Alvarez Machado, which we visited this time. The area was developed early, between 1917 and 1918, and schools were also established early. The first branch elementary school there was founded in December 1919 (São Paulo Japanese School Parents Association, 1934, p.6). The school has been closed for a long time, but the school building still remains today, on a small hill overlooking the area on all sides (Photo 15-3).
On this hill, I listened to the stories of three elderly people who grew up in this area. Mr. K (born in 1924) recounted with nostalgia, "We used to be on the other side of that mountain. We used to come here to play school plays, crossing the mountain." From the school building on the hill, he said, he could see the children walking to school from the farmland here and there. As I travel and collect the life histories of immigrants, I realized that there are countless "little stories."
Around the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil in 2008, various publications on Japanese immigrants were published, among which "Japanese immigration to Brazil: A century of history" (2010) can be cited as marking the starting point of research after the "100th anniversary." This book indicates the direction of future "immigration history research" from "grand stories" that span decades to "small stories" (Maruyama, 2010, 75).
The author feels that it is necessary to weave countless "small stories," connect them to the "big story," and examine and reconstruct the "big story" from these "small stories." In doing so, we must reconsider the meaning of Japanese people coming to South America, on the other side of the world, clearing vast forests, building schools, and teaching children the Japanese language. We must also reexamine the meaning of the Japanese language and culture that have been passed down despite being banned as an appropriate foreign language during the war and being obstructed by Brazilian authorities on multiple occasions.
For example, just thinking about the children who studied at Japanese educational institutions such as Taisho Elementary School and Seishu Gijuku in São Paulo, the center of Japanese immigration, presents many research challenges. After World War II, urbanization progressed further and many Japanese people moved to São Paulo, and many of those who studied at the educational institutions in the city became active as leaders in the Japanese community. All of them demonstrated their talents as bilingual and bicultural people (Photo 15-4).
In the 1930s, children lived a linguistic double life, learning Portuguese in the morning at public schools and Japanese at Japanese schools in the afternoon. At some schools, such as Taisho Elementary School and Alianca Elementary School, classes were taught by bilingual teachers, including teachers who had studied abroad and second-generation Japanese students. As a result, bilingual and bicultural education was practiced unintentionally. These early examples of bilingual and bicultural education served as preliminary experiments for postwar Japanese language and bilingual education in Brazil, and provide a variety of materials and challenges for applied linguistics and multilingual education.
Mr. HK (born in 1936), an engineer who once went to Sony headquarters for technical training, is from the wartime generation. While attending Taisho Elementary School, where the language was Portuguese, he secretly learned about Japan through traveling instructors.
"In those days, teachers would come to the police empty-handed, wearing sandals and hiding the torn-up textbooks in the belts of their trousers. When questioned by the police, they would make an expression as if they were out for a stroll. They would then decide which children would be on duty, such as today would be in this place and tomorrow would be in that place, but would never stick to one place, instead going round to each child's house one by one to teach them Japanese. That was the era."
When Japanese language education was revived after the war, many former Japanese teachers and second-generation Japanese teachers were involved in the revival and development of education for immigrant children. These include running various scholarship facilities around the country that were not only boarding houses for Japanese-Brazilians but also taught Japanese and provided discipline, spreading the Japanese Readings book compiled in Brazil, founding the Japan-Brazil Cultural Promotion Association, and building the Armonia student dormitory. These talented people nurtured before and during the war went on to play an active role in the field of education for many children from the 1950s onwards.
From the third floor where the Institute for Humanities is currently located, you can see the Cultural Association's parking lot, which was once the playground of Taisho Elementary School. The origins of this institute lie in the "Saturday Society" (São Paulo Institute of Humanities), which enlightened Nikkei intellectuals and discussed academic issues "to understand the society and culture of Brazil, the country to which Japanese people migrated, to confirm the position of Nikkei communities within that society, and from there to build a philosophy of new life and action." The people who gathered at the Saturday Society, including Kawai Takeo, Handa Tomoo, and Miyao Susumu, were all children of immigrants who had studied at the Nikkei educational institutions introduced in this series.
Mr. YA (born in 1927), who studied at Taisho Elementary School for eight years from 1934, said in fluent Japanese, "Taisho Elementary School was the most fun time of my life" (Photo 15-5). To repeat, the 1930s was the golden age of prewar Japanese language education. The principal at that time was Mr. Kanichi Morozumi, who came all the way from Suwa, Shinshu. Principal Morozumi, who was said to have been a "scary teacher" for a short time, must have been smiling at the sight of the children from the window in the staff room.
History goes around in circles. It's a cliché, but... As I rest my chin on my elbows in a room at the Institute of Humanities, piled high with documents, I try to imagine children walking to school in groups of three or five from Conde de Sarzedas Street, where the Japanese town was located, and from Conselheiro Furtado Street, where the tram used to run, down Galvão Bueno Street, and up the slope of San Joaquim.
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[Postscript] I was assisted by many people in writing this series. In the research required to collect materials, I received research funding from the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, the Japan Foundation, the Waseda University Institute for Migration and Ethnic Culture Studies, and the Doshisha University Institute for Humanities. I was also assisted by my colleagues at the Department of Foreign Languages and Translation at the University of Brasilia, who kindly sent me on my research there, the São Paulo Institute of Humanities, which I used as a base in São Paulo, the Brazilian Archives of Japanese Emigration, Mr. Numata Shinichi, a living encyclopedia in Londrina, and countless others. I cannot mention their names one by one, but I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude.
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References
Numata, Shinichi (2008) "Shin-chan's Folktales: Five Great Stories of the International Colonization of Northern Parana (Part 1)"
Hiroaki Maruyama (ed.) (2010) "Japanese Immigrants to Brazil: A Hundred Years of Trajectory" Akashi Shoten
Sao Paulo Japanese School Parents' Association (1934) Sao Paulo Japanese School Parents' Association Newsletter No. 2
Sao Paulo Institute of Humanities "From the Saturday Club to the Sao Paulo Institute of Humanities, and to the Present"
http://www.cenb.org.br/cenb/index.php/articles/display/27 (Accessed August 1, 2011)
© 2011 Sachio Negawa
