I've been in Tingo María, a city in the Huánuco region, for almost a month now. Tingo María is located in the heart of Peru, where the mountains and the jungle meet. It's where I reconnected with my Nikkei roots, without having any contact with other Nikkei people and with a German husband.
About a year ago, I decided to "break out of my bubble," "leave my comfort zone," or, as several Nikkei have said at one time or another, "leave the neighborhood." At 40, I felt that if I stayed "in the neighborhood" (meaning the "neighborhood" refers to the Nikkei community, as the Issei called it) any longer, I would stagnate.
Until then, I still called money okane or food gohan (being in Peru) and I celebrated Oshogatsu by placing yellow flowers on the Butsudan (Japanese altar) to attract good luck in the New Year.
On top of that, almost 100% of my Facebook friends and contacts were Nikkei , I worked for a Nikkei newspaper (and if I did freelance work for foreigners, it was Japanese), I wrote a blog about Japanese and Nikkei culture (where I still post to this day), and I used my English and German (because I graduated from university with those languages) to continue reading about Japanese and Nikkei culture. Even in love, I was always attracted only to Nikkei or Japanese people!
All this self-imposed ostracism came from my grandmother's influence. Her mentality, influenced primarily by World War II, led her to view dojin as something negative, using the now-obsolete term dojin for anything that wasn't Japanese or Nikkei . That way of thinking, my grandmother held, stayed with me almost my entire life, until I reached the age where I asked myself, "What have I done so far?"
I've met Nikkei who carry this " issei mentality," but only when it suits them. They tell you that "you have to work for kimochi (feelings) and not for money," making you feel bad if you ask about overtime pay or when your salary will be deposited in case of delays. Or they still see "differences" between a dojin and a Nikkei, attributing all the positive aspects to the latter. And if you want a partner, they think "it's better for the partner to be Nikkei ," for a better connection.
Up until that point, I'd mostly worked for kimochi , and the inevitable question when meeting people in the neighborhood was "what sonjin are you from?" (as if our connection basically depended on where our grandparents or great-grandparents came from!)... Until I decided to leave the neighborhood.
Honestly, leaving that “ issei mentality” behind was difficult because it taught me to be resilient in life and that “if I fell 7 times, I had to get up 8” ( nanakorobi yaoki ), but at the same time, it conditioned me to be afraid of failure and stay in my comfort zone (which hinders personal growth) and live only for others and forget who I am.
And being a woman, I felt that this mentality limited my personal and professional life. I had to put aside my own dreams to care for the elderly in the house, since that was "a woman's job," and I missed out on opportunities just because " Nihonjin doesn't do that," as the oba would say.
My grandmother, who was born before both World Wars, raised me throughout my childhood, and I learned from her almost all of Okinawan customs, even the more obsolete ones, like reciting the mabuya , which brings the soul back to the body after a terrible scare, and the chinomiku , which my mother would repeat when we wore new clothes. But she also passed on her prejudices to me.
But with my mother's death, I gradually left that issei mentality behind. She asked that we remember her in our hearts and not in the butsudan , especially with me in mind, since it was my responsibility to carry the family butsudan . "I don't want to be a burden to you, even after I'm gone," she told us, recalling that she's been doing ochato (tea offerings), anniversary masses, special meals during Obon and Oshogatsu, and so on for 33 years.
It wasn't until I turned 40 that I began to care more about myself and see all the opportunities I had denied myself by thinking like my grandmother Issei , both at work and in love.
I think there was a moment when I questioned my Nikkei roots and decided to leave the colony. It wasn't long before I met my husband, and he was the one who reconnected me with the colony, even though he was German.
Rainer and I have seen other mixed couples in Hamburg and Lima, but it was in Tingo María, the jungle of Peru, where I found other couples like us with whom I felt a greater connection, not because the wives are Peruvian, but because the European husbands remind me of the early Issei .
For these couples and for us, communication has been the biggest challenge. In my case, my German isn't fluent, my husband Rainer is just learning Spanish, and sometimes we don't even understand each other in English; so we end up mixing German, English, and a few Spanish words. "I want pollo essen" (I want to eat chicken, in English-Spanish-German).
This reminds me of when oba would say “ Gohan !, cold like this, it’s not tasty”, to let us know that lunch was ready or else, “ Asa kara metido en obenjo … That’s what happens when you’re a gachimaya ” (he’s been in the bathroom since morning… That’s what happens when you’re a glutton), when he would scold us in Japanese-Spanish-Uchinaguchi for overeating.
Sometimes I get the impression that Rainer thinks I'm insulting him when I blurt out a few words in Japanese, since he's never asked me what I mean when I shout, for example , "Chotto matte!" every time he starts his motorcycle and I'm barely getting behind him. However, when we argue, we each defend ourselves in our native language, since Spanish is richer in expressions and German sounds harsher and more cutting.
“The secret to good coexistence is not always understanding what the other person is saying,” several Peruvian women who are married to Europeans and currently live in Tingo María told me.
This tactic reminds me of my oba , who often pretended not to hear the oji when they argued. I always thought the oba 's silence was out of submission, but later I understood that she was applying the phrase "foolish words, deaf ears."
Like my grandparents, many of these Germans currently living in Tingo María came to Peru seeking a better future. Here they found love, started families, and have adapted to local life without losing their own customs, just as the first Issei did.
One of the customs they brought with them is the Frühschoppen, which Germans celebrate on Sundays to drink beer and chat. Since we learned they hold one in Tingo María, Rainer and I often participate, as it's one of the few opportunities he has to converse with other Germans, while I take advantage of the opportunity to meet their wives and share experiences ("What's it like living with a German?").
Although they don't have the same purpose, Frühschoppen reminds me of tanomoshi or tambourines. Of the few tanomoshi I've attended in Lima, I remember that they were held once a month at a restaurant (because it was the most practical option, since no one wanted to offer their home) and 99% of the attendees were nesan (in Nikkei slang, older women). The connection I find between Frühschoppen and tanomoshi is that both provide an opportunity to socialize and always offer food (especially beer, in the case of Frühschoppen).
Oba always said, "You have to be close to the neighborhood," but now that I'm married to Rainer, my other "neighborhood" is the German community living in Tingo María. This community reminds me so much of the early Issei, that it was inevitable to reconnect with my Nikkei roots.
Here we met Ulrich, who brews craft beers, and Anselm, who makes wines; as well as Thomas, who owns a restaurant in the town of Tingo María. Like some Issei , they put into practice in Tingo María what they knew how to do in Germany. In Lima, for example, the Tsukazan (which is the Uchinaguchi pronunciation of the surname Tsukayama) prepared and sold vinegar in the Magdalena district, possibly following in the footsteps of the family in Okinawa who made awamori (Okinawan liquor) before World War II.
We've also exchanged greetings or heard from other Europeans who have come from England, Poland, Spain, and France, as well as the United States, and who have been living in Tingo María with their Peruvian wives for years.
Many of them arrived in Peru when terrorism in the jungle had already been controlled, say, in the late 1990s and beyond, and when coca ceased to be the predominant crop in Tingo María, giving way to cacao and coffee. Like many Issei , many of these Germans began working the land with machetes in hand, growing cacao or coffee; but unlike the first, they brought all their savings with them.
Many bought land to live and farm upon arriving in Tingo María. The money they inherited from their parents, the money they collected from years of working in a comfortable office in Germany, or all the money they had saved for their retirement, they have invested in the land where they now live. They wanted to live away from the stress of big cities, they all agreed, as did a Japanese woman who fell in love with the simple, natural life of Tingo María but had to return to Japan, vowing to return to stay permanently. Now she is working to save up and fulfill this dream.
But this isn't the first time Germans have come to Tingo María. In the mid-19th century, the Peruvian government promoted German immigration to the Peruvian jungle, and the first group of settlers arrived in Tingo María in 1853. At that time, Europeans were considered a "superior race" and, therefore, were best suited to "improve the race" and lift the Amazon out of its then- precarious state.
Another destination for this German immigration was Tingo María. One of the most well-known Germans in the region is Hans Victor Langemak Michelsen, who founded Aucayacu in 1948, located an hour from Tingo María, and served as its first mayor.
But there aren't only Germans in Tingo María; there must also be Nikkei, but I haven't seen any yet, or been able to recognize them on the street. I was told that in Huánuco, the main city in the region of the same name, there are Nikkei families like the Arakaki and Shinsato, the former known for selling the best salchipapa (salchipapa), according to locals. Among the Shinsatos, Lucila Shinsato stands out. She was a politician and former president of the Huánuco Regional Administration Transitional Council (CTAR Huánuco).
Several Tingalese migrated to the larger cities in the 1980s to escape terrorist violence, according to one of the wives, which could explain the low visibility of the Nikkei community in Tingo María. Citing author Isabelle Lausent-Herrera, the Japanese presence in Huánuco and Tingo María was discreet.
On the Facebook page “ Tingo María, Ayer y Siempre ” we can see photographs of Japanese Peruvians who lived in Tingo María between 1930 and 1950. According to the same source, the Japanese who arrived in Tingo María were part of the second wave of Japanese migration to Peru, which occurred mainly between the 1920s and 1930s.
I even saw a photo of a group of Japanese people eating around a wooden table, which looks very similar to one I took at one of the Frühschoppen.
So far I have no doubt that the German community reminds me of the early Issei , with their various similarities.
Even when Rainer and I had our marriage papers translated, the translator reminded us that Germans and Japanese share a common past forged during World War II. To which we responded, "No wonder when we argue, neither of us wants to lose!" But joking aside, I feel like Rainer and I not only have an emotional and historical connection, but also a life connection. He was the one who reconnected me to my roots, which I thought I'd severed before I met him.
Note:
1. Vásquez Monge, Eduardo. German and Austrian Immigration to Peru in the 19th Century. 2009.
© 2025 Milagros Tsukayama Shinzato
