Interviews

1. The Nikkei Integration into society (Spanish)

2. Is non-integration due to the distrust because of what happened in the Second World War? (Spanish)

3. Looking Inside (Spanish)

4. I’m a Japanese, Peruvian… who am I? (Spanish)

5. Being a Nikkei today (Spanish)

6. Nikkei identity (Spanish)

7. Does a Nikkei culture exist? (Spanish)

8. Necessary apologies (Spanish)

9. Japanese immigration with an Okinawan face (Spanish)

10. The Okinawan idiosyncrasies (Spanish)

11. Ambassador of Good Will (Spanish)

12. Ambassador’s job (Spanish)

13. Histories of immigrants (Spanish)

14. The myth of the sacrifice of immigrants (Spanish)

15. Paisaje terrestre [Terrestrial landscape] (Spanish)

16. Feminist, ecologist, Buddhist… activist (Spanish)

17. The poet is going to hibernate (Spanish)

Moromisato,Doris

(b. 1962) Peruvian Poet, Okinawan descendant

Does a Nikkei culture exist? (Spanish)

(Spanish) In terms of biological interpretation, yes, we are the community that has the biggest number of graphic artists and arts and crafts. Why do I say we’re the culture with the biggest number? The painters, sculptors, designers, identify themselves as Nikkei. That doesn’t mean they are Japanese descendants, and in their works they always try to place some detail of their ancestry. So there is a Nikkei culture. Yes, there is, I think so. I’m convinced there is a Nikkei culture, as there is a women culture, black culture, gay culture, heterosexual. There just is. The detail is you have to go beyond, as I told you, the biological issue and find other marks. For example, Rhonny Alhahel, a painter that is not Nikkei, says he paints like a Japanese. It is interesting. I think there is, and they also wouldn’t mythicize nor downplay it. Not even to say that it exists or it doesn’t. It only exists. It is one more aspect of a type of art.

Date: February 26, 2008

Location: Lima, Peru

Interviewer: Harumi Nako

Contributed by: Asociación Peruano Japonesa (APJ)

Interviewee Bio

Doris Moromisato Miasato (1962) was born in Chambala, an agricultural zone of Lima, Peru. She graduated with a degree in Law and Political Science at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

She has published the collection of poems Morada donde la luna perdió su palidez [Home were the moon lost its paleness] (1988), Chambala era un camino [Chambala was the path] (1999), Diario de la mujer es ponja [Diary of a Jap woman] (2004), Paisaje Terrestre [Terrestrial Path] (2007), as well as the story book Okinawa, un siglo en el Perú [Okinawa. A century in Peru] (2006). Her poems, stories, essays, and features have also been included in several anthologies and have been translated into several languages.

She is an ecologist, feminist and Buddhist. In 2006, the Okinawa Municipality nominated her as an Ambassador of Good Will. Nowadays, she is columnist for the Discover Nikkei Website, and since 2005 she has managed the organization of book fairs as Cultural Director of Cámara Peruana del Libro. (February 26, 2008)