Discover Nikkei

https://www.discovernikkei.org/en/interviews/clips/593/

Jobs for Japanese Argentines (Spanish)

(Spanish) In Argentina, in a city, when people think of Japanese, when an Argentine thinks of a Japanese person, he thinks of a dry cleaner’s. Because in the city…generally in the cities, for the last 50 years, the Japanese worked as dry cleaners. Usually those from Okinawa. And then those that lived further outside the capital, outside of Buenos Aires, or outside other cities, were florists. And that was my father’s case as well. My dad initially lived in a town called Darin, which is where my grandfather lived. And after that we moved about 20 kilometers away to a city called Escobar. There there’s a big…there are more than 200 Japanese families living there, and the majority are florists. And, well, Escobar is now known as the flower capital of the country. And the first founders of that…festival were actually the Japanese.


Argentina dry cleaning florists

Date: October 7, 2005

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Ann Kaneko

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Monica Kogiso is a Nikkei Nisei Argentinian, born in Buenos Aires in the city of Escobar where the Japanese community thrives on floristry. She is licensed in tourism, currently working as a resource, tourism and event coordinator for Japan, serving as bridge between both Argentina and Japan. She is the former president of Centro Nikkei Argentino, a Nikkei organization located in Buenos Aires and is a representative for the Panamerican Nikkei Association. (January 23, 2007)

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