Philanthropist, volunteer worker and resident of Peru, Scott Jeppesen of the charitable organisation Sonrisas en Peru, explores the fascinating history of Japanese immigration to Peru and the strong influence that Japanese culture has played on various aspects of Peruvian society.
I currently reside in Lima, the capital of Peru. Every day I am faced with some characteristic of Peruvian culture that has been derived from Japanese origins. Urged by curiosity I soon discovered the intriguing story of the Japanese Peruvians, a large ethnic immigrant group in Peru.
The Japanese Peruvians
The Japanese Peruvians are Peruvian citizens of Japanese ethnic origin. They constitute around 0.3% of Peru’s population (estimated at nearly 90,000 in 2008) which is the second largest population of people with Japanese ancestry in Latin America after Brazil.
Peru was the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigration. Back in 1899 the first wave of 790 Japanese immigrants arrived at the Peruvian seaport Callao aboard the “Sakura Maru” from the Japanese port of Yokohama and thus spawned the Nikkei ethnicity in Latin America.
The Sakura Maru
Most notably, Japanese Peruvians were brought to the world’s attention in 1990 by the election of Alberto Fujimori, son of Japanese immigrants and the 90th president of Peru. Fujimori was the first person of Asian descent to become president of a Western country.
Alberto Ken'ya Fujimori
Immigration To Peru
Peru and Japan have held close ties for well over a century. They established diplomatic relations in 1883 making Peru the first country in Latin American, and tenth country in the world, to establish this kind of formal link with Japan.
But what prompted the Japanese to migrate to Peru?
In the later half of the 19th century the Meiji Restoration brought an end to feudalism in Japan generating great poverty in its rural population and causing a surplus of skilled farmers. Seeking relief from the increasing unrest of the agrarian class, the Japanese government saw emigration as a tool to relieve some of the suffering caused by the nation’s rapid modernization during the Meiji era.
Japanese Peruvian farmer Carlos Chiyoteru Hiraoka and his wife Rosa Torres
The first Japanese settlers to arrive in Peru were primarily Japanese farmers escaping impoverished conditions in Japan’s rural areas. Most left Japan to work as contract laborers on Peru’s coastal sugar and cotton plantations who were suffering a labor shortage at the time. The Japanese arrived with a sojourner mentality or temporary intentions, that is, the dream of finding wealth in a faraway land and a view to eventually return home with their hard earned savings.
Based on statistics from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 33,070 Japanese had emigrated to Peru by 1941
Settlement In Peru
When the Japanese immigrants arrived on the Peruvian farms and plantations, life was not as expected. They were subjected to hours of exhaustive work and often suffered physical violence. As a result, many Japanese immigrants abandoned their jobs or fled. Those Japanese who fulfilled their contracts remained free and went to the cities where they started small businesses that required little capital, such as stores, hairdresser shops, small coffee shops, or restaurants. Others opted to work as gardeners or household servants for wealthy families.
"Bodega Naka" - Japanese Peruvian store in Lima
Over time the Japanese Peruvians evolved into a dominating part of the Peruvian economy, but their growing success led to other problems.
Insularity And Racialisation
Rather than assimilating into Peruvian society the Japanese isolated themselves, lived in separate communities and generally only associated with other Japanese. They sent their children to Japanese-language schools and continued many practices typical of Japanese culture.
As the Japanese in Peru became economically successful, the Peruvians saw the Japanese as a threat that ultimately festered into a racist attitude towards the Japanese which led to discrimination not only at a social level, but eventually at a political level.
Japanese Peruvians
In 1940 riots broke out in Lima and Callao instigated by anti Japanese Peruvian sentiment that left 10 Japanese Peruvians dead, hundreds injured and numerous Japanese Peruvian businesses and homes destroyed. The Peruvian government reacted to the riots by suspending future immigration rights to the Japanese and by taking away the citizenship of native-born Japanese Peruvians.
The WWII Internment
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States reached an agreement with the government of Peru and 1,771 Japanese Peruvians were deported from Peru to the United States and were interned for the duration of the war in American internment camps. At the conclusion of the war, the Peruvian government refused to allow the detainees to return.
Most detainees, fearing never being able to return to Peru accepted transportation back to Japan. The rest stayed in the US where they eventually obtained US citizenship.
Japanese Peruvians in the Panama Canal en route to U.S. Internment Camps in 1942.
Japanese Peruvians in the internment camp in Texas
The Japanese In Peru Today
The Japanese Peruvians have made a substantial impact on the economic and cultural diversity of Peru. Today, they are basically a closed society with a tremendous pride in preserving traditional values and Japanese culture and heritage. They have managed to maintain a strong attachment to Peru but without abandoning their Japanese roots.
The embedded video below shows a slideshow of an amazing collection of historical images of the Japanese Peruvian people.
Sources:
Please take the opportunity to visit my website Sonrisas en Peru, meaning “smiles in Peru” in Spanish. It is an organisation dedicated to improving the lives of under-privileged children in rural Peru.
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Very moving!!!
Fascinating. Ten Japanese killed and the Govt takes away the survivors’ citizenship. Not much of a surprise they are a closed society today. What is a surprise though, is the son of Japanese immigrants becoming President. What an accomplishment!
Need a link for “the Meiji Restoration”.
Nice work Scott!
Wow. Great read! I’m not surprised by the Pervian government’s reaction after the riots.
What did surprise me is that the American government wanted to round up Japanese in Peru and put them in American internment camps. What sense does that make and why would Peru agree to that? If a war broke out today with China, would we try to convince every country in the world to let us transport their Chinese populations in American internment camps? What did the Japanese in Peru really have to do with the war, and what effect could they have had on the war from Peru?
Yes definately strange. It had nothing to do with a fear of the Japanese here. It was solely to appease public pressure. I, too, am suprised the Americans went to all the effort including the enormous costs involved in moving the Peruvian-Japanese to Texas, not to mention that it mustn’t have been too popular for the American public. I would think it was to keep the Peruvian government on-side…maybe for economic reasons.
Not sure of the validity of this but I read that the United States used or intended to use them in hostage exchanges with Japan.
What the article doesnt say about Fujimori
In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure, and was sentenced to six years in prison.
On April 7, 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government’s battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. T
On July 20, 2009, a Peruvian court sentenced Alberto Fujimori to an additional 7+1⁄2 years in prison for embezzlement after the former president admitted paying his spy chief US$15 million in state funds. He later pled guilty to bribery.
@James Off-topic and provocative. It is not an article about an individual person, but about an amazing group of people. Not sure why you think the article needed to mention this. You do know that the article is not about Fujimori, right?
A good post. Some Japanese were forced to leave for Brazil or Peru. The government feared there might be a revolution so forced many left wing and communists to emigrate. Here in Kobe City there is a building which housed people while waiting for a ship. I had an art studio in the building for 4 years until last year when it was reformed and turned into a museum. During that time I met many Japanese who had come to live here from Brazil or Peru. They shared their stories with me.
thanks for the contribution scott. i learned about a fascinating piece of history that i never knew.
Cool post! Very interesting.
I am not surprised the Japanese isolated themselves from rest of society. For some reason the Japanese culture has a habit of doing this.
I remember in college we had a population of Japanese students. They all would kind of cut themselves off from everyone else. They had their own little world. It took us a while to get them to open up and engage with the other students.
Well the Peruvians are a little strange compared to Australia so i could understand as well! They do alot of things very differently here compared to Australia, U.S. and Canada where i’ve lived at different times
Interesting post! Good to see other lesser known parts of Japanese history being explored. Plugs all those little gaps in my knowledge
Nicely written piece, I knew little of this population other than that they existed.
What a hard lot these people faced. Unwanted at home, then abused in their new country, only to face reprisal when they eventually got on their feet. I wish it were a unique series of events, but I applaud them for staying and thriving: 90,000 remaining after all they went through!
Scott, do you know if the fate of the Japanese population that emigrated to Brazil was much the same?
You need to make a Correction.
You are right that Peru is has the second largest Japanese populiation after Brazil in Latin America (Actually Brazils is the largest in the world outside Japan. But The Japanese are not the largest ethnic immigrant group in Peru.
There is much more Chinese in Peru, some say that up to 15% percent of Peruvians have Chinese DNA. Also there is more Italians and other ethnic Peruvians than Japanese Peruvians.
Hi Marco,
Yes i double checked that and you’re absolutely right. Maybe I should have said that ‘Asian Peruvians’ make up the largest ethnic population in Peru rather than Japanese Peruvians. According to Wikipedia Chinese Peruvians make up 2-3% of the population at around 1.3 million people. The Japanese in Peru are 0.3% at 90,000.
Sorry about the error!