Located in Broome – a pearling and tourist town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia – the Broome Japanese Cemetery is an interesting piece of local history. It is a tribute to the contribution that the Japanese made to Broome and it’s pearling industry and also a sentimental reminder of the dangers of the early days of pearl diving.

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A submission to the September 2011 J-Festa with the theme “Events in Japan“.

The Namamugi Incident was a samurai assault on foreign nationals in Japan on September 14, 1862, which resulted in the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863, during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. It started out with a samurai attack on British nationals, ended up with the British engaging war on a province of Japan and has an interesting side piece on how the Japanese national flag was adopted.

Body of Charles Richardson, 1862

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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