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introduction
Japan's cramped, crowded land and depleting natural resources have forced them to look overseas in search of a new home.
For thousands of years, the Japanese government has not discouraged the idea of sending immigrants abroad to establish expansion bases.
Now, in a distant South American country, the Japanese have achieved their goals in a relatively "gentle" way. And the country that was taken down by the Japanese is Brazil.
Brazil recruits immigrants - Europe does not want it, the Great Qing does not allow it, but Japan cannot ask for it
Brazil is the country with the largest number of overseas immigrants from Japan. The Japanese ethnic group has grown in Brazil to nearly two million.
The total area of real estate purchased by the Japanese in Brazil is more than three times that of Japanese territory. The origin of this phenomenon has to be talked about in the 19th century.
In the past, the dominant mode of production in Brazil was an estate-based plantation economy, and the main labor force on the plantations was black slaves.
However, in 1888, Brazil passed the Gold Act, which abolished slavery. From then on, blacks became free labor.
Some of the black people who regained their freedom returned to Africa, and some went to American factories. It's just that they don't want to stay on the plantation.
Brazil is a sparsely populated country, and the sudden loss of labor has made Brazilian agriculture difficult and stagnant.
As a result, Brazilian authorities began recruiting immigrants to fill the labor gap.
As a country with the Portuguese as its base, Brazil's rulers naturally preferred white European immigrants.
At first, Brazil's preferential policies attracted only Italian immigrants, which were relatively poor at the time.
Other wealthy European countries do not look at Brazil at all, and if they want to immigrate, they also go to the United States. As a result, within a decade, hundreds of thousands of immigrants of Italian descent had been added to Brazil.
And Italy's own population is not large, where can it withstand the Brazilian government's digging? To this end, Italy has enacted laws prohibiting nationals from immigrating to Brazil.
On the other hand, the Italian people are fierce, there are many gangs, and they especially like to huddle for warmth, which has caused trouble to Brazilian security.
At this time, the Brazilian government set its sights on Asia, knowing that there were people living there who could cultivate and endure hardships, and that emigrating them would alleviate the domestic crisis.
The first thing the Brazilian delegation found was not Japan, but the Qing Dynasty, and after examining the people's situation, they submitted a labor export contract to the Qing government, intending to "buy" some hard labor from China.
Unexpectedly, Brazilians were rejected on the spot for no other reason than fear of the diaspora's life.
The Qing government has long been frightened by those overseas nationals, whether it is Nanyang expatriates or public students, as long as they go abroad, they will eventually develop into anti-Qing forces.
The diaspora paid for the revolutionary party, and he was still abroad, and the Qing government could not cure him.
Just as the immigration plan stalled, another country across the sea threw an olive branch to the Brazilian mission.
The Japanese government came to it ill and said: Doesn't Brazil want loyal farmers? We have
The little book went to Brazil - did not have a good heart
The Japanese certainly did not have any good intentions, and letting the people go to Brazil was definitely not as simple as aid, and they also had their own calculations.
At that time, Japan was in the era of the Meiji Restoration, and in order to obtain land for industrial production, a policy similar to that of the British enclosure movement was implemented.
Meiji Restoration
The government opened up land sales, and unwitting peasants were coerced and lured to sell land to capitalists and get the money.
The Japanese government backhanded the yen to depreciate. Farmers had no money to spend or land to plant, so they flocked to the cities and became factory labor.
This is still good, since Japan's industrialization has only just begun, and there are not many jobs to be provided.
Many peasants lost their jobs on the spot after losing their land and could only wander around the city, which brought a lot of security risks to society. Right now, Brazil's immigration program is in the hands of the Japanese.
Japan has too many people and too few jobs, and the country cannot feed itself, while Brazil is too big and too few people to come.
As a result, the two sides hit it off, signed a labor export contract, and under the government's propaganda, a large number of unemployed vagrants dragged their families to sign up for migrant groups to the other side of the ocean.
In 1908, the first group of 782 Japanese immigrants finally arrived in the port of Santos, Brazil after two months of wandering on the ship "Togasa Maru".
By the outbreak of World War II, the number of Japanese people in Brazil had begun to take shape, reaching 200,000. According to the regulations, first-generation immigrants can only work in agriculture, and cannot get involved in other industries.
But this is enough for the small life of a farmer, at least to have his own land.
The first generation of immigrants were resettled by Brazilian authorities in the southeastern rainforests, where they cleared forests, opened estates and engaged in coffee cultivation.
Over time, the anomalies of the immigrants became apparent, and the Japanese were unusually united in Brazil, and after they earned enough money from the plantation work, they would set up plantations in joint ventures with their compatriots, become their own owners, and hire only Japanese laborers.
Over time, several families settled in an area, and they usually sent only a few representatives to contact the Brazilian government and agricultural product distributors.
If there are any internal problems, they will not turn to the Brazilian government for help, but the problems of the clan will be solved internally.
Gradually, an autonomous group independent of Brazilian society was formed, and it could even be said that it was a "state within a state".
Since Japanese people live together all year round, there is no need to communicate with other ethnic groups in Brazil, let alone integrate into the main Brazilian culture.
The way of life of these people in Brazil is not much different from that in Japan, for them it is just a change of land to farm.
Although they are already citizens of Brazil legally, in practice, they have no sense of identity with the country.
At the same time, the Japanese government, far across the ocean, did not shy away from providing assistance to these Japanese who were already foreign citizens.
They paid for and paved wells for Japanese estates, built water conservancy, opened schools for communities, and introduced Japanese language teaching materials. It is completely considered Japanese territory.
Japan's aggressive ambitions were revealed, and Japanese immigrants were suspected
In the late twenties of the twentieth century, more and more Japanese nationals came to Northeast China to do opium business, and they acted in China for the protection of the Eastern Army.
On the other hand, the Japanese Kwantung Army, entrenched in the South Manchuria Railway, constantly created incidents to find reasons for sending more troops.
In the future, the Japanese became more and more intense, not satisfied with simple military occupation, but also more organized and planned to send pioneering groups to emigrate to the northeast, robbing land and exchanging blood.
This scene, except for the scene without the army, is so similar to the situation in Brazil!
On September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army launched a full-scale invasion of northeast China, which shocked the world.
This was an elaborate conspiracy, and on the eve of the invasion, the Kwantung Army received active cooperation from Japanese diasporas.
After the 918 incident, the identity of overseas Japanese became sensitive.
At that time, there were rumors in Brazil that what the Japanese government was doing in Brazil was the same as in northeast China, and that the ultimate goal was colonial aggression. And these Japanese people are equivalent to the advance party. For a while, everyone in Brazil was at risk.
Judging from previous manifestations, Brazilians' skepticism is justified, and at the same time, the political situation in Brazil is undergoing subtle changes.
Previously, Brazilian politics was controlled by the two major oligarchs of coffee and milk, and the Brazilian president was supported by the oligarchs since the fourth term, and actively protected the interests of large plantation owners and oligarchs after coming to power.
This period is also known as the "Republic of Coffee and Milk", so during this period, the Japanese who grew coffee as a business did quite well.
In 1929, the economic crisis broke out, milk was unsold, coffee exports were blocked, and prices plummeted.
Vargas, supported by the army, staged a coup d'état that overthrew the "Republic of Coffee and Milk", and the Japanese plantation owners gradually lost power.
During his tenure, Vargas stepped up efforts to liquidate coffee plantation owners in an attempt to break their manipulation of national politics.
At this time, the Japanese, who were living well in small life, became a punching bag for diverting domestic contradictions and were constantly targeted.
In 1934, Brazil introduced a law against Japanese people, forbidding them to live together, and dispatched law enforcement agencies to force the division of communities and move Japanese people throughout the country.
Vargas
At the end of 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and soon after, the Brazilian government followed the footsteps of the US imperialists, joined the anti-fascist camp, and severed diplomatic relations with Japan.
As a result of the war, there was a wave of anti-Asian in Brazil, with Japanese immigrants being the first to be sanctioned, and the government confiscated their property, closed their schools, and searched their homes on the grounds of espionage.
They were displaced and their families destroyed. In this exotic hot land, the fly camp dogs stayed for decades, and returned to the pre-liberation overnight.
In fact, the exclusion of Japanese people in Brazil is purely self-inflicted, because the Japanese are too isolated and self-isolated, mysterious all day long, and their country has many unrighteous acts, so it has become the target of public criticism at the first time.
As mentioned earlier, immigration activities in Japan are led by the government, and these people maintain close contact with their own government after obtaining the right of residence.
In addition, they did not come to live in peace at all, and the Japanese government left a hand early on, calling them to immigrate to Brazil with militaristic ideas.
After being brainwashed, many people went to the ocean under the banner of serving the emperor, and their motives were quite impure.
Therefore, for a long time after the defeat of Japan, Japanese people could not obtain real information, and many jokes were made about it.
In mid-August 1945, the Emperor of Japan read the Edict of the End of the War, and the news of Japan's surrender spread through the radio throughout the seven continents and four oceans.
While overseas Chinese are immersed in the joyful atmosphere of drumming in unison, Japanese people in Brazil are actually celebrating victory! It's ironic.
The specific cause of the incident has to start with the severance of diplomatic relations between Japan and Pakistan, when Brazilian customs seized Japanese-language newspapers and periodicals.
And the foreigners or natives that Japanese people usually come into contact with can be counted with a single slap, let alone let them read Portuguese newspapers and periodicals.
As a result, they are left with only one channel for international news, the "Alliance of Ministers".
The Alliance is a right-wing organization active in Brazil's Japanese-American community, reaching 150,000 people at its peak.
The organization has a team of professional translators who can read foreign language newspapers and periodicals. They don't do business and make up fake news every day.
For example, in early August of that year, Japan was hit by two nuclear explosions one after another, but the news released by the Ministers Alliance was: Japan had developed an incomprehensible Zhenguo killing weapon, which frightened the "Miying ghost beast" into asking for peace talks overnight.
After Japan's defeat, they did even better, and in early September, Japanese Foreign Minister Aoi Shigemitsu signed the surrender on the Missouri, marking Japan's official defeat.
A few days later, the footage fell into the hands of the Ministers, who pinched their heads, turned off the sound, and added the subtitles, and it became: American soldiers lined up to welcome the Japanese delegates to review their surrender ceremony.
In the eyes of the audience, the Japanese representative in the film is dressed appropriately across the sabre, naturally the victorious side, but as everyone knows, the Chōdō Alliance also quietly cut off the part where Aoi Shigemitsu handed over the saber.
In the era of immature technology, editing was a time-consuming and laborious work, which naturally could not be done in vain, so the Ministers Alliance began to accumulate wealth in the name of the "imperial army".
They first lied that the "imperial army" was coming to "recover" Brazil, under the pretense of raising hospitality expenses, and collected donations from various communities.
In order to motivate them, the Ministers Alliance found someone to process scrap iron pieces into the appearance of medals and "reward" them to those subjects who were willing to donate money.
Most egregiously, they also lied that the Japanese government was about to send warships to take the Japanese home, so that they could buy the tickets first.
Hearing such news, homesick Japanese Americans were all moved. He was deceived by the Ministers Alliance and his family wealth was scattered.
Of course, not all Japanese are so easy to deceive, and a few people of insight see their flaws, realize that the Japanese general trend has passed, and call on their compatriots not to get carried away by patriotic marketing.
To prove this, they even produced the most crucial physical evidence, a copy of the Edict of the Final Battle.
But things have come to this point, scammers do not want to cut off the way of wealth, and the deceived people do not want to admit that they are fools, and can only carry out the scam.
And rational patriots became the target of mass attack, and the radicals at the bottom of the Ministers Alliance were anxious, and they shouted the slogan "Heavenly thief".
Assassinate social elites involved in debunking rumors. In two years, 23 people were killed and more than 100 injured.
Most importantly, this incident aroused strong resentment in Brazilian society, and at that time, the Ministerial Alliance was quite rampant, and even dared to shoot and kill people in the streets in order to suppress dissidents.
Although they are all Japanese killing Japanese, other ethnic groups are also afraid, after all, this group of people are nagging all day, and they don't know what they are doing, and they may become the next target when they walk one day.
The Brazilian government had to step in to rectify the situation, arresting hundreds of people in one day, and after weeks of crackdown, the matter was calmed down.
It was not until 1947 that the Japanese in Brazil gradually accepted the reality of Japan's defeat and surrender, and the Ministers Alliance incident subsided.
The Japanese gradually understood the truth of making a fortune by muffled voice, no longer blatantly preaching militarism, but actively integrating into other ethnic groups, and subtly changing the local people's perception of Japan.
Some Japanese began speaking Portuguese, intermarried with locals, and even converted to Catholicism.
After escaping the poverty of the first generation, many Japanese became doctors, lawyers, engineers, and government employees. It can also be regarded as mixing into high society and did not disgrace East Asians.
On the Japanese side, although it has experienced two nuclear explosions, the whole country is devastated.
But fortunately, in time for the outbreak of the Korean War, countless orders for the US military fell from the sky, relying on the production of various equipment for the Americans, the collapsed economy finally survived.
After the economic boom in the 70s, the arrogant native Japanese did not pay attention to Brazil, which was still among the developing countries, and ordinary people gradually forgot about the Japanese people in Brazil.
However, both Japanese political and business circles have shown unusual concern for these overseas citizens, for example, when the Japanese imperial family visited Brazil in 2018, Princess Mako received representatives of Japanese groups in Brazil.
Before leaving, they did not forget to plant a commemorative tree together, which meant that they would not forget their roots in Japan.
What's even more puzzling is that the Japanese government buys land in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina every year, and the Japanese acquisition is never based on profit or loss, and some land can't even create a penny of value for them, but they also want to buy it.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Japan has purchased 1.1 million square kilometers of real estate in Brazil by 2020.
The area of Japan is only 378,000 square kilometers. Its true intentions are doubtful.
On the other hand, there are more and more Japanese companies in Brazil, and Japanese entrepreneurs are investing in Brazil in various industries, especially real estate and high-tech industries.
In addition, in Japanese-owned companies, almost all of the employees from the middle level up are Japanese. It is difficult for other ethnic groups to squeeze in, and even if they do, there is little room for growth.
epilogue
Perhaps as written in science fiction, Japan has long made Brazil its own Noah's Ark, and when the disaster of the country occurs, it can directly change its home.
However, if that day does come, it is still unknown how much role Japanese people in Brazil can play and whether the Brazilian government can accept it.
Resources:
1. "The History and Characteristics of Japanese Immigration to Brazil in the Early Days", Du Juan
2. Studies on Japanese Immigration in Brazil (1908-1945), Zhang Yiwei