Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will trace a comparison between the uchinanchu and naichi ethos remembering trajectories of migrant families. I am engaged since 2001 in a field research together to Japanese Brazilian and Okinawan associations, migratory movement, identity contrast, global networks and sociability.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of my Master Dissertation, result of a field research with intense contact and systematic participant observation among the Japanese Brazilian population in Brasilia, São Paulo and Paraná. The work deals with the identity Nikkey in Brazil with a specific focus on contrastive identity construction operated between Uchinanchu and Naichi, Okinawans and Japaneses. Sharing the dynamics of emigration from Japan to Brazil, the two groups transposed to land elsewhere not only their own culture, language and identity as well as carried on its diaspora for the contrast ratio and distinction between Uchinanchu and Naichi. After a closer relationship with the two groups held in an ethnographic research addressing food, fellowship, parties, sociability, kinship, social articulations, belonging and identity is perceived that the current shape of our communities Uchinanchu and Nikkey differ dramatically. Cultural factors and identity, concepts and ideas that determine feelings of identification and belonging operated in the conformation of two diasporic communities whose trajectories although parallel, have fundamentally different characteristics. Stories about marriages in my family in the generation before that of my jitchan have always impressed strongly. There as a matrimonial arrangement made still in Japan, as well as a case of adoption to ensure the continuity of the family name also in Japan. The ethnographic writing about kinship of my family and other two Okinawans families will point differences between uchinanchu and Japanese ethos. The tree trajectories in issue will show how the difference of ethos can construct so diverse familial trajectories.

Paper Download (380 KB)