Paper short abstract:

Through the work with the memories of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Brazil, this study characterized the importance of land in the constitution of the nikkey rural way of life. The results of this research point to the need for a combination of kinship, land and immigration experience to understanding the complexity of this way of life.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to present elements for understanding what we call nikkey rural way of life. Why Japanese immigrants have become small landowners in São Paulo State's countryside and what is the role of land to these men and women, are some questions to be answered in this presentation. Historically constituted, this way of relating to the land and to the nature is what, in general, explains the persistence of many small nikkey landowners bound to their sites. Mostly, the lands of the interlocutors in this study were situated in regions through which the sugar cane industry advances, making it increasingly difficult to play this way of life, since politically, socially and economically are incompatible ways of organizing the production. Necessarily anchored in a very specific and rigid family background, with strict rules that are collectively shared, the individual strategies point to the collective undertaking: the improvement of living conditions and the end of overwork. Thus, this paper presents the key elements to understand the values of a significant portion of Japanese immigrants in Brazil, in this case, those who are articulated till the present day on the nikkey rural way of life.