Japanese in Latin America

 Kenji Orito Yokoi Díaz, a Japanese who is Colombian too and gives lectures about the human values in our societies.
Foto: gentedecanaveral.com.  

Japanese migration to Latin America began in the late nineteenth century, and today the continent is home to 1.7 million persons of Japanese descent. From those early struggling communities, Japan and the continent have forged a long and deep relationship.

Latin American progress in the last few decades has been rapid but uneven. Some nations have made impressive economic, social and political progress. Brazil has become both a regional and global player. But long-term pockets of deep-seated poverty, social inequality and instability remain.

One of the book that shares studies of the patterns of Japanese migration on the continent as a whole is “The Japanese in Latin America” by Daniel M. Masterson, with the assistance of Sayaka Funada-Classen, University of Illinois Press, 2004. In this book the autors examine Japanese agricultural colonies in Latin America, as well as the subsequent cultural networks that sprang up within and among them, and the changes that occurred as the Japanese moved from wage labor to ownership of farms and small businesses. Masterson also explores recent economic crises in Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, which combined with a strong Japanese economy to cause at least a quarter million Latin American Japanese to migrate back to Japan.

Japan and its international development agency, JICA, have committed themselves to helping to tackle such long-term problems, assisting the Japanese communities, known as Nikkei, to thrive, but also helping to confront more recent crises such as climate change and an assault on the world's biodiversity, particularly in the globe's most impressive and important eco-system, the Amazon River basin.

Kenji Orito Yokoi Díaz, un japonés bastante colombiano.

Este hombre se ha convertido en todo un personaje para los colombianos

que se encuentran dentro y fuera del país, debido a sus conferencias 

en las que resalta los valores de la población colombiana y la

riqueza de nuestra cultura. Foto: gentedecanaveral.com.

Related links:

http://www.jica.go.jp/english/news/focus_on/latin2011/index.html

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/23tgr5yq9780252028694.html

http://youtu.be/ZufqRnBf9Ks