Warlock- Posted July 17, 2021 Posted July 17, 2021 https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-57449112 In 1639 Japan adopted a policy known as sakoku (closed country), by which the Asian nation closed its doors to the rest of the world, prohibiting both the entry and the exit of people. Whoever entered or left the country would be sentenced to death. This isolation lasted for more than two hundred years, until, in 1853, an American naval officer named Matthew Perry entered what is now Tokyo Bay with a fleet of warfighters. Perry managed to force Japan to reopen to international trade, but the country continued to prohibit its citizens from leaving the territory. But the Western-inspired reforms were so fast-paced that they caused rapid social transformation, bringing thousands of people from rural areas to cities. Large urban centers, such as Tokyo and Osaka, began to have problems of overcrowding. It was in this context that the first great wave of Japanese migration began. The emigrants, who would later be known as Nikkei (a person with ties to Japan), left their country in search of better opportunities, encouraged by a government that not only sought to solve the problem of overpo[CENSORED]tion, but also to expand political influence and economy of Japan in the world. First destination The first Japanese migration abroad occurred in 1868 and the destination was Hawaii, which was not yet part of the United States at that time. It was a small contingent of 148 rural workers. "Hawaii required labor for agriculture, particularly its sugar farms, and it was an agreement that was made with the king of the archipelago," historian Cecilia Onaha, a professor at the Center for Japanese Studies (CEJ), told BBC Mundo. from the Institute of International Relations of the National University of La Plata, in Argentina. According to records from the National Museum of American History, many of those early emigrants later moved to the United States, settling in California, Washington, and Oregon. The North American country became the main focus of interest for Japanese emigrants, who had already viewed that country with interest since the arrival of Commodore Perry. "Almost all the migration of that time went to the US or Canada, because they were the countries that paid the best wages," explains Onaha. It is estimated that between 1886 and 1911 more than 400,000 Japanese arrived in the United States, according to the Library of Congress of that country. Most settled in Hawaii or on the West Coast. The wave of Japanese immigration was so great that at the beginning of the 20th century the US government decided to intervene, prohibiting new arrivals from Japan. It was this limitation that led many Japanese and the government of that country to become interested in a new destination to emigrate: Latin America. The Enomoto colony The first official migration project for Latin America was organized in 1897, when about thirty Japanese were sent to Chiapas, in southern Mexico. It was at the initiative of former Japanese Foreign Minister Enomoto Takeaki, one of the biggest promoters of Japanese emigration. In 1891, when he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Enomoto had established an office dedicated to seeking new territories for the Japanese abroad. After leaving the government, in 1893, he founded the Association for Colonization and Emigration (Shokumin Kyokai). According to academic Alberto Matsumoto, an expert on the history of Japanese immigration, Enomoto had become interested in Mexico because this country had signed a Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Japan in 1888. In 1891, when he was chancellor, he established in that country the first consulate of Japan in Latin America. The then Mexican president, Porfirio Díaz, "was promoting the entry of foreign capital to develop infrastructure and was pleased to receive immigrants to po[CENSORED]te the country," Matsumoto recounted in a series he wrote for the Discover Nikkei site. "Studies carried out by the Japanese government at the time concluded that they could make significant profits from agriculture, something that was later shown to be not such an easy adventure," he says. The small group of Japanese settlers arrived in Chiapas with the intention of setting up a coffee plantation. But the climatic difficulties and the acquisition of plants not suitable for that region led to the failure of the project in a short time. The so-called Enomoto colony disintegrated and, according to Matsumoto, the vast majority went to other parts of Mexico "in search of more promising horizons." Immigration by contract But the failure of the project did not end Japanese immigration to Mexico. The Porfirian government granted new concessions for the exploitation of mines and the construction of railways, and the companies in charge required more labor than they could obtain in Mexico. Contract immigration attracted thousands of foreign workers to the Latin American country. In the book "Destination Mexico: a study of Asian migrations to Mexico, 19th and 20th centuries", the author María Elena Ota Mishima points out that between 1900 and 1910 10,000 Japanese workers arrived. The vast majority ended up crossing the border into the United States. Aware of this phenomenon, the US government signed agreements to also limit Japanese migration to Mexico. It is for this reason that the Japanese community in Mexico would end up being considerably smaller than those of Brazil and Peru, the two South American nations that most attracted Japanese workers at the beginning of the 20th century. Peru and Brazil The first Japanese to arrive in Peru and Brazil also did so as contract immigrants. At the end of the 19th century, Peru required labor for its growing sugar industry and that was how the first 790 Nikkei arrived in 1899, hired to work on farms on the coast. According to the Museum of Japanese Immigration to Peru, that first group consisted entirely of men, but "it was followed by 82 other groups - already made up of women and children - until 1923, when the migration by contract ended." In Brazil, Japanese immigration only began in 1908, with the arrival of 781 peasants hired to work on the coffee plantations. But a decade later, the largest country in Latin America would become the main pole of attraction for the Japanese. Of the nearly 245,000 Japanese who had migrated to Latin America by the 1940s, three-quarters - 189,000 people - went to Brazil, according to records from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. In comparison, 33,000 Japanese arrived in Peru, 15,000 in Mexico and 5,000 in Argentina (mainly from Brazil and Peru). Impact According to Onaha, the number of Japanese who settled in Latin America during that first wave of migration was similar to what would later arrive after World War II, when the second massive wave of Japanese emigrants occurred.
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