Who's Alberto Fujimori
and what's
he doing sleeping on my couch?
By BILL
STONEHILL
Alberto Fujimori, ousted as president of Peru, has
gone and dumped himself on the doorstep of Japan — the proverbial
unwanted baby at the church door. The Japanese are clearly baffled about
what to do with him. What is more, they can't figure out why he is there.
And it is obvious to everyone but Fujimori himself that they just hope he
goes home.
For one thing, the embarrassing fact has emerged
that he has Japanese citizenship. Apparently his father registered his
birth with the Japanese Embassy in Lima, a fact which the government of
Japan has now confirmed. This creates another problem and the cause of
increasing anger in Peru: if he is a citizen of Japan, what was he doing
serving two (nearly three) terms as president of Peru? Fujimori's
supporters have always been insistent that he is a Peruvian, but Fujimori
himself has always kept silent on this point.
But the real and truly the largest problem is that
Fujimori is a symbol of an entire policy that has come back to haunt the
Japanese, one they would prefer to sweep under the carpet. It is also
painfully obvious that the Japanese government considers the Japanese it
dumped in South America between 1930 and 1970 — many of them still
Japanese citizens — an embarrassment, and just wishes they would go
away.
One of the more vicious legends the Japanese
believe about their own country is that it is small, highly over-populated
and lacking in natural resources. This has served as the excuse for a
century of aggression. But Japan is none of these things. It is about 1.5
times the size of California, but with slightly less than double the
population. Or, put another way around, the population density of Japan is
only about 70% of Holland or Belgium. In terms of natural resources as
well as population, if it were dropped into the middle of Europe, it would
be a typical European country.
Belief in the myth runs deep in Japan, and
immigration was encouraged, first in the 19th century to America, and then
from the 1930s onward to South America. Getting people to emigrate to
America and to South America are two different things. America, the
shining land of opportunity, and South America, the land of caudillos
(bosses), lata fundía (large estates) and poverty, were two very
different clefs on the piano.
Emigrants to South America were encouraged to go
by flattering them that they were being "called for" by the
various governments of South America to "improve" those
countries. To a certain extent, this was true. Like the Mennonite settlers
from Germany, who have been influential in several South American
countries in introducing new methods of agriculture, particularly dairy
farming, settlers from Japan were indeed welcomed by a a number of
governments hoping that they would improve the economy. But the big lure
for most settlers was land.
In most cases settlers were promised land and also
care and grants from the Japanese government; they would recreate a little
piece of Japan in the tropics, and — presumably — like the
Mennonites, they would be quarantined by tall, sturdy hurricane fences
from the surrounding squalor of their "hosts." Land-hungry
second and third sons — Japan was still primarily rural in the 1950s —
and young women from the cities, who saw themselves in dead-end jobs as
waitresses or on factory assembly lines, lined up for land under the
tropical moon.
The emigrants were carried from Japan on the best
liners Japan had. It would be a tropical adventure. It was unmistakably
romantic. Black and white films from that time show farm boys
uncomfortable in new suits, perhaps wearing ties for the first time in
their life, escorting Aubrey Hepburnish girls in starched crinolines
around promenade decks and playing shuffleboard as the ships headed
steadily towards the equator.
The shock came when they arrived at their new
"settlements." In most cases, they were knee-deep in mud and
nothing else. The support and help promised by the Japanese government was
not there. It was sink or swim. Those who had a bit of education or some
initiative found they could make their way, but those coming prepared to
be farmers sank into poverty.
At the beginning of last year, much of the
Japanese community of Dominica, whose members had been lured there in the
1960s with golden promises, sued the Japanese government for
misrepresentation and breach of promise. Now sunk into poverty, they are
too old to live in Dominica and too old to go back.
Fujimori’s family was part of the wave of
Japanese immigrants that arrived in Peru and other South American
countries immediately after WW2. Fujimori, who had become an agricultural
engineer, was typical of some of the better-off families that had joined
the immigration. They were able to obtain education and better themselves,
and often do better than their fellow Peruvians, but the poor Japanese who
immigrated to Peru had decidedly mixed fortunes.
With the coming of the Bubble in Japan, the
descendents of Japanese immigrants in South America, hearing that there
were jobs to be had, started asking for visas to Japan, and started to
look for work. Although they had Japanese names and looked Japanese, the
language they thought and spoke in was Brazilian or Spanish. They were
Japanese only in name. They brought with them the customs and the
individualism of South America, and were thoroughly unwelcome in Japan.
The frigid welcome manifests itself in many ways,
but sometimes in overt racial prejudice. In Japanese cities with a high
concentration of Brazilian or South Americans of Japanese descent, signs
saying "no foreigners" have become a common sight at
restaurants, public baths and swimming pools. Last year, a Brazilian
journalist who was barred from a jewelry store just because she was a
foreigner successfully sued and won in Japanese court. Even with this
widely discussed ruling, there has been no change in the continuing
anti-foreign discrimination so common throughout Japan. If anything, it is
spreading. So much for the "sensitive" Japanese.
Racism — or, more accurately, anti-foreignism
— in Japan lies barely beneath the surface, and the rural areas of
Japan, where many South Americans end up, are particularly bad. South
Americans of Japanese descent are not totally without support mechanisms,
however. There are both Spanish and Brazilian language newspapers and
Spanish and Brazilian TV. Journalists from their home countries report
their stories, but it is crystal clear to anyone: the Japanese want
nothing to do with their own immigrants or the children of these
immigrants.
This is the country that Fujimori has come to. And
this is the country that asks, who is Alberto Fujimori, and what is he
doing sleeping on my sofa?
©Bill Stonehill 2000 All rights reserved
Editor's note: Bill Stonehill hails from Chicago, Illinois. Trained as
an engineer and China specialist, he has now been living in Tokyo for well
over 20 years. He imports Swiss watches, is expert at taking them apart,
and if anyone knows what makes Japan tick too then he does. From 1999
until 2001 he wrote a regular Japan column for the Morrock News Service
(sadly discontinued), which was enjoyed by Web-surfers around the world.
We greatly appreciate the author's allowing us to republish some of
his very best articles here in Eyes on Japan.
This page last updated 2008-06-16
Eyes on Japan compiled and edited by
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