Verge: Studies in Global Asias

Abstract:

During World War II, the Brazilian government implemented repressive measures targeting immigrant communities of Italian, German, and Japanese extraction. Those measures intensified a process already under way since the beginning of the Estado Novo (New State, 1937–45). In this article, I focus on the consequences of these measures on the experience of Japanese immigrants in the city of São Paulo and specifically in the neighborhood of Liberdade, which had the greatest concentration of Japanese. I argue that in those years of restrictions and ethnic persecution, a durable and valued connection existed between Japanese immigrants and the neighborhood of Liberdade. This type of selective occupation and settlement of urban space reflects a demarcation of territory in a way that those difficult years could not undo.