Brazilians in Japan
[7][8] At that time, Japan was receiving a large number of illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and Thailand.
[9] The legislation of 1990 was intended to select immigrants who entered Japan, giving a clear preference for Japanese descendants from South America, especially Brazil.
These people were lured to Japan to work in areas that the Japanese refused (the so-called "three K": Kitsui, Kitanai and Kiken – dirty, dangerous and demeaning).
[11] (There have been comparable problems in Germany with Russians of ethnic German descent, showing that this phenomenon is not necessarily unique to Japan.)
In April 2009, due to the financial crisis, the Japanese government introduced a new program that would incentivize Brazilian and other Latin American immigrants to return home with a stipend of $3000 for airfare and $2000 for each dependent.
As of 2004, the cities with under 1,000,000 total inhabitants with the largest Brazilian Nikkei populations were Hamamatsu (12,766), Toyohashi (10,293), Toyota (6,266), Okazaki (4,500), Suzuka (4,084), Kani (3,874), Komaki (3,629), Isesaki (3,372), Ōta (3,245), and Ōgaki (3,129).
An anthropologist known as Takeyuki Tsuda, coined the term "positive minority" to describe Japanese Brazilians' socioeconomic status in Brazil.
The majority of Brazilians with Japanese descent have a high socioeconomic status despite their inactivity in politics and smaller demographics.
[11] They were viewed in Brazil as a “model minority,” meaning that were looked up upon by other Brazilian natives with their good education and middle class economic status.
When Japanese Brazilians migrated back to Japan, many of them faced a drastic change to their social and ethnic status.
[6] With Catholicism widespread in Brazil, in the early days of Brazilian migration to Japan, Catholic churches often served as spaces for migrant gatherings and socialization.
After World War II many first generation Japanese migrants encouraged their offspring to convert to the Catholic religion for social and economic opportunities in Brazil.
However, the growth of secular Brazilian community organization, media, and businesses in Japan has taken over part of this role from the churches.
However, differences in culture and even in religious tradition have made it difficult to integrate Brazilian migrants into native Japanese Catholic congregations.
[27] For example, in the Saitama Diocese, although Japanese-speaking and Portuguese-speaking congregations share the same church building, exchange between them is almost non-existent, and the two groups hold ceremonies, celebrations, and other events separately.
[31] Brazilians tend to take jobs considered undesirable by native Japanese, such as working in electronics factories,[32] and in the automotive sector.
