To answer your question of why there is a large Japanese community in Brazil we first need to establish the fact that long before any Japanese arrived in Brazil a lots of other peoples had arrived there. After Brazil gained independence from Portugal in 1822 the Emperor Pedro I and the elites wanted to modernize Brazil. They wanted a modern, export orientated economy based mostly on agriculture. Agriculture was one of the main industries that where growing at this time, and it demanded a lot of labor. And since slavery wasn’t really an option anymore and the slave trade eventually ended in 1850. This although it had been outlawed in 1826 but continued do to the necessity of workers(in this case slaves) on the plantations. And besides that it was seen as undesirable to bring more people of color to Brazil, the elite’s wanted a Modern country, which in their mind meant a white country.
The ideal candidates, according to the Brazilian elite, were white and catholic. The first efforts to bring white farmers to the large plantations didn’t work out as well as the elite’s had hoped. Firstly while they wanted free and white laborers on the plantations they didn’t treat them as laborers but as slaves. So while they did attract lots of immigrants, this also caused issues between the immigrant workforce and the plantation owners. Despite this loads of people from North-West Europe (Mostly German) came to Brazil to search for a better life. Still tough this wasn’t enough to satisfy the needs of the large plantations.
The next groups of mass immigrants came from Southern Europe, mostly Italian, Portuguese and to a lesser extend Spanish. These too didn’t work out as well as the elite’s had hoped, because most immigrants that arrived from Europe weren’t the best and brightest and most where illiterate, but mostly poor lower class citizens looking for a better life. This caused a lot of tension between the local plantation owners and these peoples. At one point it became so bad that the Italian authorities prohibited Italians from migrating to Brazil due to abuses by the plantation owners of the labor force. The third group that was attempted where Jews and Arabs, this scheme failed mostly due to the fact that most of the Jews and Arabs didn’t stay on the plantations but became shop keepers in the large cities in the country. Therefore the plantation owners still didn’t have a big enough workforce.
So far the attempts of the Brazilian state to “whiten” the population hadn’t worked out as promised, and still hadn’t brought in enough workers. From 1868 Japan transformed from a Feudal state to a Modern state with a lot of population growth. This caused the Japanese state to look for ways to relieve the population pressure, their main targets at first were the USA and mainland Asia. But soon they started looking at other regions, one of which was Brazil with a large demand for immigrants. This caused the Japanese and Brazilians to make a deal about immigration. This coincided with the Japanese desire to be a Western Country, and the Brazilian elites started to think about Japanese as white. In 1908 the first Japanese arrived in Brazil aboard the Kasato Maru, and the Brazilians where immediately impressed with the Japanese would-be immigrants. This event was witnessed by the Soa Paulo’s Inspector of Agriculture J. Amandio Sobral who was impressed that most of the immigrants were literate, “and in flagrant contrast … to our workers did not seem poor”. He too was amazed that the Immigrants looked European, and were clean, and so was the ship on which they had just undertook their journey. The arriving Japanese too were happily surprised with their arrival in Brazil, as by pure coincidence Sao Paulo was just having a festival, which the immigrants thought was in their honor. Over the years a lot more Japanese arrived and they were really well liked by the Brazilians. Despite this they still suffered from abuses by the large landowners but to a far less extent due to the protection of the Japanese immigrants by the Japanese state, and as Japan was a world power at this stage this meant far better conditions for the Japanese than other peoples had encountered at first.
I hope you will enjoy the read, I expanded a bit on the original questions and included the other targets of immigration first to give a more complete picture. If you have any additional questions feel free to ask I’ll try to answer them as best I can.
Sources: LESSER, J., Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to present, New York, 2013.
I haven't read this in some time so couldn't provide a summary that would do it justice, but Dr. Takeyuki Tsuda, an Anthropologist at UC San Diego, wrote a excellent ethnography on the subject. It is a staple in many anthropology programs and considered a must-read ethnography for many scholars studying trans transnationalism.
Tsuda, Takeyuki. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Teansnational Perspective. 2003. Columbia UP.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/strangers-in-the-ethnic-homeland/9780231128384
Couple of interesting points on this:
The immigration was largely organized and executed by private companies. A big one was Kaigai Ijuu Kumiai Rengokai (Confederação das Cooperativas de Emigração), founded in Japan in 1927, and its Brazilian subsidiary, Bratac (a contraction of Brasil Takushoku Kumiai Ltda., which apparently translates to “Brazil colonization society”). Source: http://www.imigracaojaponesa.com.br/index.php/nossa-historia/historia-da-imigracao-parte-3/
The Brazilian government (and apparently elements of civil society as well) persecuted the Japanese Brazilians during the Second World War. Japanese language schools were shut down, people were forced to move to the interior of the country, and Japanese language newspapers and radios were closed. According to the source below, this was inspired by the US internment of Japanese Americans during the same period, and actively encouraged by the Brazilian ambassador to Washington. http://www.usp.br/proin/download/imprensa/imprensa_integras_20_04_2009.pdf
Its a very interesting story, thanks for sharing it.
When I first read the headline, I assumed the basic reason was export of agricultural labor. Its the same reason there are Japanese populations in places like Hawaii and California.
Japanese labors were also imported to work sugarcane fields in Queensland, Australia. Southern european workers were also imported to Queensland, like in Brazil.
Japanese laborers also moved to Peru and I believe Alberto Fujimori was descended from this population. A community of Peruvian workers also live in Japan, so worker populations moved both ways at different times.
Source: Peru and Japan, an Uneasy Relationship