A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan

Araceli TinajeroTranslated by Veronica Karpoich

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN LATIN AMERICA AND ASIA

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia

Series EditorsIgnacio López-Calvo

University of California, MercedMerced, CA, USA

Kathleen LópezRutgers University

New Brunswick, NJ, USA

This series is devoted to the diversity of encounters between Latin America and Asia through multiple points of contact across time and space. It welcomes different theoretical and disciplinary approaches to define, describe, and explore the histories and cultural production of people of Asian descent in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also welcomes research on Hispano-Filipino history and cultural production. Themes may include Asian immigration and geopolitics, the influence and/or representation of the Hispanic world in Asian cultures, Orientalism and Occidentalism in the Hispanic world and Asia, and other transpacific and south-south exchanges that disrupt the boundaries of traditional academic fields and singular notions of identity. The geographical scope of the series incorporates the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Pacific Rim and the Caribbean region. We welcome single-author monographs and volumes of essays from experts in the field from different academic backgrounds.

About the series editors:Ignacio López-Calvo is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of California, Merced, USA and director of the UC Merced Center for the Humanities. He is author of several books on Latin American and US Latino literature. He is co-executive director of the academic journal Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World.

Kathleen López is Associate Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Department of History at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA.  She is author of Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History (2013) and a contributor to Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought (2015), Immigration and National Identities in Latin America (2016), and Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016).

Advisory Board:Koichi Hagimoto, Wellesley College, USAEvelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University, USAJunyoung Verónica Kim, University of Pittsburgh, USAAna Paulina Lee, Columbia University, USADebbie Lee-DiStefano, Southeast Missouri State University, USAShigeko Mato, Waseda University, JapanZelideth María Rivas, Marshall University, USARobert Chao Romero, University of California, Los Angeles, USALok Siu, University of California, Berkeley, USAAraceli Tinajero, City College of New York, USALaura Torres-Rodríguez, New York University, USA

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15129

Araceli Tinajero

A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers

in JapanTranslated by Veronica Karpoich

Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and AsiaISBN 978-3-030-64487-1 ISBN 978-3-030-64488-8 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64488-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Araceli TinajeroClassical and Modern LanguagesThe City College of New YorkNew York, NY, USA

Independent scholarBrooklyn, NY, USA

Translated by Veronica Karpoich

To Josefina Tinajero,sister, friend, angel…

vii

On Tuesday, January 21 of this year, I presented Historia cultural de los hispanohablantes en Japón [A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan] at the Cervantes Institute in Tokyo. It was a serene night and not very cold, although it was winter. In the auditorium, a friendly audience made up of approximately 100 people listened enthusiastically to what the panelists (Shigeko Mato, Gonzalo Robledo, Monserrat Sanz Yagüe, Akira Watanabe) and I had to say about the book. Everything seemed normal, but the next day, the news indicated that the death toll from a new flu-like coronavirus in China had risen to nine or so and that there were 440 con-firmed cases. Since that moment, everything has changed. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the entire world.

When the virus reached New York, the city closed almost entirely. On March 11, my university suspended in-person classes, and since then, I have not returned to campus. I had no choice but to cancel book presenta-tions that I had scheduled in Spain, Mexico, and New York. On the other hand, it has been a privilege that Vero, my translator, has worked on this version precisely during the worst months of the pandemic, when almost all of us have been confined. This book shows that even in the worst moments of crisis, intellectual activity continues.

Ships sailing the Hudson River that normally carry passengers from Manhattan to New Jersey were stranded for more than one hundred days. In fact, no ship was permitted to navigate the waters except for a floating

Prologue to the english edition

viii PROLOGUE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

navy hospital. This morning, walking on one side of the river, I saw a sail-boat. Today, ships have sprung back to action. My tears could have filled the Hudson River.

North Bergen, NJ Araceli Tinajero June 29, 2020

ix

My most profound thanks…to everyone who granted me an interview; I do not write their names

here as they appear throughout the text,to Takahiro Kato, who received me in Japan for the first time as a pro-

fessional and for having invited me to give so many talks and seminars in various Japanese universities,

to my friend Mónica Ricketts for convincing me not to abandon this project and for her constant support,

to Natsuki Uehara for having done so much for me in Okinawa and helping me obtain important statistics; and to Atushi Uema for his kind reception,

to Shigeko Mato for her hospitality in Tokyo and for all the various favors over the years,

to Aurelio Asiain and Monserrat Loyde for their kindness and the invi-tation to Kansai Gaidai,

to Junko Kajita, Michiyo Hayashi, and Alvaro M.  Navarro for their kindness in Hirakata-shi,

to Noboru Kinoshita, Abel Cárdenas, Chizuru Ushida, and Masaki Kawashima for their kind reception in Nagoya,

to Maria Kinoshita, for her interesting conversations about films,to Ayako Saitou and Takaatsu Yanagihara for their attention in Tokyo,to Alberto K. Fonseca Sakai for the wonderful intellectual exchange

and for helping me with data and important bibliography,to Shoji Bando and Seiko Ota, thank you for the unforgettable moments

in Kyoto,

Acknowledgments

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to Jun’ichi Hibino for allowing me to investigate his archives; thank you for your patience,

to Naomi Fujito for sharing so much material and so many anecdotes,to Hisatoshi Tajima for his knowledge related to Okinawan culture,to Marcos Rodríguez, Rosa María Pinelo, and Akiko Mori for introduc-

ing me to young Cubans in Tokyo, already masters of music,to Ryukichi Terao for his interesting conversation and for having gifted

me several impeccable translations,to Mariko and Akira Watanabe for marvelous times in Tokyo and

Yamanashi; and thank you to Yukiko Sugishita for her entertaining conver-sation in Kamata,

to Keiki Yoshitake, loyal friend whose ears are always attentive to my doubts; thank you for making me feel ALWAYS at home in Nagoya,

to Hiroshi Ojima for his enthusiasm and for promoting Cuban culture in Japan,

to Yoichi Higashiyama for his sage advice and patience when I reviewed the archives of Seisen Daigaku,

to Seiko Nishiyama for helping me obtain difficult interviews and for her unconditional labor as a volunteer in the group “Friends,”

to Yukiko Haneda, lifelong friend, thanks for the sushi that spring after-noon under the cherry trees in Shinjuku Gyoen,

to Sisters Gwendolyn Hoeffel and Michiko Sato for their kind welcome in Nagoya and for helping me with my study of the libraries,

to Sister María Matilde Núñez for allowing to study her archives and her library,

to Father Anselmo Ferreira de Melo for his constant help,to Juan Carlos Lugo Alba for his hospitality in Okinawa,to Zhexuan Wang for reminding me that writing is what gives meaning

to my life,to Karen Horan and Hande Gumuskemer for being so close (literally),

and for believing in this book when I began writing it,to Helene Hoedl and Paul Hoeffel for their unconditional support,to Lorena Hernández Ramírez for the important bibliography and for

helping me articulate the title of this book; also, thank you for the enter-taining conversations in New York,

to my colleagues, Emi Kikuchi and Akemi Kudo, for the profound, unwavering support;

to Elsa Cross for providing me valuable bibliography when I was finish-ing the manuscript;

xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to the librarians of the City College of New York: Daisy Domínguez, Sarah Aponte, and Jessy Pérez; as well as Everett Allgood (NYU librarian), thank you for your care and support,

to Dr. Lakra for letting me use his art for the cover of the Spanish edi-tion; he knows how much I admire his boldness and the value that he gives to the art of “copying,”

to all my siblings, Ángel, Leticia, Graciela, María Eugenia, Natividad, Elvia, Josefina, Iván, and Lizbeth, for their love forever,

to my beautiful nieces and nephews, Nancy, Gisela, César, Karla, Miguel, Mónica, Jaritzi Guadalupe, Mariana, José Angel, Marco Leopoldo, Esaú, Tania, and Alexa;

above all, I thank my nephew Mario Alberto Vega López, who helped me with the photographs for this book;

to Lizeth Y. López, my faithful interlocutor, thanks for reading part of the manuscript and making excellent suggestions;

and, finally, to Stephen Pollard for so many wonderful things.I am profoundly indebted to Carlos Aguasaco from Artepoética for the

confidence that he has in my projects. Thanks to him the Spanish version of this book was published. I would also like to thank Carlos Velásquez Torres for his determination in editing the Spanish edition. Furthermore, I would like to thank Susana Sueiro Seoane, Florentino Rodao García, Consuelo Marco Martínez, Javier Parrondo, Daniel Sastre, Antonio Castillo Gómez, Verónica Sierra Blas, and Guadalupe Adámez Castro for diseminating my work in Spain.

I want to give thanks to Veronica Karpoich, the translator of this book; I am infinitely grateful to her for working with so much precision and so quickly even during the most severe and uncertain moments of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is impeccable. Thank you very much, Vero, really.

My heartfelt thanks to Camille Davis, Cultural, Media, and Communication Studies editor of Palgrave Macmillan, for her trust and faith in this project. I am also immensely grateful to Ignacio López-Calvo and Kathleen López, series editors of Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, for their guidance, enthusiasm, and for promoting Transpacific Studies scholarship. I would also like to thank Palgrave Macmillan editorial and project coordination team for their tremendous patience: special thanks to Liam McLean, Md. Saif, Petra Treiber, Vanipriya Manohar, Divya Anish, and Sylvia Anand.

xiii

Beginning in 1990, thousands of Spanish speakers emigrated to Japan. A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan focuses on the intellec-tuals, literature, translations, festivals, cultural associations, music (bolero, tropical music, and pop, including reggaeton), dance (flamenco, tango, and salsa), radio, newspapers, magazines, libraries, and blogs produced in Spanish, in Japan, by Latin Americans and Spaniards who have lived in that country over the last three decades. Based on in-depth research in archives throughout the country as well as field work including several interviews, Japanese-speaking Mexican scholar Araceli Tinajero uncovers a transnational, contemporary cultural history that is important not only for today but for future generations.

About the book

xv

1 Introduction to the Historical and Cultural Links Between the Spanish-Speaking World and Japan 1

2 Intellectuals 9Conclusion 60

3 Media 63Section One: Newspapers 63

International Press Newspaper 63Section Two: Magazines 80

Revista Mercado Latino [Latin Market Magazine] 80Kyodai and Revista Kyodai [Kyodai and Kyodai Magazine] 87Revista Hyogolatino [Hyogolatino Magazine] 91Revista Mujer Latina [Latin Woman Magazine] 95Latin-a [Latin-a Magazine] 97Revista Wakaranai [Wakaranai Magazine] 101Impacto Semanal – Prensa Oficial Peruana en Japón [Impact Weekly – Official Peruvian Press in Japan] 103Acueducto – La revista española en Japón [Acqueduct – The Spanish Magazine in Japan] 104Revista Escape [Escape Magazine] 108Revista Kanto – Arte, Cultura, Literatura, Comunicación [Kanto Magazine – Art, Culture, Literature, Communication] 110Conclusion 114

contents

xvi CONTENTS

Section Three: Radio 115Radio Latina Super FM 115Radio FM YY 116Radio Cocolo FM 76.5 MHZ 120Radio Shonan de Kanagawa 83.1 Mhz 122Radio Yamato FM 77.7 122Radio Latina and Rincón Latino 123Radio Libertad and La Voz del Inmigrante 124Radio NHK 124Radio Club Latino 125

4 Music, Dance, Festivals, and Associations 139

5 Literature and Libraries 181Section One: Literature 181

The City 184Technology: Trains and Mobile Devices 186Loneliness 189Daily Life 191Work Life 192Diversity: Coexisting with Other Foreigners 201Discrimination 203Nostalgia 206Suicide 207Conclusion 208

Section Two: Libraries 213

6 Blogs and Other Emerging Digital and Physical Intersections Between the Spanish-Speaking World and Japan 225

Bibliography 235

Index 247

xvii

Araceli Tinajero is Professor of Hispanic literatures, an author, a critic, a cultural promoter, and teaches at The City College of New York and at the City University of New  York’s Graduate Center. She is the author of Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano, El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory, and Kokoro: A Mexican Woman in Japan. Tinajero is the editor or co-editor of various volumes including Cultura y letras cuba-nas en el siglo XXI, Exilio y cosmopolitismo en el arte y la literatura his-pánica, Orientalisms of the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian World, Technology and Culture in Twentieth Century Mexico, and Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change. She is the Book Review Editor of the journal Asia/América Latina.

Veronica Karpoich holds an MA in International Political Economy and Development from Fordham University. She began her professional career at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where she managed events, publications, and communications focused on Cuba and Mexico in mul-tiple languages. For more than a decade, she has worked in the non-profit sector delivering technical assistance and working in English and Spanish with governments, financial service providers, and end ben-eficiaries of financial products and services around the world.

About the Author And the trAnslAtor

xix

Fig. 2.1 Cover of Doña Bárbara in Japanese, 2016. Gendaikikakushitsu, Keiko Motonaga (designer) 61

Fig. 2.2 Classroom at Eurolingual School, Osaka, 2015 62Fig. 3.1 Mercado Latino magazine, 2011 129Fig. 3.2 Kyodai magazine, 2011. Kyodai Remittance 130Fig. 3.3 Kyodai Magazine, 2014. Kyodai Remittance 131Fig. 3.4 Hyogolatino magazine, 2002. World Kids Community 132Fig. 3.5 Escape magazine, 2011. Plasmarte 133Fig. 3.6 Acueducto—La Revista Española en Japón magazine, 2011.

Adelante Co., Ltd 134Fig. 3.7 Mujer Latina magazine, 2010. Revista Latin-a, Comunidad

Latina, Hyogo 135Fig. 3.8 Latin-a magazine, 2017. Revista Latin-a, Hyogo Laten

Community 136Fig. 3.9 Roxana Oshiro broadcasting the radio program Salsa Latina,

Kobe, 2015 137Fig. 4.1 Peruvian food stand at the Peru Festival, Tokyo, 2013 173Fig. 4.2 Dancers at the Brazil Day, Tokyo, 2013 174Fig. 4.3 Poster Fiesta Peruana de Kobe, 2014. Hyogo Laten Community 175Fig. 4.4 Children dancing marinera at the Wakaba International Festival,

Tokyo, 2015 176Fig. 4.5 Members of the Alexander L.P. and Puros Habanos band—Joan

David, percussion (right) and Alexander LP (left), leader, singer, guitarist, and producer. Tokyo, 2015 177

Fig. 4.6 Youngster dancing during the procession of Señor de los Milagros, Hirakata Catholic Church, Osaka, 2016 178

list of figures

xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.7 Mexicans and Japanese celebrating the Day of the Dead, Instituto Cervantes, Tokyo, 2016 179

Fig. 5.1 Midorigaoka Church library, Nagoya, 2013 222Fig. 5.2 Toyota City public library, 2013 223Fig. 6.1 Children at the Colegio Mundo de Alegría, Hamamatsu, 2015 231Fig. 6.2 Youngsters at the Colegio Mundo de Alegría, Hamamatsu, 2015 232Fig. 6.3 Héctor García, Blogger, Tokyo, 2015 233

1© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021A. Tinajero, A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64488-8_1

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to the Historical and Cultural Links Between the Spanish-Speaking World

and Japan

In 2009, when I wrote my book Kokoro: A Mexican Woman in Japan, I returned to Nagoya, the city where I had lived in the early 1980s. When I set foot in its streets after so much time, nostalgia overwhelmed me; it was now another city, it was now a Japan that I had not experienced. I knew that beginning in the 1990s waves of Latin American immigrants had arrived, but I had not lived with them. They had arrived afterward. I also knew that these immigrants had begun to create a culture of which I did not form a part. When I lived in Japan, there were no magazines, newspa-pers, radio, or televisions programs in Spanish.1 In addition, there were very few festivals celebrating the Hispanic world; Hispanic music was scarcely heard, and relatively few restaurants served Hispanic food. I tried to locate a book that might give me insight into this recent cultural his-tory, but I did not find one, even though there are in fact monographic works that cover different historical and cultural aspects of that community.2

1 When I lived in Japan, I was not a professional yet. The newspapers and specialized jour-nals accessible in university libraries were out of my reach because I was not part of academic circles.

2 See books, edited volumes, or articles by Almazán and Barlés Báquena, Bigenho, Camayd-Freixas, Cid Lucas, Fonseca Sakai, Gasquet, Gómez Aragón, Hagimoto, Kushigian, López Calvo, Masterson and Funada-Classen, Matsuda, Nagy-Zekmi, Rivas and Lee-DiStefano, Riger Tsurumi, Rossi, and Rostmji-Kerns, among others (all listed in the bibliography). Some of these studies focus on the Nissei or Sansei (e.g., second- or third-generation Japanese

2

Despite this, it would be wrong to say that the presence of Spanish speakers in the archipelago is a phenomenon of recent decades. In fact, Spanish missionaries arrived in Japan for the first time in the sixteenth century. There, the Spanish introduced agricultural products, theoretical knowledge of astronomy, geography, mathematics, fine arts, chemical and physical products—for example, soap, mirrors, brandy, wine, lenses, and telescopes—along with metallurgical and shipping techniques.3 These relationships remained for decades until the beginning of the seventeenth century when a persecution against Catholics spread for more than 250 years (the recent movie Silence by Martin Scorsese showed an episode from this history).4 Simultaneously, Japan entered the Edo or Tokugawa Period (1603–1868), which was characterized by the closing of national borders to avoid contact with foreigners. This self-isolation ended in 1868 with the Meiji Period (1868–1912) when the opposite was done: the country entered into a profound process of westernization.5 From the western world, Japan began to learn about science and technology, and, on a smaller scale, humanities. The first Spanish classes were taught in the Tokyo School of Commerce in 1890. With the passing of time, more and more Spanish language schools were opened. Things changed again after World War II, when there was a decline in the study of humanities. The Catholic church had the “hope that there would be massive conversions to Catholicism in Japan,”6 but this was not the case; even if some small schools were transformed into Catholic universities where Spanish was taught. In the 1960s, with the Olympic Games in Tokyo, the Osaka Expo in 1970, and an increase in the popularity of Spanish and Latin American music, little by little, Spanish departments were opened in the great uni-versities: Sophia, Seisen, Kobe, Kyoto, Nanzan, and so on.7 This study does not delve into these very important cultural intersections between Japan and the Spanish-speaking world.8

immigrants who live in Peru or Brazil). There are several studies in Japanese as well. See the bibliography in Fonseca Sakai’s article “Comunidades latinoamericanas….”

3 Cabezas García, “Impacto mutuo…” 21.4 The film is based on Shusako Endo’s novel.5 See Michiko Tanaka’s edition, chapters 3 and 4.6 “Interview with Father Gustavo Andrarde, S.J.” In González and Morales Muñoz, 208.7 Rey, 168.8 See the important volumes Japón y la Península Ibérica. Cinco siglos de encuentros edited

by Cid Lucas and Japón y Occidente: el patrimonio cultural como punto de encuentro, edited by Anjhara Gómez. Additionally, the works of Jesuit Pedro García Gutiérrez include seminal

A. TINAJERO

3

Instead, this book centers on the cultural history of Spanish speakers in Japan in the last three decades.9 By Spanish speakers, I refer to the Latin Americans and Spanish that in the present live or have lived in the country for long periods of time within that timeframe.10 The economic prosperity of Japan toward the end of the twentieth century enticed companies to bring foreigners to work in the country. In 1991, the New Migration and Aliens Act permitted the entrance of all Japanese descendants (Nissei) through the third generation (Sansei); they were able to obtain permanent residency and work without restrictions.11 In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese, abandoning poverty, immigrated primar-ily to Brazil and Peru. Now, their children or grandchildren could go to work legally in Japan. The arrival of thousands of Nissei or Sansei Latin Americans to Japan coincided with larger global transnational move-ments.12 For example, Spain was a country that received waves of immi-grants; however, at the same time, hundreds of Spanish went to live in other parts of the world, including Japan. I decided to study the cultural output of Latin Americans and the Spanish in Japan together because, as we will see, they are not united just by the same language, but also in many cases they work for the same institutions, contribute to the same newspa-pers or magazines, and form part of the same public that attended cultural and artistic events.

This book, like all projects, began with a personal interest. I had lived in Nagoya in the Aichi Province south of Tokyo between 1981 and 1984, during a period of unprecedented economic boom. A few years after I left, in 1991, the Spanish speakers that are the topic of this book began to arrive. By the end of that year, there were 26,281 Peruvians; 3366

studies that help us better understand the dialogue between Japan and the West through the arts (see bibliography).

9 While I was writing this book, some of the people I was studying who were living in Japan left the country. Some returned to their homelands; others moved to other parts of the world. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for people to move from country to country or from continent to continent.

10 The terms “Latino” and “Hispanic” have generated several debates and been the object of study of important books. See works by Juan González (the introduction), David Gutiérrez (note 2, p. xxiii), and the volume edited by Delgado and Stefancic.

11 Rossi (“La comunidad latina…” 3).12 Throughout this book, I will be using the terms Nissei and Nikkei interchangeably. Both

refer to the descendants of Japanese immigrants that reside in a foreign country.

1 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL LINKS…

4

Argentinians; 1052 Paraguayans; and 1766 Bolivians in Japan.13 Given that I was not a witness to the cultural processes in which they have been involved, such as the creation of newspapers, magazines, radio programs, festivals, Spanish-language literature, and so on, it is exactly this that I wanted to investigate. In 2011, just after the Great Tohoku Earthquake, I began to travel regularly to Japan to begin my studies, which I carried out from Tokyo to Okinawa. The territory of the Japanese islands is larger than France or Germany, even though only one-fourth of the land is hab-itable; it is for this reason that in Japan, above all, overpopulation is a concern.14 It was a challenge to travel through different cities and towns where Spanish-speaking communities are not obvious the way Chinatowns are in various cities of the world. There are 70,432 Spanish speakers in Japan, and 70% of the population is of Peruvian origin;15 however, this Spanish-speaking population in its totality does not reach 1% of the Japanese population, which totals more than 126 million.16 There are also thousands of Nissei or Sansei Brazilians who triple the population of Spanish speakers; they also arrived from South America at the beginning

13 Over the following years, the numbers increased rapidly except for the number of Argentinians. For example, by the year 2000, there were 46,171 Peruvians, 3072 Argentinians, 1678 Paraguayans, and 3915 Bolivians (this is from the Nikkeijinshuro Kankyo Kaizejigyo no Kiseki pp 74–75 [2000]; correspondence with Alberto Matsumoto).

14 Marshall, 221.15 According to the statistics of the Japan Ministry of Justice, in June 2018 there were

70,421 Spanish-speaking people: Costa Ricans 189, Cubans 250, Dominicans 553, Salvadorians 144, Guatemalans 139, Hondurans 139, Mexicans 2744, Nicaraguans 89, Panamanians 56, Argentinians 2825, Bolivians 5858, Chileans 751, Colombians 2405, Ecuadorians 228, Paraguayans 2052, Peruvians 48,266, Uruguayans 110, Venezuelans 417 and 3217 Spanish. However, December 2016 statistics list: 274 Costa Ricans, 323 Cubans, 701 Dominicans, 146 Salvadorians, 191 Guatemalans, 210 Hondurans, 3822 Mexicans, 106 Nicaraguans, 110 Panamanians, 3257 Argentinians, 5591 Bolivians, 915 Chileans, 2707 Colombians, 269 Ecuadorians, 1,976 Paraguayans, 48,098 Peruvians, 128 Uruguayans, 437 Venezuelans, and 3110 Spanish; a total of 72,372. However, the population of Brazilians is higher: 196,781 (2018) and 183,583 (2016). Source: http://www.moj.go.jp/housei/toukei/toukei_ichiran_touroku.html. Accessed January 8, 2020. Population numbers fluc-tuate; for instance, due to the Great Tohoku Earthquake in 2011, the Spanish-speaking population decreased since a number of  people left Japan. Nowadays, there are 20% less Peruvians than in 2001. Source: Correspondence with Alberto Matsumoto. In addition, there are several persons who are not officially registered. An example of the complexity of the foreign population statistics is thoroughly presented in the article “Los mexicanos que viven en Japón” by Monserrat Loyde.

16 http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-population/. Accessed February, 4, 2020.

A. TINAJERO

5

of the 1990s. By 1991, there were already 119,333Brazilians living in the archipelago, and at the present time, there are 211,677.17 However, the total population of foreigners in Japan, including Chinese and Korean populations, which on their own surpass one million inhabitants, does not reach 1.83% of the total population of the country.18 In other words, Japan is a country with very few immigrants. Even though the majority of Spanish speakers are Peruvians of Japanese ancestry (Nissei or Sansei), in this book, I do not exclusively focus on them because, as I will try to dem-onstrate, all Spanish speakers have contributed to the creation of an eclec-tic and original culture.

This brief history does not do justice to the thousands of Spanish speak-ers that have lived—whether permanently or for a time—in Japan until 1990, nor to their achievements. It also does not do justice to the Japanese who speak Spanish, who in one form or another also form part of the cul-tural history of Spanish speakers in the country. There are thousands of Japanese that speak Spanish and are part of diverse related spheres in soci-ety: there are professors of Latin American and Spanish literature, as well as experts in the areas of social sciences, plastic artists, scientists, physi-cians, musicians, lawyers, filmmakers, interpreters, translators, dancers, entrepreneurs, monks, priests, and, in summary, a world of people that have lived with and helped Spanish speakers to make progress in their country and live a more dignified life. There are also thousands of volun-teer interpreters and translators that work tirelessly to help those Spanish speakers that do not yet understand the Japanese language. This book is an homage to these Japanese as well, because, as readers have seen in the acknowledgments, this study would have been impossible without their support, hospitality, and sage advice.

The second chapter covers a brief study of professionals and intellectu-als in Japan, who have founded publishing houses, published books, trans-lated important works, and written for the major newspapers and magazines published in the country. As the reader will see, both Japanese and Spanish speakers in Japan benefit from the contributions of these intellectuals, who build bridges of communication between the Hispanic

17 Source: correspondence with Alberto Matsumoto (see note 13). The scope of my study does not include Brazilians; however, they have created their own cultural universe and scholarship about their socio-economic and cultural life in Japan has proliferated in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

18 Ibid.

1 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL LINKS…

6

world and Japan through their seminars and publications in Spain or Latin America. At the same time, they act as “ambassadors” for Hispanic intel-lectuals that spend time, whether short or long, in Japan.

In the third chapter, I present a study of Spanish media in Japan in three sections. I start with the founding and development of the newspa-per International Press, a pioneer weekly publication that continues to be the leading publication in the Spanish language in Japan. The second sec-tion covers various free magazines, and the final section is dedicated to radio. This is the most extensive chapter because, elsewhere, I allude to various newspapers or magazines, including the topics they cover and the literature they publish. As people from all over the Hispanic world con-sume and contribute to media, it is especially in this space where Spanish speakers from different communities coexist.

Dance and musical expression are the focus of the fourth chapter. I provide a brief overview of how styles such as flamenco, tango, and salsa arrived in Japan and how Spanish speakers have promoted their develop-ment even more in the time since. On the topic of music produced in Japan, I give examples of groups dedicated to bolero, tropical music, and pop, including reggaeton. As music is intimately connected with the festi-vals celebrated in the country, in this section, I also include a study of major festivals as well as the cultural associations that organize and pro-mote them.

The fifth chapter centers on literature and, to a much lesser degree, on libraries. Taking as a major thread the novel Banteki (El salvaje) by José Pazó, I analyze how the literary production of Spanish speakers above all occupies itself with themes like cities, technology, loneliness, daily life, working life, living with foreigners, discrimination, nostalgia for one’s home country, and suicide. In the second half of the chapter, given that many Spanish speakers in Japan do not play a role in university spaces, I provide a brief overview of non-specialized libraries that offer materials for these readers.

In the sixth and final chapter, I discuss blogs and other emerging digital and physical intersections between the Spanish-speaking world and Japan. I make a brief reference to blogs and bloggers whose thousands of users enter their universe with a simple click and whose work promotes not just the exchange of information digitally but has also positively contributed to the promotion of written content as well. I briefly discuss Twitter and

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other social networks. Finally, I touch upon newly established bilingual schools that are contributing positively to the education of a new genera-tion of bilingual or even trilingual Spanish speakers in Japan, who are already and will continue to develop their own multi-faceted and nuanced cultural production in the Land of the Rising Sun.

1 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL LINKS…

9© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021A. Tinajero, A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan, Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64488-8_2

CHAPTER 2

Intellectuals

It is difficult to begin a recent history of intellectuals living in Japan given that there is a long history of scholars who have resided in Japan over the span of the twentieth century.1 This book focuses on intellectuals active over the last thirty years because, with the arrival of thousands of Spanish speakers in 1990, a more open and pluralistic dialogue was initiated between Japan and the Spanish-speaking world. In addition, several milestones and major events have taken place over the past three decades that have been either international in nature or have garnered attention from across the globe. In the political sphere, these include the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989,

1 See Japón y la Península Ibérica edited by Cid Lucas and the articles by Cabezas García and Pazó Espinosa in the same volume. Also, see the works of Jesús González Vallés, Fernando García Gutiérrez, Gonzalo Jiménez de la Espada, Federico Lanzaco y Fernando Rodríguez-Izquierdo as well as the book by Gasquet and chapter two of my Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano and the books mentioned in the introduction. Later on, I will talk about the association Confederación Académica Nipona, Española y Latinoamericana (CANELA) where the Editorial Board of Cuadernos CANELA (a journal published by the same association) are Spanish-speaking professors (some Japanese) who live in Japan and are authors of very important academic works. The majority of the members are professors as well. This is a brief list: Daniel Saucedo Segami (Director of CANELA), Daniel Arrieta, Ignacio Aristimuño, Paloma Trenado, Roger Civit i Contra, Montserrat Sanz Yagüe, Fernando Blanco, Arturo Escandón, Noritaka Fukushima, Noboru Kinoshita, Alfredo López-Pasarín Basabe, Naoka Mori, Emma Nishida, Kimiyo Nishimura, Carla Tronu Montané, and Lluís Valls Campà, among others.

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which marked the end of the Showa Era, the ascension to the throne by Akihito in 1990, signaling the start of the Heisei Era, and the 2019 launch of the Reiwa Era with Emperor Naruhito at the throne. The 1995 Kobe Earthquake, 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, economic recession of 2008, the Great Tohoku Earthquake, and radioactivity resulting from the Daiichi Nuclear Plant accident in Fukushima in 2011 also took place during this period. Soon, Japan will experience another major event when it hosts the Olympic Games.2 In the cultural sphere, one example of a major milestone includes the formation of the Confederación Académica Nipona, Española y Latinoamericana (CANELA) [Japanese, Spanish and Latin American Academic Confederation], which occurred at the end of the 1980s spear-headed by Professor Pedro Simón, an Argentine and Grand Chancellor of Nanzan University in Nagoya. Importantly, it was the first academic con-federation in Japan to offer conferences and publications (Cuadernos CANELA) in Spanish. During its first conference, Simón said: “today, a small group of 22 lovers of that which is Spanish establishes itself united in a confederation to achieve these goals. … Meeting here, a group of Japanese, Spanish, and Latin American colleagues, we propose to continue deepening our respective areas of study. … And in order for these studies to come to be known by the whole group, we propose to communicate in the Spanish language.”3 In addition, in 2008, the Cervantes Institute of Tokyo opened, the largest center in the entire Cervantes network. Through the institute, important conferences are held on Hispanic culture in Japan, and various cultural activities from around the Hispanic world are made accessible to academics as well as the general public. The intellectuals cov-ered in this chapter have lived through all or some of these historic events. In this period, they have created publishing houses, translated important works, and edited pieces published in Spain or Latin America for the first time, worked for the first Spanish- language newspapers and magazines in Japan, undertaken arduous research on nuclear energy, and become entrepreneurs and formed their own institutions. Due to lack of time and space, I decided to focus on a small group of individuals that I believe will provide readers with a diverse understanding of what intellectuals are doing in Japan; that is to say, this chapter shows only a microcosm of what takes

2 The Tokyo Olympic Games were scheduled for the summer of 2020 but have been postponed to July 23—August 8, 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

3 http://www.canela.org.es/cuadernoscanela/canelapdf/cc1saludo.pdf. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.

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place in this sphere in the archipelago.4 As I am a professor of literature, this study also provided me with the opportunity to interview and to study those that operate in literature, translation, interpretation, journalism, and/or teaching languages.5

A key intellectual among the esteemed group, Montse Watkins was born in Barcelona in 1955. Thirty years later, she arrived in Japan, capti-vated by its history and culture, but, above all, by the movies of Ozu Yasujiro. Shortly after arriving, she learned the Japanese language and worked as a correspondent for the EFE, a news agency in Tokyo, and the newspaper AVUI, headquartered in Barcelona. Watkins was one of the pioneers in translating Japanese literature directly from the original Japanese. Since it was difficult to publish her first translations in Spain, in 1994, she established Colección Luna Books [Luna Books Collection] within the Japanese publishing house Gendaikikakushitsu. From 1994 through 2000 (the year of her death), Watkins published more than twenty-five books,6 producing some of the first translations of Japanese literature to the Spanish language. The export of her books to the Western world enabled readers to explore Japanese authors for the first time.

Montse, as her friends and critics called her, produced an extensive body of work. She completed a direct translation from Japanese of three anthologies by Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933): Tren nocturno de la vía láctea, Historias mágicas, and El mesón con muchos pedidos,7 with the last of the three done in collaboration with Elena Gallego. Additionally, she published El dragón, an anthology of stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa; two selections of stories by Yakumo Koizumi (Lafcadio Hearn): Historias misteriosas and La linterna de poenía; a selection of chapters from the work of Natsume Soseki, Soy un gato; and, by Shimazaki Toson, El precepto roto, which openly raises the marginalization of the buraku (the untouchables). She published Indigno ser humano and El ocaso by Osamu

4 For example, I was not able to interview many intellectuals or important journalists such as Pablo Lores Kanto Mario Castro Ganoza, Luis Álvarez, nor Pedro Simón, a very important intellectual. In this chapter I use the term “intellectual” to refer to diverse professionals who are academics, journalists, and professionals who have their own language institutes.

5 An e-book about Spanish professionals in Japan was just published. See Colina Martín.6 Gallego Andrada edited a volume based on critical works about Montse Watkins: Ensayos

en homenaje…. Also, see: http://www.montsewatkins.net/.7 For a detailed list of translations from Japanese into Spanish in a larger context and to

understand the importance of Montse’s translations see V.  David Almazán’s “El punto de inflexión….”

2 INTELLECTUALS