Jesus Loves Japan by Suma Ikeuchi

J E S U S L OV E S J A PA N
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JESUS LOVES JAPAN
R E T U R N M I G R A T I O N AND
G L O B A L PENTECOSTALISM
I N A B R A Z I L I A N D I A S P O R A
SUMA IKEUCHI
S TA NFO RD UN I VER SI T Y P RE S S ❚ S TA NFO RD , C ALI FO RNI A

Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2019 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ikeuchi, Suma, 1985– author.
Title: Jesus loves Japan : return migration and global pentecostalism in a Brazilian diaspora /
Suma Ikeuchi.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018041613 | ISBN 9781503607965 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503609341
(pbk.) | ISBN 9781503609358 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Pentecostalism—Japan. | Return migration—Japan. | Brazilians—Japan—
Religion. | Brazilians—Japan—Ethnic identity. | Japan—Emigration and immigration—
Religious aspects—Pentecostal churches. | Brazil—Emigration and immigration—Religious
aspects—Pentecostal churches.
Classification: LCC BR1644.5.J3 I34 2019 | DDC 275.2/083—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041613 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041613)
Cover design: George Kirkpatrick
Typeset by Westchester Publishing Services in 10/14 Minion Pro
D e d i c a t e d t o t h e M e m o r i e s o f
H i s a k o I k e u c h i
T a t s u o I k e u c h i
T e r u y u k i I k e u c h i
K a y a k o S h i b a
T a m a k i S h i b a
Y a s u m a s a S h i b a
Y a s u t o s h i S h i b a
CON TENT S
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Prologue: Along the Big Question Mark xv
PART I BEGINNINGS
1 Pilgrims in the Strange Homeland 3
2 Japanese Blood, Brazilian Birth, and
Transnational God 12
PART II SUSPENDED
3 Putting Aside Living 35
4 Neither Here nor There 53
PART III RENEWED
5 Back to the Present 77
6 The Culture of Love 93
PART IV CONTESTED
7 Of Two Bloods 113
8 Ancestors of God 133
viii C O N T E N TS
PART V RETURNS
9 Accompanied Self 157
10 Jesus Loves Japan 180
Epilogue: En Route to Impossible Homes 187
Notes 191
Bibliography 205
Index 227
ILL U STRATIONS
1 Map of the Aichi Prefecture, Japan xviii
2 Sites of worship offering Portuguese service in Japan 26
3 “Naturalization: All You Need to Know” 48
4 Confession of love at the graduation ceremony
of Casados para Sempre 95
5 Water baptism 139
ACK N OW LED GMEN TS
°is book has benefited from the support of many people over the years, and
I would like to thank them here mainly in a chronological order. My parents,
Yumi and Yoshiaki Ikeuchi, have always been incredibly supportive. Born
into a working-class family coping with the postwar poverty in Japan, my
father in particular believed that education was “the only kind of investment
whose fruit no one can take away from you.” My siblings, Maya Kōno and Yūsuke
Ikeuchi, have also been a consistent source of support, especially during the
transition period aﬅer I moved to the United States. Migration comes with its
costs, however, and I missed some funerals of my close relatives in the following
years. So this book is dedicated to my kin who have crossed over to the realm
of ancestors.
°e Iwakuni Foundation for Scholarship funded my undergraduate study
at Hokkaido University in Japan. Shūichi Iwakuni and Toshihisa Yokota, the
then and current presidents of the foundation, respectively, treated me as an
intellectual equal and challenged me in stimulating ways during the annual
events for scholarship recipients. Many faculty at Hokkaido University had en-
during effects on the development of my young mind. °ey include Naoya Itō,
Hiroto Koga, and Takami Kuwayama. Tomohiko Ōhira was the bedrock of my
formative years at the university; I thrived thanks to his vibrant teaching and
warm guidance. °e Support Program for Long-Term Study Abroad from the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in Japan made
it possible for me to pursue my master’s study in the United States with its gen-
erous national scholarship. °e faculty in the Anthropology Department at
Brandeis University warmly welcomed and patiently mentored me as I clum-
sily made my entrance into American higher education. Special thanks go to
Sarah Lamb and Ellen Schattschneider for guiding me with intellectual rigor
and unwavering psychological support.
xii A CK N OWL E D GM E N T S
People I met and worked with at Emory University have helped me grow

the ideas in this book with their sustained and stimulating intellectual en-
couragement. Chikako Ozawa-de Silva gave me the best advice I could
ever ask for. She has helped me think deeply about the relationship between
culture, religion, and the self while being incredibly generous with her time,
energy, and emotional support. From Bradd Shore, I received the best train-
ing in psychological anthropology and learned how to analyze cultural diver-
sity in nuanced ways. His playful sense of humor and deep appreciation of
ethnographic prose always made our conversations enriching. Jeffrey Lesser, a
historian of Brazil, complemented the anthropological perspective with his
insistence on the need to situate current events within historical processes.
His advice was always spot-on, whether it was about scholarly analysis or aca-
demic career.
°e generous support from many organizations and institutions made
possible the research for this book. I am grateful to the Kathryn Davis Fellow-
ship for Peace, Department of Anthropology at Emory, and Wenner-Gren
Foundation (Grant Number 8746) for funding the preparatory and main
phases of the ethnographic project. °e Nanzan Institute for Religion and
Culture, led by Michiaki Okuyama at the time, kindly offered me an intellec-
tual home where I could discuss my findings during the fieldwork in Japan.
°e University of Alabama’s Publisher-in-Residence Program, directed by
George F. °ompson, later helped me navigate the process of writing a
book. Lastly, the Social Science Research Council gave me the opportunity
to spend a summer as fellow-in-residence at the University of Göttingen’s
Transregional and Global Studies Platform, where I could finish the book
manuscript.
Most importantly, it was the people in Toyota and other cities in the Aichi
Prefecture that made this research possible. I feel deeply grateful and indebted
to Cid Carneiro, who generously opened up the community at Missão Apoio
Toyota to an outsider like myself. All the other informants in Aichi—many of
whom I had the honor to call friends—appear on the following pages under
pseudonyms for the protection of privacy. I therefore cannot directly thank
them here, but their generosity and kindness were beyond words. °e time and
stories they shared with me are now an inextricable part of my own journey.
Deus abençoe cada um de vocês.
°is book also owes a great deal to the conviviality and intellectual stimu-
lation I received from my colleagues in the Religious Studies Department at
A CK N OW LE D GM E N T S xiii
the University of Alabama. °ey warmly welcomed me, an ethnographer

trained in anthropology, into their vibrant intellectual community and en-
couraged me to push my work in new directions. Special thanks go to Russell
McCutcheon and Steven Ramey, who supported me as the department chair
and faculty mentor, respectively. At my newest institutional home, the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), I benefit from the exciting company of di-
verse interdisciplinary scholars in the Department of Liberal Arts. I thank my
colleagues for welcoming my work into the mix and inspiring me to think out-
side the box. I am fortunate to have such a creative and supportive environment
as my academic base.
I would also like to thank friends and colleagues who have read sections of
manuscript draﬅs and have otherwise offered support over the years: Michael
Altman, James Bielo, Peter Brown, Julia Cassaniti, Moyukh Chatterjee, Jenny
Chio, Cati Coe, Jennifer Cole, Simon Coleman, Dan Coppeto, Betty Dickey,
William Dressler, Isaac Gagné, Marysia Galbraith, Casey Golomski, Glen
Goodman, Aubrey Graham, Anna Grimshaw, Hemangini Gupta, Claire-Marie
Hefner, James Hoesterey, So Hoshino, Shigehiro Ikegami, Angelo Ishi,
Jin-Heon Jung, Bonnie Kaiser, Victor Hugo Kebbe, Bruce Knauﬅ, Daniel Lin-
ger, Nathan Loewen, Edward Lowe, Tanya Luhrmann, Wolfram Manzenreiter,
Cecília Mariz, Gordon Mathews, Lora McDonald, Laura McTighe, Koichi
Mori, Ryo Morimoto, Karen Nakamura, Valentina Napolitano, Michael Peletz,
Kristin Phillips, Kwame Phillips, Devaka Premawardhana, Sonya Pritzker,
Dario Paulo Barrera Rivera, Nathaniel Roberts, Joel Robbins, Jennifer Rob-
ertson, °omas Rogers, Joshua Hotaka Roth, Srirupa Roy, Sonia Ryang, Don
Seeman, Stephen Selka, Rafael Shoji, Sydney Silverstein, Merinda Simmons,
Mark Smith, Domingos Souza, Marvin Sterling, Vaia Touna, Lesley Jo Weaver,
Sarah LeBaron von Baeyer, Carol Worthman, and Masanobu Yamada.
I am grateful to my editor at Stanford University Press, Marcela Maxfield,
for believing in this project and effectively handling the review and production
process. Special thanks also go to Olivia Bartz and Faith Wilson Stein. °e
comments provided by the two anonymous reviewers improved the final manu-
script so much that I feel bad to be unable to directly thank them. I would also
like to make clear that some parts of the book are derived from or based on three
of my previously published works. °ese two articles are available online at
http:// www.tandfonline.com/ and copyrighted by Taylor & Francis: “Back to the
Present” in Ethnos (Vol. 82, Issue 4, 2017, doi: 10.1080/00141844.2015.1107610) and
“From Ethnic Religion to Generative Selves” in Contemporary Japan (Vol. 29,
xiv A CK N OW LE D GM E N T S
Issue 2, 2017, doi: 10.1080/18692729.2017.1351046). °e third article, “Accompa-

nied Self,” was published in Ethos by the American Anthropological Associa-
tion (Vol. 45, Issue 1, 2017, doi: 10.1111/etho.12156). I thank these journals for
permitting me to build on the published materials.
Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to Jamie Nicolas Witter for his love, pa-
tience, and selfless support over the years. Many migrants told me during the
research for this book that home is where you make it, and he makes me feel
at home no matter where we are.
P RO L O GUE
Along the Big Question Mark
“Wake up!” I shouted to myself as I shook my head like a soaked dog getting out
of water. Refocusing my gaze on the dark road ahead, I tightened my grip on the
steering wheel. Just thirty more minutes, I told myself. Stay awake for just thirty
more minutes and I can collapse into my bed. It was almost one o’ clock in the
morning, and I was on my way home from a one-on-one Bible study with Sara,
a young migrant in her twenties who was a member of the Brazilian Pentecostal
denomination that I was researching. Like most Brazilians in Japan, she was a
factory worker with a long shiﬅ. On this particular day, her Japanese boss asked
her to work three extra hours to meet the daily production quota, which is why
she could leave her factory only at nine in the evening.
“°ank you for waiting! My body stunk from sweating, so I had to go home
to take a quick shower,” Sara said as she bustled into the fast food restaurant
where I was waiting close to ten o’clock. We usually met at Saizeriya, a chain
restaurant that Sara liked, because it was close to her workplace in Kariya. It
was a forty-five-minute drive from Toyota, where I lived during fieldwork. We
started the Bible study as she ate her late dinner. “Today we are going to learn
about opening our hearts to Jesus,” Sara said as she wiped pizza sauce from her
fingers. “Now, I’m not sure how you Japanese people think about this, but God
knows what you think and how you feel all the time. You understand?”
Realizing that she was waiting for my response aﬅer a few seconds, I hesi-
tantly opened my mouth. “Um, do I understand?”
“Yes, do you believe that God is always in your heart?”
“Um . . . Sara, you know I’m not Christian, at least not yet. We talked about
this.”
“Well, but it’s God’s plan that you chose to study our churches. °ere is no
such thing as coincidence! You want to learn about the Word of God, don’t
xvi P R OL OG UE
you?” Sara said with a glowing smile that showed little sign of exhaustion from
her eleven-hour work at the assembly line that day.
“Yes,” I admitted hesitantly, “I’m here to learn.” I was starting to realize
through such exchanges that there was little room for the detached observer
in my fieldwork among Brazilian Pentecostal converts in Japan. Since I could
not be a fully immersed participant, either, in terms of what my informants
called faith, my principle in dealing with my ambiguous insider/outsider sta-
tus was honesty to the degree that it was appropriate. “Well,” I blurted, “if
I can be frank, Sara, I think it’s a little bit strange.”
“Oh?”
“When you say God is with you anytime, anywhere . . . does that mean
someone is by my side even when I’m sitting on a toilet? °at feels . . . weird.”
Sara blinked and then burst out laughing. “It’s not like that, Suma! God is
a gentleman!”
By the time Sara and I hugged and said good night to each other, it was past
midnight. I started driving, following the familiar signs for Route 155. Japan
National Route 155 starts in Tokoname, Aichi, and continues counterclock-
wise in a large circle around the prefectural capital of Nagoya until it ends in
Yatomi, Aichi. On the map, it is shaped almost perfectly like a question mark,
with the Chūbu Centrair International Airport located in the bottom dot. °e
airport on the artificial island serves as the entry point for most Brazilian mi-
grants in the area, as well as the exit point for those who decided that their time
in Japan was up. From Tokoname, where the airport is located, Route 155
stretches northward, eastward, and then westward, connecting many manu-
facturing cities in Aichi: Chita, Kariya, Chiryū, Toyota, and Komaki, to name
a few. Toyota, located roughly halfway on the route, is home to the headquar-
ters of the multinational automobile company, Toyota Motor Corporation.
During my time there, I heard many residents comment matter-of-factly that
the city was the powerful company’s jōkamachi—a “castle town” whose virtual
ruler was not in the city hall but in the headquarters building. In fact, it is the
city that was named aﬅer the company, not the other way around. In 1959, then
Koromo City passed a bill to officially change its name to Toyota City, making
a gesture of appreciation to the corporation that brought in jobs, investments,
and tax revenue.
My car had passed the city limit of Toyota, and soon enough I was driving
on the part of Route 155 called Toyota Bypass, which was elevated to go over a
vast Toyota plant. On both sides, I could see fields of gray steel buildings below,
PRO LOG U E xvii
lit by colorful artificial lights and pumping out fuming smoke into the dark

midnight sky. I wondered how many auto parts made by migrants such as Sara
were transforming into brand-new cars at that moment. I also wondered absent-
mindedly how many Brazilian workers were on the night shiﬅ that night inside
the factories that stood along the road.
Route 155, the big question mark. It was the artery of my fieldwork, bring-
ing me to new places, people, and ideas. It led me to interviews in neighboring
cities, to weekend barbecue parties on the seashore, and to new churches that
my informants thought I should visit. Funny, I thought to myself, I’m chasing
down the answers to my questions along this huge question mark. It hit me
then that maybe it was not just me, the ethnographer, who was looking for some
answers on this road. Some migrants came here in search of answers to their
lives, typically what they called “the better future.” To other migrants, such as
Sara, the answer was now Jesus Christ, and their churches dotted the cities con-
nected by the route. Many of us were on this big question mark, with our desti-
nations uncertain and our quests unfinished.
°e bypass ended and my car glided down, passing a large roadside sign
that read “Welcome to Toyota, the City of Cars.” “Almost there,” I muttered to
myself. “Almost home.”
JAPAN
N Tokyo
Komaki
Map Area
(Aichi)
5 51
Osaka
et uo R
Nagoya
R
etu o
5 51
Homi Danchi
Missão Apoio
Toyota
Toyota
Tokai
Ro ut e 155 Kariya
Chita
Okazaki
Anjo
Chubu
International Nishio
Airport
0 3 6 mi Main research sites

Top manufacturing cities
0 5 10 km Major Missão Apoio churches
Catholic churches with biweekly Portuguese mass
F IG UR E 1 . Map of the Aichi Prefecture, Japan, with Route 155 and research-related sites.
J E S U S L OV E S J A PA N
序
Part One
BEGINNINGS
1
PILGRIMS IN T HE STRANGE HOMELAND
Opening: “Walk in Reverence During Your Pilgrimage”
“Brothers and sisters, this week I spent many days contemplating on the ques-
tion of being a peregrino in this land.” Presbyter Bruno addressed the roughly
two hundred congregants who gathered for a Sunday aﬅernoon service at
Missão Apoio Toyota Pentecostal Church.1 °e majority of the attendants were
Nikkei—or Japanese Brazilian—migrants who secured their “long-term resi-
dent” visas in Japan by proving that they were, at least partially, of Japanese
descent. Having opened his sermon with a passage from ± Peter ±:±7, which ad-
vises to “walk in reverence during the time of your pilgrimage,” the presbyter
was inviting the congregation to dwell on the meaning of being a peregrino,
or sojourner in a strange land. 2
°e room—its ceiling too low to be called a hall but still the size of a spa-
cious classroom—was quiet except for occasional babbles from a dozen tod-
dlers fidgeting in the arms of their parents, who were seated in rows of white
plastic chairs facing the pulpit. Dark red curtains, covering the front and side-
walls from ceiling to floor, enclosed the congregants and added a touch of sol-
emnness to the place. But the attire of most attendants was casual—T-shirts,
shorts, caps, and ragged jeans—save a handful in leadership roles who always
dressed formally for service. Standing between an electric organ and a drum
set on the slightly elevated front stage, Presbyter Bruno looked crisp in a navy
blue suit with a light yellow tie.
4 B EG I N N I N GS
“No one in this nation can understand this better than us foreign
dekasseguis—Brazilians, Peruvians, and Bolivians,” he observed by listing the
major migrant groups who have benefited from Japan’s ancestry-based visa.
Dekasegi, which means seasonal labor migration in Japanese, has transformed
into dekassegui in Portuguese to refer to Japanese descendants who move to
Japan for work. °e presbyter’s father was one of such dekasseguis, a second-
generation Nikkei born and raised in Paraná, Brazil, who migrated with his
family in ±996 to save money for a new house. He was seventeen years old when
his father took him halfway around the globe to their supposed ancestral
homeland.
“I, for one, principally because of my cara de japonês [Japanese face] like
many of you here, I am Japanese in Brazil.” Presbyter Bruno continued to rem-
inisce about his experiences as a Nikkei. “Wherever I’d go, [I’d hear people
say] ‘Hey japa, can’t you open those tiny eyes, japa!’ ” Many congregants, who
may have received similar treatments in Brazil, laughed out loud. Smiling and
nodding, he added, “So when my father decided [to migrate], I thought, ‘Well
good, now I’m going to Japan.’ I arrived, then the Japanese here told me, ‘Hey,
gaijin [foreigner]!’ ” °e crowd laughed and cheered again. His story of being
betwixt and between, dramatized for preaching, was striking a chord with his
audience who had also been living with multiple ethnic identities. He contin-
ued, “Where are we from, really? We are Japanese, we are Brazilian, and we
become sort of lost, you see, in our identity.” Presbyter Bruno then returned
to the theme of being a peregrino:
But when the Bible tells us to stay firm, to walk in reverence during our
peregrinação [pilgrimage], this leads us, this aﬅernoon, to examine certain
things in our life. Because when we speak of a peregrino, . . . he can’t count
on the things of the world [coisas do mundo]. He can’t accumulate too much
baggage. . . .
I remember the day when my father leﬅ for Brazil. I had to go and help him
with his move, but aﬅer two, three days, we still couldn’t finish it. °ere were
so many things, brothers and sisters, too many things indeed, which he had
accumulated in his fiﬅeen years here in Japan. . . .
But a peregrino cannot be tied down by the things of this world. He can-
not gather many things for himself, because the time will come when he re-
alizes that he doesn’t belong in that land, and he has to move to another
place.
PI LG RI MS IN T H E S T RA NG E HOM E LA ND 5
In the sermon, he likens the life in flux of Nikkei Brazilians to the travels of
early disciples in foreign lands in biblical times. By blurring the temporal and
geographical lines between the two, he links the transiency of migrant life to
the transiency of worldly life itself. Migrant converts’ transnational mobility
thus turns into an ethical proclivity to inhabit the world as pilgrims.
Morality of Mobility
Movement does not merely entail a physical change of locations but also
amounts to a temporal, affective, and moral act. Mobility is thus fraught
with aspirations, anxieties, and ambiguities. “Going forward,” for example,
invokes advance, progress, and modernity. °e synonyms for “going back,” in
contrast, include recede, revert, and regress, all of which connote decline and
degeneration. But going back does not always equal becoming backward. “Re-
turn” can evoke a complex web of emotions with a claim for one’s roots, image
of pure original state, and nostalgia for the primordial past. Without a sense
of destination or place to return to, movement can turn into a “wander,”
which can entail an uprooted state of aimless roaming or a liberated mobile
subject unconfined by boundaries.
Presbyter Bruno’s narrative attests to the entanglement of mobility in
moral implications. He acknowledges the difficulty many Nikkei Brazilians
experienced in establishing a firm sense of national belonging in both Brazil
and Japan. Notably, he does not characterize either his migration to Japan
or his father’s move back to Brazil as a “return” in his sermon. Instead, he de-
scribes such movements as “going” (ir) and “leaving” (sair), effectively refrain-
ing from assigning a point of origin to either country. °is issue of uncertain
national origin translates into a question of ambiguous identity: “Where are
we from, really?” Presbyter Bruno, however, does not end on a pessimistic
note. Instead of framing the perceived loss of identity as a failure to become
fully integrated national citizens, he renders it as an opportunity to cultivate
new subjectivities as sojourners in pilgrimage. Just as a peregrino of God must
not dwell in the world of material desire, a migrant convert must not cling to
the material things accumulated in one place. Ultimately, he seems to suggest,
a Christian migrant is a peregrino not just in foreign countries but also in
worldly life itself. °e sermon generatively interprets sojourn in a foreign
land—or peregrinação—as a form of ethical mobility consisting in purposeful
rootlessness.
6 B EG I N N I N GS
Presbyter Bruno’s evocation of diaspora as pilgrimage blurs the line be-
tween migratory and religious movements, thereby defying the ontological
separation between the two. To him and many of his audience, migration
and religion do not necessarily constitute two separate phenomena but instead
one unified process of subject formation as a sojourner en route. A pilgrim
is therefore away from home in a dual sense—far from the ethnic homeland
and the celestial home at once. °is double diasporic consciousness amplifies
the ethical reverberation between the longing for the lost homeland and the
yearning for the presence of God. “°e empowering paradox of diaspora is
that dwelling here assumes a solidarity and connection there,” James Clifford
wrote regarding “the axis of origin and return” that constitutes the backbone of
homeward subjectivity. 3 °is elsewhere—an imagined locus of origin where
the return to wholeness becomes possible—does not need be a single place; it
can simultaneously encompass an ethnonational homeland and an eschato-
logical destination.
Morality of mobility refers to the fundamental interworking of migrant mo-
bility and religious sensibility in the reformation of subjectivity among itiner-
ants in diaspora.4 In its Christian mode, the morality of mobility finds its roots
in various moments of loss: the Fall as the loss of innocence, the Tower of Babel
as the loss of unified humanity, and the Crucifixion as the loss of the savior in
flesh. It is not surprising for a mythology so conspicuously defined by loss to
fixate on origin, its restoration, and even its immanence. But origin lost and
found is never pristine but ever a mediated one, no matter how potent the il-
lusion of immediacy. Matthew Engelke described this necessity of mediation
as the problem of presence, or “how a religious subject defines and claims to
construct a relationship with the divine through the investment of authority
and meaning in certain words, actions, and objects.”5 As it turns out, the prob-
lem of presence is equally pressing for a diasporic subject, as the memory of
homeland is always mediated by an evolving set of narratives, rituals, and
things. Possible mediums for the sustenance of home are endless, ranging from
a quick online message to an annual ethnic festival. Also among them are re-
ligious rhetoric, practices, and networks, which can incite dynamic homeward
orientation among migrants. °e morality of mobility thus points to the dual
mediation at work in the making of itinerant subjectivity, with the relation-
ship with the divine on the one hand and the memory of homeland on the
other. Peregrino is an apt name for this sojourning subject defined by loss, out
of Eden and far from home, still en route toward imagined origins.
°e morality of mobility is not an abstract idea but an ethnographic reality
to Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostal migrants. °ey are descendants of Japanese
immigrants in Brazil who have “returned” to Japan and converted to Pente-
costal Christianity once there. As transnational migrants with a century-old
history of diaspora, they craﬅ their selves by weaving together multiple na-
tional belongings, ethnoracial identities, and potential homelands. °e
sources of their generative self-making, however, are not limited to ethnic
and national rhetoric. As participants in the global Pentecostal movements,
they also claim a belonging in “the Kingdom of God,” which supposedly tran-
scends man-made ethnonational boundaries—the world where they have
faced persistent racism due to their ambiguous hyphenated identity. As such,
the lives of Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostals in Japan are shaped by multiple origin
myths—national, cultural, and theological. Myth in this context does not sig-
nify a domain of archived imaginary tales but instead refers to a set of narra-
tives that people live, so intensely and compellingly, to bring forth real-world
consequences.
In ±990, the Japanese government introduced a new type of visa for “long-
term residents.” Oﬅen dubbed the Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa, it is
available to foreigners of Japanese descent up to the third generation. °e same
logic that governs Japan’s jus sanguinis citizenship law determines the bound-
ary of Nikkei-jin visa beneficiaries. °e right to settlement is conferred virtu-
ally as the right of blood. At the same time, the legal system also implies that
the “Japanese blood” becomes diluted over time; this is why fourth-generation
descendants do not qualify for the visa. Clearly, the national ideology that
underpinned the implementation of the new visa recognizes only one point of
origin, which is when Japanese nationals leﬅ the country. °is preemigration
original state, the source of any acknowledgeable Japaneseness in the subse-
quent generations born abroad, cannot be replicated—even when many off-
spring of third-generation Nikkei migrants are today raised in Japan from
birth. Japan’s consanguineous myth thus locates the origin of national identity
in the primordial unity of race, culture, and spirit, which arose within the geo-
graphical bounds of Japan. Although this origin story of “Japanese blood” places
Nikkei foreigners on the perimeters of national kinship, their moral entitle-
ment to belonging remains contested due to their ethnoracial ambiguity.
For Nikkei Brazilians who actually migrated to Japan by obtaining the visa,
the emigration of their Japanese ancestors seldom constitutes the starting point
of their life stories. Many say they do not know where their grandparents came
8 B EG I N N I N GS
from in Japan, and some openly admit that they do not care. Very few travel to
the place of their ancestral roots, even when they could contact living relatives
there. °is is partly because they are so-called labor migrants who decided to
come to Japan primarily to save money, send remittances, and then go home to
Brazil. °e majority are second- and third-generation Nikkeis who were born
and raised in places like São Paulo, Paraná, and Pará. Predominantly, Nikkei
migrants themselves do not view their movement to Japan as a return to the coun-
try of origin. Instead, many speak about their eventual return to Brazil, planned
or fantasized: “Of course I want to go home. I was born there!” Brazil, which
received waves of Japanese immigrants in the first two-thirds of the twentieth
century, confers citizenship on the basis of place of birth. It is terra natal or “land
of birth” that is valorized in the rhetoric of national belonging. Furthermore,
Brazil has long upheld mestiçagem, or “racial mixture,” as an important aspect of
national identity.² Despite the fact that they have oﬅen been perceived as the un-
assimilable Oriental Other, once in Japan many Nikkeis look back to their natal
country as the irrefutable homeland. °us, the primary locus of their authentic
identity—and hence origin—now lies in Brazil, where the myth of mestiçagem
constitutes the centerpiece of national identity. To many, the projected return to
Brazil starts to gain moral significance, at once as the craved end to the discrimi-
nation they face as vulnerable foreign laborers and as a return to secure belonging
in nationhood.
°e relationship between “Japanese blood” and “Brazilian birth” is ambiv-
alent to say the least, and negotiation of identities is a daily task for many Nik-
kei Brazilians in Japan. For those who converted to Pentecostalism that has
flourished among migrant communities, however, yet another origin myth
takes hold. Pentecostalism is a charismatic Christian movement that places par-
ticular emphasis on the direct and personal experience of God through the
giﬅs of the Holy Spirit. On the individual scale, the most defining aspects of
Pentecostal identity are attributed to the redemption story of conversion: “I was
lost but now I am saved.” On the scriptural scale, the Pentecostal myth locates
the origin of the current human state at various moments of loss, revival, and
suspension: the crucifixion of Jesus, his resurrection, and the Second Coming.
By fusing personal experiences with biblical themes, Nikkei converts learn a
third way to narrate their origin stories, this time not as national subjects but
as crentes (believers or born-again Christians). Set in the grand narrative land-
scape of loss and revival, the Pentecostal conception of time can also help
converts defy the temporal scales of modern nation-states.³ Importantly, Pen-
tecostals oﬅen evoke the rhetoric of moral universalism with their origin myth;
it is ideally open to anyone regardless of citizenship, ethnicity, bloodline, or
place of birth.
Living in Japan as Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostal migrants entails negotiat-
ing between the ethical ramifications of three origin myths sketched out
above—of Japanese blood, Brazilian birth, and transnational God. I will ex-
plore how migrant converts comprehend, combine, and at times contest such
myths that shape their ever-shiﬅing boundaries of the self. Where do they think
they are “from,” when national citizenship, ethnic identity, and religious sub-
jectivity are predicated on diverging origin stories? What happens when the
right to mobility rests on the ability to embody state-sanctioned origin? How
do their projects of return in turn affect the moral contours of citizenship, be-
longing, and diaspora?
At the Crossroads of Global Currents
°e lives of Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostals in Japan unfold at the intersection
of two growing trends in contemporary globalization. °e first is the state-
sanctioned “return” of diasporic populations. Over the past several decades,
nations such as Japan, China, India, and South Korea have implemented legal
structures that facilitate the migration of foreign citizens deemed to possess
enduring ties to national kinship.8 °is Asian trend shows that nationalism
today is more about selective reordering of mobile subjects into tiers of desir-
ables and undesirables and less about a strict fixing of national citizenry—what
Aihwa Ong called “flexible citizenship.”´ °e regime of return has produced
potential beneficiaries around the globe, attracting Chinese Canadians to Hong
Kong, Indian Americans to Bangalore, and Japanese Brazilians to Toyota.1µ It
has had a particularly visible impact on the shape of Japanese diaspora in the
Americas by prompting many descendants to “return.”11 Roughly thirty years
aﬅer the introduction of the “long-term resident” visa, which enabled the mass
migration of Nikkeis, there are roughly ±96,¶00 Brazilian nationals living in
Japan today. Although Nikkeis benefit from the visa policy that gives prefer-
ential treatment to foreigners of Japanese descent, they oﬅen experience sub-
tle and not-so-subtle racism due to their ambiguous quasi-Japanese status. °e
Japanese majority oﬅen expects a special proclivity for smooth assimilation
from Nikkei foreigners due to the supposed shared blood but, of course, Nik-
kei Brazilians are culturally and linguistically Brazilian. °e stress they feel
10 BE G INNI NG S
from this forced cultural conformity is further exacerbated by the fact that the
majority work as unskilled dispatch laborers—the kind of workforce that Japa-
nese mainstream society oﬅen regards as disposable. As there already exist
two detailed ethnographic monographs by Takeyuki Tsuda and Joshua Roth on
the work conditions of Nikkei Brazilians in Japan, this book does not focus
on the topic of labor.12 My labor-related findings mostly repeat and confirm
their observations about the discriminatory treatment that foreign migrants
oﬅen receive as a result of their race, ethnicity, and part-time status. °e emphasis
will instead be on the intersection of return migration and religious revivalism,
which brings me to the next point.
°e second relevant global movement comprises the transnational Pente-
costal networks. Pentecostalism has been the fastest-growing branch of global
Christianity over the past several decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa
and Latin America. Brazil, for instance, has seen a fourfold increase in its Pen-
tecostal population over the last forty years from · percent to ¸¸ percent, be-
coming one of the epicenters of global Pentecostalism in the South.13 Although
the Christian renewalist movements have been less pronounced in Asia, Pen-
tecostalism has generated many points of contention precisely due to its em-
battled minority status.14 Japan has historically persecuted and suppressed
Christianity as a foreign religion, and as a result, Christians make up only
± percent of its population today. Yet this is the cultural context in which many
Nikkei migrants have been converting to Pentecostalism since the early ±990s.
°e flourishing of Pentecostalism among the “return” migrants indicates that
it exerts a particular appeal in their postmigration life in the strange ancestral
homeland.
°is book offers a rare window into the lives of the people who inhabit the
crossroads of Asian return migration and Latin American Pentecostalism in
transnational Japan. To date, the study of return migration says surprisingly
little about the role of religion and scholars continue to explore the complex-
ity of return primarily in ethnoracial terms.15 I counterbalance this conven-
tional analytical primacy of the “ethnic lens” by drawing on the insights from
the anthropology of Christianity. 1² Return migration is an intensely political
process that hinges on the intimate work of self-making on the part of its
participants. An analysis of Pentecostal conversion among return migrants
consequently needs to pay equal attention to the political and psychological di-
mensions of religious life—two dimensions that are in fact inseparable to start
with. I take my framework of moral mobility to represent such a psychopolitical
P IL GR IM S I N T HE S T RAN GE HO ME L AN D 11
approach to religion on the move. °is synthetic perspective can elucidate why
Pentecostalism has flourished among people like Nikkei Brazilian migrants,
who inhabit some of the most fluid and contested boundaries in this age of
globalization.
An ethnography illustrates the particular to illuminate the universal; it re-
counts a specific cultural life as a lens to magnify something overarching and
fundamental about the human condition. Although this one is based on my
immersive fieldwork in a single region in Japan, the global currents that brought
forth the people who fill the following pages extend far beyond the nation’s
territorial borders and run through many other countries and continents of
the world.
2
J A P A N E S E B L O O D , B R A Z I L I A N B I R T H ,
A N D T R A N S N AT I O N A L G O D
Rooting for Brazil from the Other Side of the World
“Being a crente is like having a second job,” Sergio said reassuringly from the
passenger’s seat as I yawned at the wheel. I quickly shut my mouth and gave
him an embarrassed smile. It was ¹:º0 ».¼. and we had been up all night.
°e first two gatherings that we attended were indeed for crentes, or “believers.”
°e home group meeting, which took place weekly on Friday night, started
at around ±0 ½.¼. and lasted for two hours. Some attendants then carpooled to
a nearby mountain, where several dozen church members held a weekly vigí-
lia (vigil, or late-night prayer meeting). It went on until past º ».¼. Normally,
I would then drive Sergio and some other friends back and then go home myself
to collapse into bed. But this day was special. °e ¸0±¹ FIFA World Cup was in
progress on the other side of the world in Brazil. °ose who wanted to watch
their national team play in the live-broadcasted quarterfinals against Colombia
had to be up before dawn at · ».¼. on July · to root for their distant homeland.
As I drove to a nearby park, I wondered if the Brazilian players, who must be
warming up for the game in Florianópolis, felt this dedicated support that
came halfway around the globe from Japan—the country with the third larg-
est Brazilian expatriate community in the world aﬅer the United States and
Paraguay.
I parked my car in the empty parking lot of Suigen Park, where we had been
told to meet with the others who went home first to bring the TV, electric
J A P AN E SE B L O O D, B R AZ I L I AN B I R T H , AN D T R A N S N AT I O N AL G O D 13
generator, and wireless video transmitter. It was obviously not their first time
to have an outdoor TV viewing gathering, and they seemed to know what
they were doing. Sergio and I got out of the car to breathe some fresh morning
air. Although it was still dark, the rim of the mountains at a distance was
beginning to turn whitish yellow. Birds were starting to chirp, signaling the
immanent beginning of a new morning. “Oh, my body feels like I’ve just come
out of yakin [night shiﬅ],” Sergio said as he laughed, stretching with his hands
on the lower back of his waist. “I used to do it a lot when I was younger, when
I wanted to save a lot of money to return to Brazil quickly. °ank God I don’t
do it anymore; it breaks your body!” We sat down on a nearby bench to wait,
sipping the warm coffee we had bought at a 7-Eleven on our way to the park.
Sergio was a Nikkei in his late thirties who had been living in Japan for over a
decade. Like most Brazilian migrants, he had intended to work in Japan “for
a year or two” but ended up staying much longer. His wife, who attended the
same home group gathering with him, usually skipped the vigil to go home
for their nine-year-old daughter, who was born in Japan.
“By the way, my daughter said something funny the other day, Suma,” Ser-
gio giggled.
“Oh. What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Otōsan, nande burajiru ōen suru? Nihon wa?’ [Daddy, why do
you root for Brazil? What about Japan?]” He repeated his daughter’s remark in
Japanese, mimicking her critical tone. We both laughed. Unlike Sergio and his
wife, who both grew up in Mato Grosso do Sul and spoke only basic Japanese,
their daughter preferred speaking in Japanese, especially aﬅer she started
attending a local Japanese elementary school. He continued, “I explained to
her that I am Brazilian, but I’m not sure if she really got it.” °en, straighten-
ing his back a little, Sergio added, “I’ve never felt Japanese in my life anyway,
you see. Only my grandfather was Japanese, and I never knew him. Everyone
else in my family is Brazilian. I had no contact with Japanese culture in my
small town, you know, there was no Japanese community there. . . . It wasn’t
like São Paulo.” I nodded. Compared with São Paulo or Paraná, Sergio’s home
state in Brazil had fewer Japanese communities, and it sounded like he did not
grow up in any of them.
“So, you are sansei [third-generation] but you never felt Japanese?”
“No, not at all,” Sergio shook his head. “I don’t look Japanese either, right?
I’m mestiço [mixed-race] with índio [indigenous], negro [black], português [Por-
tuguese], and japonês [Japanese]. . . . A huge mix. I don’t look Japanese.
14 BE G INNI NG S
Sometimes people think my wife is the Japanese one, you know, who got us
the visa, because I’m too preto [dark].”
“But your wife is not Nikkei,” I interjected.
“No! She is Brazilian. But she is mais branquinha [lighter-skinned], so
people think that. On paper I am sansei, but I feel like a yonsei [fourth-
generation]! I’m not Japanese. I’m não sei, that’s right, I’m não sei.” We chuck-
led. To call oneself não sei was something of an insider joke among the Nikkei
migrants whom I met. Punning with the word sei (“generation” in Japanese
and “I know” in Portuguese), Sergio defied the necessity for generational iden-
tity by playfully declaring that he belonged to the “I-don’t-know” generation.
“We are all não sei in some way, aren’t we?” I quipped.
“For sure,” Sergio smiled, “We don’t really know who we truly are—except
maybe God. Only God knows.”
A large van appeared on the road before us and then pulled into the park-
ing lot, blinding us for a second with its bright headlights. “Finally!” Sergio
stood up, waving at the car. “It’s almost five. °ey are late!” I stood up, too, feel-
ing the morning dew on grass wetting my toes in sandals. °e van’s door slid
open and five or six people jumped out from the back seats, all looking tired
and excited at once. “C’mon, gente [folks], let’s set this up quickly!” Sergio
called animatedly, striding around the van toward the back trunk. “°e game is
about to start!”
The Past in the Present
°e ethnographer always arrives late. °e life of the people among whom she
lives had started long before her arrival and will continue beyond her provisional
stay. Her job is to retrieve something whole from this necessarily partial picture
that emerges from fieldwork, especially because no study can be exhaustive in
the literal sense of the word. Yet, some moments are powerful enough to pull her
back to contemplate once again this fact: the human drama that she now partici-
pates in had begun years and decades before her timid appearance. What went
on before is still going on in this moment. °e past is in the present.
To me, the early morning before the Brazil-Colombia quarterfinals that
I spent with Sergio in the crisp air before dawn was one of such moments. What
unfolded was certainly not contained inside Suigen Park in Toyota City, or
within July ·, ¸0±¹. No, it went beyond and back. To begin, why are there so
many Brazilian migrants of Japanese ancestry like Sergio in Japan today? Why
are there a large number of Japanese descendants in Brazil in the first place?
Why is generational distinction so entrenched in their identities, so much so
that some defiantly joke that they belong to the “I-don’t-know” generation?
Why is “looking Japanese” so important, and how does ethnoracial ambiguity
shape their life in Japan? Why do some migrants like Sergio convert to Pente-
costalism and regard it as their “second job,” which becomes so important
that they stay up all night praying? Last but not least, why do they root for Bra-
zil instead of Japan when the latter could also be their homeland?
°e stories that can answer these questions begin in Santos, Brazil, in ±90¶.
By starting with the history of the people with whom I spent over a year, I will
show that they do not constitute an independent cultural entity but instead a
flexible knot in the ever-dynamic process of identity making. To this day, an-
thropology oﬅen fails to historicize the objects of its study, which leads to the
conflation of politico-historical processes with psychocultural differences. Such
a lack of historical contextualization has a consequence for the study of migra-
tion. A present-centered frame of reference oﬅen ends up depicting mobility as
something new and exceptional that disrupts the hitherto fixed relationship be-
tween territory, culture, and identity.1 But the tacit dualism between stasis and
motion that lurks in such a framework is untenable as migrant identities are
borne out of their historical interactions with various regimes of mobility.
Asian “Whites”: Immigration to Brazil
Japanese immigration to Brazil started in ±90¶ with the arrival of Kosato-maru,
a ship that carried 7¶± Japanese passengers. By ±9¹±, roughly ±¶9,000 Japanese
nationals had entered the country.2 Having abolished centuries-old slavery in
±¶¶¶, the ruling class of early twentieth-century Brazil was keenly interested
in securing a new supply of labor for plantation fields. Many Brazilian elites
viewed the new migrant group from Asia as an ideal substitute for European
immigrants, who oﬅen protested poor working conditions. An effort to place
the newcomers in a social category equal to their European counterparts was
therefore palpable from the outset. J. Amândio Sobral, São Paulo’s inspector
of agriculture, met the first group of Japanese migrants as they disembarked
from Kosato-maru at the port of Santos in São Paulo and wrote a report on his
first impressions. Most of the immigrants were literate; they did not seem poor;
they wore European clothes made in Japanese factories; the living quarters of
Kosato-maru, in which they had traveled for three months, were absolutely
16 BE G INNI NG S
clean, and so were their clothes and bodies. Sobral concluded, “°e race is very
different, but it is not inferior.”3
Japanese migrants entered Brazilian society at a time when its elites oﬅen
conflated national development with what they considered as racial progress.
Brazil received more African slaves than any other nation in the Americas.
When a large number of free blacks became part of its citizenry in the late nine-
teenth century, nationalist thinkers had to reconcile the large presence of
nonwhite population with the prevailing ideology of white superiority at the
time. °e answer was so-called branqueamento (whitening). °e whitening ide-
ology posited that by mestiçagem (interracial mixing), the white race and its
superior civilization would eventually prevail by absorbing positive qualities
of other races, and blacks and Indians would gradually disappear.4 It is impor-
tant to remember, however, that the Brazilian notions of race seldom appealed
to strict biological determinism; the equivalent of the “one-drop rule” did not
exist in Brazil. Whitening was as much a cultural and class-based concept as
a phenotypic and biological one: “By maximizing their contact with individu-
als who were more advanced culturally [darker people could whiten]. One of
the easiest channels was intermarriage. Miscegenation, therefore, was seen as
regenerative, if not biologically, at least in terms of culture contacts.” 5
°e first large-scale influx of migrants from the Far East stimulated the na-
tion’s preoccupation with race and progress in an ambiguous way. Phenotypi-
cally, Japanese were not white. Additionally, the Brazilian majority oﬅen
deemed the Asian newcomers unassimilable due to what the majority viewed
as an alien culture incompatible with the national ethos. °e alleged lack of
assimilability meant that Japanese could slow down—and worse yet, halt—the
whitening process. At the same time, many elites were willing to place Japa-
nese migrants in the racial category of “white,” since whiteness involved not
only phenotypic traits but also cultural qualities. With the victory in the Russo-
Japanese War in ±90·, Japan was quickly solidifying its international status as
an industrialized First World nation. In the eyes of many Brazilian officials,
then, Japanese were whiter (read: more civilized) than blacks and hence more
desirable. As Sobral observed, the “race” was “not inferior.” °e Japanese were,
however, also Asian (read: too foreign), and the risk of exclusion from national
belonging was ever present.
At the rural plantations where the majority initially engaged in agricultural
labor, Japanese migrants soon turned out to be as unwilling to suffer bad treat-
ment as their European counterparts. °e establishment of Japanese colônias,
or rural farming communities subsidized by Japanese firms, alleviated some
of the harsh work conditions. Japanese migrants’ economic and social status
in Brazilian society rose steadily, primarily in the area of agriculture. Over
time, many nisei (second-generation) and sansei (third-generation) Nikkeis—
born and raised in Brazil—started to leave rural colônias for urban areas in
pursuit of better social, economic, and educational opportunities. °is rural-
urban migration and economic ascension of Nikkeis eventually yielded the
model minority stereotype, as many successfully climbed the social ladder to
become educated professional urbanites.² °e rate of interethnic marriage also
increased among the younger generations who, unlike older migrants, consid-
ered themselves primarily Brazilian. °e Brazilian majority, however, contin-
ued to conflate “Nikkei Brazilian” with “Japanese”—a tendency evidenced by
the usage of the Portuguese word japonês that, to this day, encompasses both
Brazilian nationals of Japanese descent and Japanese nationals living in Japan.
Today, Brazil is home to roughly ±.¹ million Nikkeis—the largest Japanese-
descent population in the world outside of Japan.³
The Movements of Gods and Ancestors
Between Homelands
°e ways in which Japanese migrants practiced their religions in early
twentieth-century Brazil reflected a number of social and political forces that
shaped their lives. For instance, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs pro-
hibited missionaries—with the exception of Catholic priests—from going to
Brazil from ±9±¶ until the end of World War II.8 Even major Japanese religions
such as Buddhism and Shinto were not exempt from the ban. Shinto, which
literally means “way of gods,” is a name for various ritual practices dedicated
to a multitude of deities and spirits in Japan. Beginning in the late nineteenth
century, this ostensible “indigenous religion” of Japan underwent a modern
transformation as it fused with political forces such as emperorship and im-
perialism to coalesce into State Shinto—the dominant ideology of the nation.
°e Japanese government’s official gesture to discourage the proselytization of
Japanese religions in Brazil, even the one with hegemonic political influence
back home, shows its eagerness to respond to the pressure for assimilation
from the Brazilian majority. Not only was there little protest from the mi-
grants themselves against this policy, the popular opinion among the Japa-
nese in Brazil oﬅen supported its rationale, which was the maintenance of
18 BE G INNI NG S
amicable international relations. “Since Catholicism is the de facto official re-
ligion of Brazil, any propagation of other religions should be restrained,” read
one editorial published in ±9º¸ in Burajiru Jihō, an influential Japanese-language
newspaper in São Paulo. It continued: “We the Japanese, who are to emigrate
more and more to Brazil and who consequently have to promote goodwill be-
tween the two countries, Japan and Brazil, . . . must be all the more careful
not to make the Brazilians suspicious and anxious about religious matters.”´
In addition to the government-led determent, there are several other rea-
sons why Japanese communities in Brazil saw few organized religious activi-
ties before ±9·0 (with the exception of Catholicism). °e dominant Japanese
kinship system prescribed the worship of ancestral spirits as the right and duty
of the head of household (ie), conventionally the eldest son. Since the majority
of male migrants were not the eldest and hence free from the cultural expec-
tation to partake in the care of the dead, the communal demand for ritual
experts in this area—traditionally Buddhist monks—was not strong.1µ °e
common understanding was that they had leﬅ their ancestors in someone else’s
care in Japan during their stay in Brazil. °e continuation of ancestor venera-
tion was thus unimportant to the degree that Japanese migrants viewed their
life in the nation as provisional. In the early days of immigration, when the
majority intended to return one day, they had little reason to locally reestab-
lish the social networks necessary to practice Buddhist rites for ancestors.
Furthermore, the sway of State Shinto—which to most Japanese represented
civil ethics rather than religious doctrines at the time—lessened the commu-
nal need for explicit “religion.”11 Most prewar migrants were educated during
the decades immediately preceding the World War II, when public institutions
firmly enforced State Shinto. °ey reproduced some of such social structures
in Brazil, most notably Japanese schools, where students continued to per-
form the core rituals of State Shinto, such as the recitation of Imperial Rescript
on Education. In fact, “the Japanese school in Brazil served as the spiritual cen-
ter of the community, lent some religious atmosphere with its practices of em-
peror worship, and consequently became in a sense a community shrine of the
uji gami [tutelary deity] type. It was sacred.”12
°e veneration of emperor also shaped Japanese identity in diaspora. Un-
like the commemoration of ancestors based on the unit of household or local
clan, the rituals for the emperor could serve as a symbolic nexus of emerging
Japanese ethnicity, which many migrants were experiencing more strongly
than ever as they lived among the Brazilian majority. During World War II,
however, the Brazilian government banned the teaching of the Japanese lan-
guage, which severely restricted the role Japanese schools had been playing in
the migrant communities. Since Brazil joined the Allies, the Brazilian major-
ity’s antipathy toward the “resident enemy aliens” within its national bound-
ary grew day by day. In response, many secret societies linked to the emperor
veneration arose and garnered wide support among alienated Japanese and
Nikkei communities, promoting ultranationalism.13
Japan’s surrender in August ±9¹· shook the foundation of emperor venera-
tion in Brazil but did not quite destroy it. Although the defeat proved the fal-
lacy of imperial invincibility, some factions of Japanese communities in Brazil
refused to accept this fact by claiming that the Allies had fabricated the news
to deceive them. A powerful secret society called Shindō Renmei (“League of
the Subjects’ Path” in Japanese) led such ultranationalist movements in post-
war Brazil. Some members went as far as to physically attack other Japanese
and Nikkeis who accepted the news of defeat, murdering sixteen people and
destroying many more farms. 14 °e secret societies eventually lost their mo-
mentum in the early ±9·0s as Nikkeis began to migrate to urban cities en masse,
leaving their rural agricultural communities behind.
Japan’s defeat also corroded the collective belief in return among the Japa-
nese and Nikkeis in Brazil. Most assumed that the war destroyed their home-
land permanently, or at least in a way that made their return impossible during
their lifetime. Japan was indeed in bad shape, as the postwar migration of fiﬅy
thousand Japanese to Brazil—which continued until the early ±970s—can
attest.15 It is during these immediate postwar years that the turn to permanent
residency became definitive. Brazil was, and had to be, their new home. Al-
though this shiﬅ caused a great deal of anxiety among many first-generation
Japanese immigrants, it was not such a shocking decision for the growing nisei
and sansei Nikkeis.
°e end of Shinto nationalism accelerated Nikkei conversion to Catholi-
cism, especially among the younger generations who were ascending to urban
middle class.1² Many first-generation immigrants encouraged their offspring
to pursue this option as a strategy to enhance social opportunities. In many
cases, however, conversion to Catholicism did not entail a total abandonment
of Japanese ritual practices. Multiple religious identities were common. It is
important to keep this pattern in mind, because Nikkei communities witnessed
a revival of Japanese religions—such as Buddhism and New Religions—during
the postwar period.
20 BE G INN ING S
°e widespread decision for permanent residency in Brazil ignited the mi-
gration of gods and ancestors from Japan. Now that the likelihood of return was
null, many migrants deemed it necessary to move the center of ancestral rites
from Japan to Brazil.1³ °e postwar influx of Japanese migrants—especially
from Okinawa under the U.S. occupation—also fueled the revival of ancestral
veneration. Many migrants, both prewar and postwar, regarded the accompani-
ment of their ancestors indispensable for the true completion of their immigra-
tion process. °e move of ancestral spirits in turn affirmed their determination
to reestablish their kinship-based ritual complex in their new homeland. Takashi
Maeyama wrote in ±97¸, “Today those who have decided definitely to reside per-
manently in Brazil sometimes say, ‘We are ancestors,’ or ‘We, the immigrants,
will be the ancestors in Brazil.’”18
Statistical data reflect the history of migration and religion among Nikkei
Brazilians that I have briefly sketched out. Among those who self-identified as
Asian in the ¸0±0 Census, the ratio of Buddhists was higher than that among
the general Brazilian population (º.6· percent compared to 0.±¸ percent).1´ “New
oriental religions,” which include various Japanese New Religions that started
actively proselytizing in Brazil aﬅer the war, was ±.06 percent among Asian Bra-
zilians compared with 0.0¶ percent among general Brazilian citizens. Although
the majority of Asian Brazilians were Catholic (·9.9± percent), the number was
still lower than that of the general population (6¹.6¸ percent). Pentecostal
Christians constituted a minority among Asian Brazilians at ±º.76 percent
compared with ±6.06 percent among Brazilians as a whole. 2µ
Brazil and the Growth of Pentecostalism in the South
In the ±970s, just as the last wave of Japanese immigration faded out, Brazil’s
religious landscape was beginning to undergo a profound transformation: the
rapid growth of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity accompanied by the
decline of the Roman Catholic Church. Between ±970 and ¸0±0, the ratio of
Catholics shrank drastically from roughly 9¸ to 6· percent of the population.
During the same period, Protestantism experienced a fourfold growth from
· to ¸¸ percent, mainly due to the expansion of Pentecostal and charismatic
groups.21 °e “explosion” of Pentecostalism surprised many observers because
“Pentecostalism is the first mass religion in Latin America to definitively re-
ject the Catholic institutional hegemony over the religious field.”22 Although
its constituency today consists of people from diverse class backgrounds, Pen-
tecostalism in Brazil—and Latin America in general—has grown the most

prominently among the poor in urban peripheries.23 It is important to note that
the expansion of Pentecostalism has not been unique to Brazil or Latin Amer-
ica. On the contrary, it has been the fastest-growing branch of Global
Christianity in the last several decades, especially in sub-Saharan Africa,
Oceania, and Latin America. Today, approximately ¸7 percent of Christians in
the world are charismatic or Pentecostal, the majority of whom reside in the
Global South.24
Brazil, the most populous nation in Latin America, is arguably one of the
epicenters of Global Pentecostalism in the Southern Hemisphere today. °e ex-
ponential growth of Brazilian Pentecostalism has not been contained within
its national borders.25 Besides other Latin American countries, the networks
of Brazilian denominations such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom of
God (“Universal” for short below) have extended to Mozambique, Portugal, the
United States, and Japan.2² Pentecostal networks are able to address pressing
local concerns while maintaining their global connectedness. For example, in
the United States, where Brazilian expats oﬅen feel as if they were an “invisi-
ble minority” overshadowed by Spanish-speaking Latinos, Pentecostal churches
provide a distinct space where they can be Brazilian.2³ Likewise, Pentecostal
movements in Japan also respond to a set of social issues and concerns among
Brazilian communities there.
Foreigners in the Ancestral Homeland: “Return” to Japan
In ±990, the Japanese government modified the Immigration Control and Ref-
ugee Recognition Act and introduced a new type of visa for “long-term resi-
dents” (teijūsha). Oﬅen dubbed Nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) visa, it is
available to foreigners of Japanese descent up to the third generation with no
restrictions on their gainful activities in Japan. To many Japanese officials, the
change offered a “balanced” solution to the chronic problem of manual labor
shortage in the manufacturing industry of their aging country; Nikkei foreign-
ers appeared to be a quasi-Japanese, racially correct, and thus conveniently
nonthreatening labor force that could provide a flexible and low-cost manpower
to the struggling industrial sectors. Given the dire state of inflation-plagued
Brazilian economy at the time, many nisei and sansei Nikkeis started migrating
on this visa, oﬅentimes with their spouses and minor children, who were per-
mitted to accompany them. °e Brazilian population in Japan peaked at
22 BE G INN ING S
roughly º±7,000 in ¸007—more than a twentyfold increase from ±9¶9 that

quickly pushed them up to the third-largest group of foreigners in the coun-
try.28 °ey concentrate in the prefectures with developed manufacturing in-
dustries, such as Aichi, Shizuoka, Mie, and Gunma, since the majority settled
where the jobs were.
Migration to Japan entailed a significant change in social context, which
in turn triggered a drastic shiﬅ in migrants’ ethnic self-images. In Brazil, Nik-
keis enjoy a model minority status today, as many are relatively well educated
and of middle-class background. In Japan, however, the overwhelming major-
ity took up jobs in unskilled manual labor in places such as automotive as-
sembly plants and food processing facilities. Like other foreign laborers, many
work in factories that are shunned by Japanese as “º K”—kitsui (strenuous),
kiken (dangerous), and kitanai (dirty). Due to the considerable gap in wage
standards between the two nations, Nikkeis could earn several times more as
factory workers in Japan than as white-collar professionals in Brazil. It was not
a shocking sight during the ±990s to spot Nikkei lawyers assembling auto parts
on factory floors in cities with large Brazilian populations such as Ōizumi,
Hamamatsu, and Toyota.2´ °e inability to speak fluent Japanese also barred
most Nikkei migrants from pursuing more desirable work options in Japan.
Staffing agencies called empreiteira or haken gaisha typically work as interme-
diaries between migrant workers and Japanese factories, making it virtually
unnecessary for Brazilians to learn Japanese. As providers of outsourced flex-
ible labor managed by external recruitment agencies, migrant workers may
work full-time at the same factory for years without full benefits or job secu-
rity. Many Nikkeis consequently come to feel that the ethnic prestige they (used
to) embody in Brazil disappears in the Japanese context—ironically, in the
homeland of their ancestors.
On weekdays and even on some weekends, many Brazilian workers shuttle
between clockwork factories and small apartments—“like mindless robots,” as
some told me. Rare days off—albeit unpaid, as most are wage earners—add some
much-needed color to the life that many perceive as dull and monotonous.
Some drive to nearby cities to visit their relatives who also migrated, rekin-
dling and reaffirming the human bonds that the factory labor robs them of;
others travel to regional cities for their shops, restaurants, and nightclubs to
enjoy a taste of urban life oﬅen missing from Japan’s industrial areas that are
predominantly suburban and semirural; yet others spend time in Brazilian
supermarkets, more leisurely than aﬅer-work visits on weekday evenings, to
pick out the perfect meat for their churrasco barbecue parties. In summer,

Brazilians become frequent visitors of the beaches, riverbanks, and lakesides
known as prime locations for churrasco. Although the loss of model minority
status that they once enjoyed in Brazil can be quite humiliating, they are resil-
iently building their lives in Japan, resolute not to let factory labor completely
consume their identities.
Moreover, migration to Japan delivered what they could never achieve in
Brazil: unequivocal Brazilian identity. As a marginalized minority among the
Japanese majority, many Nikkeis feel—and are perceived as—unquestionably
Brazilian for the first time in their lives.3µ Many who never danced samba in
São Paulo start to do so once in Ōizumi; some who never cooked feijoada—
the national dish of Brazil—in Mogi das Cruzes learn to do so in Toyohashi so
that they can bring it to local Brazilian events; others who never really appre-
ciated Bossa Nova in Maringá start to listen more attentively, as if to absorb a
new identity, in Hamamatsu. °us, contrary to the common scholarly desig-
nation of this migratory movement as an “ethnic return,” few Nikkeis them-
selves actually experience their migration to Japan as a return. 31 Rather, many
describe it as an unsettling encounter with racial discrimination, both subtle
and blatant, based on their “un-Japanese” phenotype (for mestiços) and man-
nerism (for all Nikkeis). At the same time, this moment of rude awakening also
opened up a new space for their ever-evolving identities, including the possi-
bility of becoming simply “Brazilian” without a hyphen.
°e Japanese officials did not see Nikkei Brazilians as uncontested ethnic
returnees, either. Although the legal definition of Nikkei-jin certainly con-
structs potential migrants as partially Japanese, the recognition of relative
proximity to national kinship never guaranteed complete national belonging.
°is is evidenced by a series of policies the Japanese government implemented
in response to the ¸00¶ global financial crisis. °e sudden recession hit migrant
workers with little job security the hardest. While the unemployment rate
among Japanese nationals in ¸009 was ·.6 percent, it rose to a staggering
¹0 percent among the Brazilian workers in the surveyed areas of the country.32
Fired without notice and unable to find other employment, many had no op-
tion but to leave the country for Brazil. °e exodus of Nikkeis accelerated when
the Japanese government announced the implementation of the “support pro-
gram to those unemployed of Japanese descent wishing to return to their home
country [nikkei-jin kikoku shien jigyō].” From April ¸009 until March ¸0±0,
unemployed Nikkeis and their dependents could receive three hundred thou-
24 BE G INN ING S
sand and two hundred thousand yen (roughly $º,000 and $¸,000), respec-

tively, for the cost of one-way travel to Brazil on the condition that they would
not enter Japan again on the Nikkei-jin visa “for a while.” By the end of ¸009,
roughly one-fourth of Brazilian residents in Japan had leﬅ. Many Japan-born
Brazilian youth “returned” to their “home” country for the first time during
this period, adding yet another layer to the complex history of Nikkei dias-
pora. Although Japan liﬅed the ban on reentry in ¸0±º with some restrictions,
the size of the Brazilian population never recovered to the pre-¸00¶ level.
Today, there are roughly ±96,¶00 Brazilian nationals in Japan, forming the
fiﬅh largest group of foreign residents aﬅer the Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and
Vietnamese.33 °e legal system permits each long-term resident to migrate with
his or her spouse and dependents, whether they qualify as Nikkei-jin or not.
°is has led to the diverse ethnic and racial profile of Brazilian residents. A
family of five, for instance, can have a sansei Nikkei mother (the primary visa
holder), non-Nikkei father, and three mestiço children. °ings become slightly
more complicated for the yonsei (fourth-generation Nikkei), many of whom
were born in Japan or brought to Japan as a child. °ey may feel quite Japa-
nese, but in legal terms, they are foreigners who would not even qualify for the
Nikkei-jin visa themselves. Although the Japanese government started accept-
ing a small number of yonsei Nikkeis under the “special activities” (tokutei
katsudō) visa in July ¸0±¶, their activities in Japan are much more restricted
and monitored compared with the freedom accorded by the Nikkei-jin visa.34
As the growing presence of Japan-born youth shows, the life of Nikkei Bra-
zilian migrants in Japan did not turn out to be as temporary as many had ex-
pected it to be when they first arrived. In fact, the majority holds permanent
resident visas instead of long-term resident visas today. Approximately
60 percent of Brazilians in Japan are permanent residents, as opposed to roughly
º0 percent who are long-term residents.35 Clearly, their life in Japan is not as
fleeting as many continue to see it to be.3² Whether they will eventually ascend
to middle and upper classes in Japanese society, as their Japanese and Nikkei
ancestors did in Brazil decades earlier, is still open to debate. Unlike Japanese
migrants in early twentieth-century Brazil, Brazilian migrants in twenty-first-
century Japan lack solid governmental support from their home country, suf-
ficient socioeconomic capital, and birthright citizenship. Factory work is still
the dominant means of making a living. A small number of Brazilian youth,
however, are starting to receive college degrees and climb up the social ladder—
slowly but steadily.
Encounter with God in the Ancestral Homeland
Just as Japanese migrants brought Buddhism, Shinto, and Japanese New Reli-
gions to Brazil, Brazilian migrants carried with them a number of religious
practices from Brazil to Japan.3³ Out of all such transnational religious net-
works extending from Brazil, Pentecostalism has likely seen the most promi-
nent growth among the migrant communities in Japan. In ¸00¶, sociologist
Rafael Shoji identified ±¹7 Brazilian Pentecostal churches in Japan, which made
up ¹7 percent—almost half—of all the sites of worship offering Portuguese ser-
vices in the country. In comparison, roughly ¸6 percent of such places be-
longed to Japanese New Religions and ¸0 percent were Catholic churches; only
¹ percent were traditional Buddhist temples.38 Although the number of churches
does not directly reflect the number of followers, my ethnographic findings
confirm the significance of his study. In Toyota City, for example, there
was one Catholic church at the time of my fieldwork. Since the church’s father
was Korean, it held biweekly mass for Brazilian parishioners by inviting a
priest who could speak Portuguese (a professor of religious studies from Portu-
gal at a nearby university who was also a certified Catholic priest). From what
I could see, roughly two hundred people would regularly attend Portuguese
mass. °e two Pentecostal churches that I knew of in Toyota had roughly four
hundred fiﬅy and two hundred Brazilian members, respectively. Almost all of
the members attended the weekly Sunday service led by Brazilian pastors.3´
°ese sociological and ethnographic findings indicate that Pentecostalism
has likely grown significantly in the context of Japan—especially in light of
Brazil’s census data from ¸0±0, in which roughly ±¹ percent of Asian Brazilians
were Pentecostal, while 60 percent were Catholic.4µ
°e case of Missão Apoio, the second-largest Brazil-derived Protestant de-
nomination in Japan, can illuminate how this Pentecostal expansion took
place.41 Its non-Nikkei Brazilian cofounders arrived in Japan in ±99± on the
Nikkei-jin visas granted to their Nikkei wives. Although they initially arrived
as labor migrants without the intention of proselytization, they soon realized
that there was a severe lack of communal support for the Nikkei migrants
and their families, who oﬅen felt isolated, marginalized, and discriminated in
Japan. Putting their prior pastoral experience from Brazil into use, they founded
a new Pentecostal denomination in ±99º with the help of their equally devout
Christian spouses and named it “Support Mission” in Portuguese—Missão
Apoio. °is brief overview shows that the key actors in the development of
26 BE G INN ING S
Tradi°onal Spiri°sm &

Buddhism 4.2% Umbanda
2.6%
Catholic Church
20.8%
Evangelical
Churches 47%
New Japanese
Religions 25.6%
F IG UR E 2 . Sites of worship offering Portuguese service in Japan. Source: Shoji ¸0±¹,
p. º7. Reprinted with permission. Note: In the original pie chart, the total percentage
adds up to ±00.¸%.
Pentecostal networks in Japan were the minority of Nikkeis who were al-
ready converts prior to their “return.” °rough kinship, their Nikkei status
could oﬅen enable the migration of non-Nikkei Pentecostal leaders from
Brazil. °at being said, the majority of congregants today report to have con-
verted to Pentecostalism aﬅer their arrival in Japan—roughly 70 percent of
the surveyed members at Missão Apoio Toyota, for instance. As the founders
themselves acknowledge in their narrative, the sociopolitical context teem-
ing with racial discrimination and labor exploitation likely has a lot to do
with the phenomenon of postmigration mass conversion. In many cases, the
Pentecostal church continues to be the only place where Brazilian migrants
can congregate with others like themselves without the gaze of the Japanese
majority.
°e mass exodus of Brazilian migrants during the ¸00¶ financial crisis,
however, changed these dynamics for good. Having realized that they cannot
expect to grow indefinitely only within the bounds of Brazilian communities,
today Pentecostal churches are adopting an increasingly transethnic rhetoric to
attract more members from the Japanese majority. °e emerging effort for ac-
tive proselytization in Japan seems to boost a sense of moral superiority among
many migrant converts.42 Although they may be stereotyped as a “backward”
Brazilian minority in economic and class-based terms, they can reenvision
themselves as a “forward” Christian minority in spiritual terms. Moreover, the
cultivation of a new religious identity enables them to claim Japan as a place to be,
not on the basis of Japanese ancestry but as conveyors of morality and godliness
in a non-Christian “pagan” land.
Evangelization of the Japanese majority, however, has turned out to be chal-
lenging to say the least. Not only is Japanese mainstream society overwhelm-
ingly Buddhist and Shintoist, it historically banned Christianity from ±6±¹ until
±¶7º and continued to suppress the Christian minority into the early twenti-
eth century.43 °ere is little explicit antipathy toward Christianity in today’s
Japan, but its continued association with foreignness and Otherness persists.
Christians—Catholics and Protestants combined—currently make up only
± percent of the Japanese population.44 But the outlook on evangelization among
many Brazilian migrant converts remains youthful and optimistic.
Fieldwork
Aichi is the fourth most populous prefecture located in central Japan, known
for its manufacturing sector and the capital of car industry in Japan: Toyota
City, my main research site. °e first social domain of my fieldwork was there-
fore the city’s factories. As Toyota is home to the headquarters of Toyota Mo-
tor Corporation, there are hundreds of automotive plants there, the majority
of which being the subsidiaries of Toyota. °e auto industry gives rise to a sig-
nificant demand for a flexible labor force in and around the city. It is not a co-
incidence, then, that Aichi Prefecture holds the largest Brazilian population
in Japan at roughly ·±,¸00.45 I worked at two different factories in Toyota for
five months in total between ¸0±º and ¸0±¹. As there already exist detailed
ethnographic works on the labor conditions among Nikkei Brazilians in
Japan, this book does not primarily focus on the topic of factory work.4² My
firsthand labor experience, however, helped me understand the power dy-
namics that saturated the workplace of my informants and enabled me to ask
informed questions during interviews.
28 BE G INN ING S
°e second main site of fieldwork was a residential neighborhood with a
large concentration of migrants. One of the largest Brazilian enclaves in Ja-
pan, a partially subsidized housing project called Homi Danchi, is located in
Toyota.4³ In ¸0±¹, more than half of the city’s ·,±¸0 Brazilians—¸,7¹6 of
them—lived in the Homi District with º,7±7 Japanese neighbors.48 By living in
Homi Danchi, I could insert myself into the reciprocal web of home visits
among its Brazilian residents. Since most congregants at Missão Apoio Toyota
lived in Homi Danchi, home visits provided me with another occasion to in-
teract with the same people in a different, more private, context. Over the
course of fieldwork, they invited me to numerous activities including coffees,
dinners, baby showers, birthday parties, soccer viewing gatherings, and fu-
nerals, all of which took place in my informants’ homes or at the Homi com-
munal center.
°e third—and primary—social field comprised local Pentecostal churches
that belong to a denomination called Missão Apoio. Although I regularly
drove to other Missão Apoio churches in the region, I focused most of my field-
work effort on the congregation in Toyota. With roughly five hundred mem-
bers, Missão Apoio Toyota was one of the largest Pentecostal churches in the
region, located fiﬅeen minutes away from Homi Danchi by car. °e physical
structure of the church was the shape of a rectangular box, with just one story
and a flat reddish brown roof, resembling the archetypical form of conve-
nience stores ubiquitous in Japan. Congregants would park their cars on the
adjacent dirt lot and walk around to the front entrance with sliding glass doors
on the wider side of the building that faced the road. Structurally, there were few
marks from the outside that signaled that this beige building was a church, save
one simple cross attached to the roof and “Igreja Evangélica” written in red
paint on one side.
I visited Missão Apoio Toyota for the first time during the summer of ¸0±¸.
Pastor Cid Carneiro, with whom I had previously spoken on the phone, came
to Toyota Station to pick me up. One of his first questions was whether I was
Nikkei Brazilian myself, to which I gave a firm no. “Interesting,” he said as he
drove. “°ere are many youngsters at my church who speak Portuguese with
an accent like yours.” Since some Japan-raised Brazilian youth speak Japa-
nese as their first language today, it is not surprising that their Portuguese
would also be affected by Japanese phonetics. His next guess was that I was
Japanese American—probably because I told him that I was a doctoral student
at an American university. I again said no, and explained that I was a Japanese
living in the United States.
“Então você é japonesa japonesa mesmo?” (So you are really Japanese
Japanese?)
“Uh, sure,” I answered aﬅer a second of hesitation as I had never heard the
phrase japonesa japonesa before. As it turned out, I ended up clarifying my new
identity—japonesa japonesa—a dozen more times that day as I interacted with
Nikkei Brazilians for the first time in my life. With Pastor Cid’s permission,
I returned again in August ¸0±º for a yearlong fieldwork.
According to the results of the survey I administered at the church, roughly
¶0 percent of the Brazilian members at Missão Apoio Toyota self-identified as
Nikkei and ¸0 percent did not.4´ Almost all of the non-Nikkei Brazilians were
spouses or ex-spouses of Nikkeis, who first entered Japan on their partners’
long-term resident visas. Among the Nikkei congregants, roughly ¸0 percent
self-identified as nisei (second generation), 6· percent as sansei (third genera-
tion), and ±0 percent as yonsei (fourth generation). °e gender distribution was
equal, with the number of women only slightly larger than that of men. °e
congregation was overall young, with roughly 90 percent of members in their
forties or younger. °e overwhelming majority worked in factories and be-
longed to the contingent labor force with little job security.
I participated in everything I was allowed to attend as a nonconvert out-
sider, which included Bible study group, Sunday worship, home group gathering,
night prayer session, street evangelization, fundraising party at church, and so
on. In addition to numerous lengthy conversations that took place organically
during participant observation, I also conducted sixty-three interviews in to-
tal. I initially attempted to conduct semistructured interviews by preparing a set
of questions, but my informants’ eagerness to inquire my identity oﬅen changed
the format into a more open one. Most Pentecostal subjects started by inter-
viewing me about my ethno-national identity and religious affiliation. °ose
who already knew that I was from a Buddhist family would instead start by
checking on my spiritual progress: “So, have you had any experiences with
God yet?” °e Japanese neighbors, coworkers, and teachers whom I inter-
viewed were equally curious. I oﬅen had to clarify why I could speak Portuguese
and appeared somewhat Americanized when I was—borrowing one infor-
mant’s words—“really, actually, ±00 percent Japanese with no foreigners in the
family lineage.”
30 BE G INN ING S
Just like the interview structure, the categories that I had initially imposed
on my subjects also became more fluid over time. In the beginning, I had
planned to recruit an equal number of participants from each racial and gen-
erational group—five interviews with “second-generation non- mestiço Nik-
keis,” for instance. A shortcoming of such a rigid approach quickly became
clear upon interviewing a woman whom I call Mimi. When I asked her if she
identified as a Nikkei, she responded yes and clarified that she was a sansei.
“But I don’t look very Japanese, right?” she said as she laughed. “Only my father
is Japanese, that’s why. Some descendants look like you, Suma, but there are
many who don’t look very Japanese because of mestiçagem. You know Cibeli?
She doesn’t look Japanese but she is actually Nikkei!”
It took me a few seconds to respond. I had actually interviewed Cibeli
the previous week, and she was adamant that she was not a Nikkei: “I’m just
Brazilian—I mean, European ancestors. My husband is the one who got us
the visa.”
When I asked Mimi if Cibeli had told her that she was Nikkei, she answered
no and added, “But her friends told me. People know these things, you see.”
Such exchanges quickly taught me that people—especiallythose in my ethno-
graphic settings—cannot always be what they claim to be themselves. Identity
walks a fine line between volition and perception, which is constantly shiﬅ-
ing. I became particularly careful with preexisting categories aﬅer this revela-
tion and learned to take them with a grain of salt. In theory, it was possible for
“non-Nikkei” Cibeli to have “Nikkei” experiences since many assumed her to
be one.
°e opposite is equally true, as Sergio’s story at the beginning of this chap-
ter shows. Although the legal system categorized him as a sansei Nikkei, he
denied having Japanese identity on the basis that no one saw him as such, even
in Brazil. In fact, he joked that he actually felt like a yonsei, who would not
qualify for the Nikkei-jin visa. With his next joke about being of an “I-don’t-
know generation (sou não sei),” Sergio further defied, playfully but poignantly,
the reified generational categories the migration policy imprinted on him. °e
pun sheds light on the ideological work that goes into the conceptual founda-
tion of migrant “generation.”5µ °e myth of Japanese blood legally obliges Nik-
keis to identify their emigrant ancestors as the original kin and count each
descendent cohort thereaﬅer as the second and third reproduction. It presents
generation as a hereditary and natural fact. But if Sergio’ssubtly rebellious joke
makes anything clear, it is the reality that generation is a social and political
construct. Just like race, ethnicity, and nationhood, generation can also be
imagined.51 I therefore understand generation to be a “historically grounded
conception” shaped by the predominant social, legal, and political patterns that
surround transnational migrants.52
Juxtaposing Sergio with Bruno from Chapter ±, who spoke about being
called a japa in Brazil, illuminates the incredible breadth of subjectivities that
the term Nikkei encompasses. In a sense, this identifying label conceals as
much as it reveals. Perhaps it is the case that “the very term ‘Japanese Brazil-
ians’ conjures up a group that does not necessarily, in any existentially or ana-
lytically significant form, exist.”53 Although I will use such categories as
“Japanese,” “Brazilian,” and “Pentecostal” throughout this book, I do so gin-
gerly with an awareness that they do not refer to any preexisting essences but
instead actively constitute such qualities in relation to one another.
Susan Harding once wrote that a non-Christian fieldworker among born-
again Christians oﬅen works at the “psychic intersection between born-again
and un-born-again languages and worlds.”54 In my case, I had not just one but
two of such crossroads: between born-again and un-born-again, on the one
hand, and between Brazilian and Japanese, on the other. In hindsight, it was
these multiple borderlands that defined the tenor of my fieldwork. Rather than
a so-called native anthropologist, I was an ethnographer on the edge—of na-
tiveness, of foreignness, and of belonging. In spirit, then, this book is about
boundaries and crossroads, and not about one society, one people, or one cul-
ture, as there was no “one single” anything about the people I spent a year with.
起
Part Two
SUSPE NDED
3
PUT TING ASIDE LI VING
“We Are in Japan but We Don’t Live Here”
“Before we finish the service, today I have a special favor to ask you,” Pastor
Cid said to the congregation as the instrumental music by the church band
faded out and the collective prayer session came to a close. He beckoned me
toward the pulpit. I stood up from my chair in one of the back rows and walked
up to the front of the room. “°is is Suma, an anthropologist—right, Suma,
antropóloga?—from the United States who is studying the Pentecostal churches
among dekasseguis in Japan.” I smiled, feeling quite awkward. Somehow the
church space felt a little larger with rows of congregants curiously gazing at
me. Pastor Cid continued, “She has a survey she wants you to fill out. So if you
have some time, please stay here and fill it out to help her.” I made a slight bow
to his direction to thank him. He was one of the extremely few Brazilians whom
I met who did not migrate on the Nikkei-jin visa. Neither he nor his spouse
was Nikkei. °ey came to Japan on the “religious activities” visa, which im-
poses more restrictions on the recipients’ gainful activities. Despite the resul-
tant financial difficulties, Pastor Cid founded and had been leading Missão
Apoio Toyota for close to two decades.
Some stood up and leﬅ, but most remained in their seats and graciously ac-
cepted a pen and a two-page questionnaire. Conversations filled the room as
people spoke to one another to confirm the answers. “Hey, honey, when did
we come to Japan? ±99·?”
36 SU S P E N D E D
“Ah . . . Wasn’t it ±99¹?”
One woman beckoned me and asked if I wanted her to fill one out when
her husband was already doing so.
“Yes, but only if you want to.”
She looked down on her baby, peacefully sleeping in her arms, and re-
sponded, “I don’t think I can write now, but my answers are pretty much
the same as his, ok?” I nodded. I should take these results with a grain of salt,
I told myself as I walked away from her. Various factors, such as whether one
happens to be holding an infant, can determine the likelihood of response. It
was clear that survey findings in themselves could not present a complete pic-
ture. I had to contextualize them with the help of ethnography.
I went through the responses the following week. Most results, such as the
roughly equal ratio of men and women in the makeup of membership, con-
firmed my prior observations. But the most illuminating discovery came from
the scribbles in the margins—something that none of the printed questions
explicitly asked. Among some thirty-five items on the survey I created, there
was the following question: “When did you first come to Japan in order to work
and/or to live here? [___ years ago, or in the year ___].” It asked when the re-
spondent came to Japan, excluding brief trips and visits. As I compiled the
answers, however, I realized that many people crossed out “live” and circled
“work” instead of or in addition to answering the year of their arrival. Some
even scribbled next to the question: “I don’t live here. I came here to work” (Não
estou aqui para morar, vim para trabalhar só). I had included the phrase “and/
or to live here” with younger Brazilians in mind, who were too little to work when
they were first brought to Japan. But the juxtaposition of “work” and “live” in-
vited an unexpected input from older migrants. °e majority of the people who
circled “work”—roughly ±± percent of all respondents—were men who arrived in
Japan in their early adulthood.1
But why does life stop in Japan? Or, to put it more specifically, how does
the line between life and work become so divisive that some migrants felt com-
pelled to cross out “to live” on the survey? To answer these questions, I am going
to elucidate the evolving relationship between mobility and temporality among
Nikkei Brazilians.
P U TT I N G A S I D E L I V I N G 37
Twice a Minority
Takeshi, a thirty-six-year-old sansei migrant from Pará, first came to Japan in
±99¸ at the age of fourteen with his Nikkei father and Afro-Brazilian mother.
He was a friendly and intelligent man who enjoyed reading books. Perhaps not
surprisingly, he felt frustrated that manual factory labor was not fulfilling his
intellectual potential. In fact, he deeply regretted not having tried harder to
finish his education. His parents, who believed their stay in Japan would be just
for a year or two, did not strongly insist on his going to Japanese school. Since
he found the Japanese language daunting, his attendance soon became inter-
mittent. Takeshi had no solid schooling beyond the eighth grade. His parents
never returned to Brazil and his widowed mother still lived in Japan at the time
of my fieldwork.
When I asked for an interview, Takeshi suggested that we meet at a coffee
shop near the church. His home was too cluttered at the time, he explained,
because his wife had just given birth to their second son. Consequently, one of
the first icebreaker questions I asked when we sat down at the coffee shop was
about the name of his newborn. “His name is Davi Hikaru,” Takeshi beamed.
“Davi is a king in the Bible, and it’s also a common Brazilian name. Hikaru is his
Japanese name, and it means light.” Curious, I asked if he had two names as well.
“Yes, my Brazilian name is João.”
“So why do you go by Takeshi rather than João?” I asked.
“Well, I’m just more used to Takeshi. Growing up in Pará, all of my friends
called me Takeshi. I was one of the few Japanese friends they had.” He shrugged
and added, “I was Japanese in Brazil, you see. And it’s a Japanese name.”
Judging that this was probably a good segue, I asked him to tell me about
his family in Brazil. “Let’s see . . . It’s my grandparents on my father’s side that
came to Brazil. My Japanese grandfather, he was a soldier.”
“Soldier? Of what kind?”
“I’m not sure; I actually don’t know him well because he was already dead
when I was born. But there was a photo of him up on the wall in the living
room. In black and white, really old photo. He is in a Japanese soldier’s uni-
form, really upright, serious. My father told me that he was from Fukushima
and was a soldier before coming to Brazil.”
“Oh, Fukushima, that’s up in the north, really cold,” I responded.
“I have no idea,” Takeshi said, and he laughed, scratching his head. “I’ve
never been to Fukushima. But yeah, my grandfather is from there, I heard.”
38 SU S P E N D E D
Soon enough, the interview moved on to the topic of his own migration.
When I asked if Japan was different from Brazil, he nodded deeply and started
describing “the principal difference” between the two nations:
In Brazil, Japanese Brazilians are treated mostly in relation to the Japanese
nation—because we look alike, you know. It’s a great pride of the Japanese
race. . . . Not all are successful, but the majority of descendants there are very
educated and hardworking. So they ended up creating a culture and an aura
around descendants. . . .
°is is not the case here in Japan. °ose people who were none of these
things all came here! [Bursts out laughing.] Here it is the opposite. Who is po-
lite, educated, civilized and industrious here? It’s the opposite! We commit
petty crimes, get into fights all the time, and are lazy. People who are violent,
and steal. °is is the principal difference that I see. . . . Here, suddenly your cul-
ture is lower. °e ideals, society, life, and future that shaped you and trained
you, they all fail.
Takeshi’s words echo a predominant sense of class downgrade that perme-
ates the migrant communities—the disappearance of “great pride of the Japa-
nese race” and the loss of ethnic “aura,” as Takeshi put it. Some Nikkei migrants
talk about it bitterly with a frown, others calmly with a shrug, and those like
Takeshi with a resilient laughter. He is in no way the only one who sees their
social status in Japan as suffering and humiliating, compared with the posi-
tive qualities they (used to) embody in Brazil. Luana, a forty-nine-year-old
Nikkei who had been living in Japan for twenty-three years, similarly observed,
“In Brazil, we are such positive people—intelligent, polite, diligent. °ey joke,
‘Want to get into USP (University of São Paulo)? Kill a Japanese and you have
a spot!’ [Laughs.] Here, it’s nothing like that at all.” Such remarks suggest that
although Nikkeis have been a minority in both Brazil and Japan, how they have
been so differs dramatically between the two countries.
The “Modern” Minority in Brazil
In the discussion of Nikkei identities in Brazil, of paramount importance are
the popular images of the Japanese nation in the country. Japan, a rare non-
Western economic power since the late nineteenth century, oﬅen impressed
Brazilian elites who were striving to modernize their nation but had yet to suc-
ceed. Social discourses in Brazil such as advertisements have oﬅen empha-
sized Japan’s positive attributes—high technology, modernity, and First World
status. Within this real and imagined geography of progress, the Japanese di-
aspora within Brazil’s own territory—specifically Nikkeis in São Paulo—took
on a powerful symbolic meaning. °ey were “Brazilians of future.” 2 Nikkeis
had thus become a “modern” minority, a symbol of the country’s promised pro-
gress. °eir actual upward mobility and economic success fueled this kind of
public imagination. At the same time, Nikkeis in Brazil were also a margin-
alized minority because of their stereotyped irrationality, hypertraditional
character, and presumed inability to assimilate.3 On either side of this good
Japanese/bad Japanese dichotomy, the Brazilian majority presupposed a pri-
mordial bond between Nikkeis and Japan.
It is clear that presumed blood ties alone did not make the Japanese nation
home for the Japanese diasporic population in Brazil. Rather, Japan had to be
the home for Nikkeis because they did not belong to the present in Brazil. °ey
instead represented both the future (i.e., hypermodernity) and the past (i.e.,
hypertradition) of Brazil, and Japan was their home away—both spatially and
temporally. As Takeshi put it, Japan was “a great pride of the Japanese race”
and those with Japanese ancestral ties were reputed to embody great “culture”
and ethnic “aura.” When Nikkei migrants like Takeshi relate that they were
Japanese in Brazil, they oﬅen do so with a pang of nostalgia because being
japonês carried a plethora of positive modern meanings.
However, the level of formal education among migrant converts at Missão
Apoio Toyota was actually not as high as the stereotypical image of professional
cosmopolitan Nikkeis in Brazil. My survey data show that roughly 90 percent
of respondents had the equivalent of a high school diploma or less. Approxi-
mately ±0 percent reported to have progressed to college or beyond (including
those who did not complete the degree), which is not higher than the ratio of
college graduates in the general Brazilian population.4 °e number is definitely
lower than the ratio of college degree holders among Nikkei Brazilians in ur-
ban São Paulo (the place with a strong discursive tie to the image of Nikkeis as
a modern minority), which was ·6 percent in ¸00¶.5 °us, my informants in
Toyota did not themselves embody all the positive stereotypical traits of Nik-
keis, but most of them still felt that migration had spoiled the protective “aura”
of ethnic prestige. Takeshi’s own limited formal education did not stop him
from depicting Nikkeis in general as well educated and well respected. °is pat-
tern attests to the emotional sway that the ideal ethnic self-image exerts upon
migrants, especially when they perceive their good social standing to be lost.
40 SU S P E N D E D
°e discursive formation of Nikkei identities in Brazil, especially the im-
age of Japan as a hypermodern nation that imprints similarly modern quali-
ties on Japanese descendants abroad, prepared a stage for the profound shock
of “homecoming” in the ±990s and ¸000s. Nikkeis who migrated to Japan were
surprised to find out that they did not arrive at the futuristic nation to which
they believed they would belong. Marcelo, another Nikkei migrant in his for-
ties, related the following story when I asked him what his experience was like
when he first arrived in Japan:
So I came in ±990 by myself and arrived in Narita. °is guy from my staffing
agency was waiting for me at the airport, and he put me in a van and started
driving to the company’s dorm.² I was looking out from the windows, and said,
“What is this?” He was like, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Where are all the modern buildings with bright colorful neon signs?
Where are all the cars and people in good clothes?” [Laughs.] Because, you see,
all I saw from the van was just vegetable fields and rice paddies, and worse
yet, I smelt an odor of . . . some kind of livestock. I was like, “What’s going on?
Japan is supposed to be a country of the First World [país do Primeiro Mundo].”
Big cities, high technology . . . You know. °en the guy laughed and said I had
to go to Tokyo to see those things. It was a huge shock. In Brazil, we believe
that the whole Japan is like that, like Tokyo.
Speaking about his arrival in Japan, Marcelo reveals the images of Japan wide-
spread in Brazil: metropolitan, advanced, forward, modern, and First World.
His “huge shock” is more temporal than cultural, for it was not his customs
that were challenged but the sense of time he had long projected onto Japan.
In a sense, he had a “time shock.” As the migrants’ image of Japan thus began
to shiﬅ, their own ethnic self-image also started to transform in the new
context.
The “Backward” Minority in Japan
Upon migration, the majority of Nikkeis took up jobs in Japan’s industrial ar-
eas such as Gunma, Shizuoka, Mie, and Aichi. As Nikkei Brazilians were now
perceived as unskilled migrant laborers, which in many cases they actually
were, their social status suffered great humiliation—ironically, in the land of
their ancestors where their “Japanese ethnic aura” is supposed to originate. In
this new social context, Nikkei subjectivity experienced a dramatic shiﬅ from
“Japanese” educated professionals to “Brazilian” unskilled laborers. And with
this new identity emerged a host of new stereotypes that began to haunt them—
negative images ranging from low-class crudeness to criminal delinquency.
As Takeshi put it, “We commit petty crimes, get into fights all the time, and
are lazy. People who are violent, and steal.”
It is crucial to acknowledge the significant influence of the neoliberal labor
system on such images. For instance, Brazilian workers routinely lament “work-
ing so much” at the same time as characterizing themselves as “lazy people.”
°is may seem contradictory, but actually makes sense in the context of their
wage labor. Many do work long hours because they have to (due to their weak
position at the workplace) or want to (because it is the only way to enhance
income in the time-based wage system). Either way, long working hours are
the result of their marginalized position in the labor market. °is awareness
fuels a sense of resentment among many migrant workers, which in turn leads
to low morale: “I don’t want to work. I feel so lazy.” °e same labor system also
incentivizes temporary workers to constantly look for other jobs that pay bet-
ter per hour, even just by one yen. As a result, many end up hopping from one
factory to another, generating a reputation that Brazilians are opportunis-
tic, reluctant to commit, and too idle to persist at one place for the greater
good. From another viewpoint, of course, it is the factories dependent on dis-
pensable contingent employees that are reluctant to commit to hardworking
foreign workers. Nonetheless, some Nikkei laborers resort to such ethnic ste-
reotypes to explain their own actions. For example, Keita—an eighteen-year-
old Nikkei youngster—told me that he was “Brazilian aﬅer all” when he quit
his job for the third time in a year. “I can’t work like an ant day aﬅer day at
one place. Maybe I lack perseverance because of my Latin nature” (Ore ik-
kasho de kotsukotsu toka muri dayo. Raten kishitsu de konjō nai no kana). In
my observation, the phenomenon of job fluidity (and, of course, insecurity)
among Nikkeis has more to do with the broader labor structure than their
ethnic nature. But many Japanese—and some Brazilians themselves—conflate
these economically driven processes with supposedly preexisting racial
characteristics.
Like Keita, many migrant youth born and raised in Japan made similar
comments about Brazilianness, despite the fact that they had never lived in Bra-
zil. One day, I was walking back to my apartment building with a group of Brazil-
ian adolescents who lived in Homi Danchi aﬅer teaching a Japanese class at a
local nongovernmental organization. At one point, I noticed that Fernando and
42 SU S P E N D E D
Yoshiki—two fiﬅeen-year-old boys—were talking about Brazil. “It’s a country
of thieves and drug dealers,” Fernando said.
Yoshiki, nodding with juvenile giggles, responded, “°at’s right man, that’s
true.”
I asked how they knew these things and offered a modest counterperspec-
tive: “You know Brazil is going to host the World Cup this year. It can be a really
cool place.”
°ey looked at me and laughed in unison. “Ah sensei [teacher], but that’s
what they say! Brazil is a country of hooligans and burglars.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“°e people [as pessoas]. People around me. Haven’t you watched the TV,
sensei? Gangs with guns shooting at the police, guys with covered faces de-
stroying shops on the street? °at’s my country!” As they kept on laughing,
I thought to myself that they had most likely seen the media images from the
military police’s “pacification” of favelas and a fragment of participants in the
¸0±º mass public demonstrations that resorted to violent vandalism. Since I did
not ask what kind of television programs their families watched at home, it is
unclear whether they received these images from Japanese media, Brazilian
networks available in Japan such as Globo, or both. Either way, such negative
representations affect how Japan-born Brazilian youth come to envision the
“homeland” they have never seen with their own eyes.
°us, negative media images of Brazil exacerbate the sense of ethnic down-
grade from a modern Asian minority to a backward Latino minority. As Takeshi
put it, their “culture” suddenly becomes “lower” in Japan. °is perceived demo-
tion of their culture in turn affects their ethnic and racial self-images in nega-
tive ways. Many simply lament or shrug off this demeaning transition, but some
Brazilian migrants make conscious effort to rebuild their social reputation in
Japan. Fumio Shimamura is one of such people, who appeared on the December
¸0±º issue of Alternativa, a free magazine in Portuguese read widely among
Brazilians in Japan. In an article titled “I Want to Help Brazilians Have a De-
cent Life,” Shimamura expressed his sense of duty as the only Brazilian public
accountant certified to practice in Japan: “I hope that one day the reputation
of Nikkei Brazilians will be equal to that which the Japanese had in Brazil.” ³
Ironically, Shimamura’s aspiration still hinges upon the tacit consensus that
the social status of Nikkei Brazilians in Japan is in no way comparable to that
of Nikkeis in Brazil.
In sum, Nikkei migrants slowly realize that, as dispensable foreign labor-
ers stereotyped for laziness, delinquency, and criminality, they do not quite
belong in Japan’s future. °is recognition in turn intensifies their desire for
return to Brazil.
Return as a Place of Hope: Future in Brazil
In Brazil, the migration of Nikkei Brazilians to Japan is oﬅen called movimento
dekassegui (movement of temporary workers). True to the term, many migrants
arrived in Japan with the intention of returning to Brazil in a few years aﬅer
saving as much money as possible. °ey were usually prepared to sacrifice com-
fort for the sake of procuring a better middle-class future for their return to
Brazil. What they initially tolerated as temporary discomfort, however, quickly
turned into a perpetual state as “several years” became five, ten, and even
twenty. Some migrants have returned to Brazil to achieve the goals they set out
for, never returning to Japan again. But those who continue to live in Japan
are oﬅentimes still under the spell of perpetual temporariness. Some mi-
grants who became critical of this psychological tendency call it an “illusion
of return” (ilusão de voltar). André, who successfully landed a job as an inter-
preter with his hard-learned Japanese, told me about his fellow migrants: “°ey’d
better stop it. It’s an illusion. °ey say they will return next year, but they
never do. Some have lived here for ten years and don’t know a single word of
Japanese.”
°e illusion of return is an ingenious way to characterize how migrants deal
with the perpetual temporariness of life. It captures the power the idea of re-
turn exerts in their minds not as a realistic and concrete action to be carried
out but as a fantastic and faraway plan to be fantasized about. Artur, for ex-
ample, talked about return in the following way:
I am from Rio, you know Rio? Lots of beaches, beautiful. See that? [He turns
on his iPhone to show photos of beautiful turquoise-blue ocean.] My house is
just a few kilometers away from this place. [His thirteen-year-old son peeks in,
smiles, and says he wants to live there.] I know, son. [I ask if his son has lived
in Rio.] What? No, he was born and raised here in Toyota. I will return, you
know, it’s just that it’s a beautiful place with no jobs. So I will save money and
return.
For many migrants, return becomes not an act they actually plan for but a place
in mind where they can safely store future desires. In a similar vein, Caroline
Brettel observed the ideological importance of “emigrar para voltar” (emi-
grate to return) in the history of Portuguese migration. Even when physical
44 SU S P E N D E D
return does not materialize, this mind-set proved psychologically protective

since “this maintenance of an intention to return alongside the postponement
of actual return is a way of dealing with the insecure environment abroad,
where the position of the migrant is very much at the mercy of fluctuations in
the international economic system.”8
As it turns out, return has captured the hopes and desires of many migrants
throughout the history of transatlantic migration. Marcelo Borges discussed
the importance of social images attached to return migrants in Portugal in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since Brazil was the most popu-
lar destination until the mid-twentieth century, brasileiro (a Brazilian) became
a discursive archetype of a native-born Portuguese who emigrated to Brazil,
made it rich, and then returned to Portugal to display his wealth. Even those
from the southern region of Portugal who tended to migrate to Argentina of-
ten spoke about the brasileiro because it “became synonymous with return
migrants regardless of their destination.”´ Many Portuguese dreamt about be-
coming a brasileiro even at the same time that they mocked his supposed greed
through caricatures. Relatedly, Arnd Schneider wrote about the Italian-
Argentinians’ yearning for return within the historical context that he char-
acterized as “inversion of roles.” 1µ When Italians migrated to Buenos Aires
before the ±9·0s, Italy meant poverty and backwardness, whereas America
represented progress, wealth, and cosmopolitan status. Yet, over time, Argen-
tina failed to deliver the glory of modern progress to such migrants and their
descendants, while Italy successfully industrialized and climbed up to its current
First World status. Italian-Argentinians’ desire for their ancestral homeland,
then, is a bitter craving for the promised future realized elsewhere—ironically,
in the land their ancestors leﬅ behind.
As these stories of migration show, return oﬅen provides a place of hope.
In the case of many Brazilian migrants in Japan, the future to return to now
lies in Brazil.
Transpacific Gypsies
Even aﬅer a decade, two decades, and in many cases acquiring permanent resi-
dent visas in Japan, many Brazilian migrants still spoke about returning to
Brazil “soon.” °ey would then admit that they had been living in Japan for
over a decade or that this was their third time to be working in Japan, usually
smiling with a hint of embarrassment. In fact, according to a survey conducted
in ¸00¹, almost half of male Brazilian migrants and ¹0 percent of female Bra-
zilian migrants had previously lived in Japan.11 For roughly ±0 percent of all
the respondents, it was their fourth, fiﬅh, or sixth time in the country. Many
migrants were critical of circular migration that has become rather common
among Brazilians in Japan. For instance, Hélio—a twenty-three-year-old Nik-
kei Brazilian—once asked me, “So, have you found anything interesting about
us yet?” It was aﬅer a Sunday evening mass in Portuguese at a Catholic church
in a neighboring city of Toyota, and he knew that I was a researcher.
“Well, let me think . . .”
I started to think but Hélio quickly interrupted me by offering his own ob-
servation: “Have you noticed that too many of us go back and forth between
Brazil and Japan, never becoming firm in our decision to stay in either coun-
try? It is a problem.” He shook his head. “°is is not good.” At that moment,
the father arrived and he excused himself to go into the confessional.
Researchers of transnationalism have long theorized the ways in which the
lives of migrants and those who are related to them are not contained within
the borders of nation-states. Steven Vertovec, for instance, used the term
bifocality to capture the state of transnational life that is simultaneously “here”
and “there.”12 Although the bifocal mode of being can be celebrated as some-
thing liberating, most Brazilians in Japan view their state in a more critical
light. Repeated migration is commonplace yet oﬅen frowned upon because it
signifies the inability to establish a stable middle-class life in either country.
In other words, the number of crossings between the two nations equals the
number of failures to arrive at a better future, which was the purpose of mi-
gration in the first place. One elderly Nikkei Brazilian man in his fiﬅies summed
up this frustration succinctly in the following way: “Nikkeis, it looks like they
have a country but they virtually don’t. When in Brazil, they are Japanese.
When in Japan, they are Brazilian. So we do but it’s like we don’t have any
country. We move around too much, too, never settling down, never knowing
how to establish ourselves. We are like gypsies [ciganos].”
Most migrants experience the circular movement between Japan and Bra-
zil not as liberating but as crippling, partially because they feel at the mercy of
fluctuating global economic forces and shiﬅing national migration policies.
Sometimes, they can even perceive mobility as something forced upon them
structurally, against their own desire to grow roots.
46 SU S P E N D E D
Living with a Japanese Mask
One phenomenon that attests to the irony of migrants’ insistence on the tem-
porariness of their life in Japan is the prevalence of permanent resident visas.
In fact, the majority of Brazilian nationals who reside in Japan today hold
permanent resident visas instead of long-term resident visas. °e trend toward
permanent residency, however, cannot be taken at its face value to signify that
migrants are settling down in Japan. Granted, a small minority of Brazilians
express a strong desire to stay and demonstrate such an intention by sending
their children to Japanese schools, saving for children’s higher education in
Japan, and—for the lucky few—buying houses on mortgage. For the majority
of Brazilians in Homi Danchi, however, the permanent resident visa was not a
token of permanent life in Japan but another option to enhance their trans-
national mobility. In fact, migrants can leave Japan more easily with the visa
since the required renewal is not as frequent for permanent residents. I have
met a handful of Brazilians who explained their decision (or plan) to come
back to Japan in relation to the maintenance of their permanent resident visa.
Hiroshi, who leﬅ Toyota to return to Brazil during my fieldwork, told me, “I’ll
definitely come back to visit in five years to maintain my permanent resident
visa; I don’t want to lose it.” For many, the visa was not symbolic but rather in-
strumental, and acquiring one did not discourage them from desiring the re-
turn to Brazil.
If not the permanent resident visa, however, there was one procedure that
many migrants still resisted as symbolically troubling instead of pursuing
it as a pragmatic social strategy: naturalization. °e August ¸0±¹ issue of
Vitrine—a popular Portuguese-language free magazine among Brazilian mi-
grants in Japan—featured a special article on this topic, titled “All You Need
to Know About Naturalization.” It read, “°e possibility of becoming a native
citizen of the country where one lives, with the same obligations and rights as
anyone else, is worth the effort, it’s a conquest of freedom from the condition
of eternal foreigner.”13 Although the article depicted the procedure as a “con-
quest of freedom,” or something necessary to achieve an equal status to the
Japanese majority in Japan, the issue’s cover image captured precisely why many
migrants still found it troubling. It showed an image of a man—presumably a
Nikkei Brazilian—putting on a mask of a Japanese face. His original face is
covered and hidden by the clean and yet impassive “Japanese” mask, thus in-
voking a sense of inauthentic identity. An alternative interpretation is also
possible: °e man may be about to take off a layer of his face. He is about to
reveal the “true Japanese self” that lies beneath, the identity that naturalization
brings to its fruition. In Brazil, Japanese ethnicity is oﬅen stereotyped as rigid
and even robotic, which constitutes the negative flip side of more positive
images such as diligence and discipline. Although Nikkeis are similarly per-
ceived to be more serious than non-Asian Brazilians, the common under-
standing today is that they have successfully combined Japanese and Brazilian
qualities, thus becoming at once “industrious” and “creative.” °is latter read-
ing of the cover image, then, can be more unsettling to Nikkeis, since it visu-
ally suggests that the underlying robotic “Japanese” core has always been
underneath the “Nikkei/Brazilian” face. Regardless of the variety of possible
interpretations, the image is a visual display of common views among Brazil-
ian migrants on what “becoming Japanese” entails: assimilation into the
“cold,” “robotic,” and “mechanical” Japanese society, which may well require
acting phony ( falso)—a quality many Brazilians openly dislike about the
Japanese in Japan.
°e irony is that non-mestiço, or so-called puro (pure-blooded), Nikkeis
phenotypically resemble the face on the Japanese mask. My informants knew,
however, that looking Japanese oﬅentimes had little to do with being Japa-
nese. Historically, Japan has long defined national identity strictly within the
narrow convergence of Japanese blood, language, and culture.14 Its nationality
law is based on jus sanguinis, or the principle of blood, which means immi-
gration does not provide a straightforward path to national belonging. Even
aﬅer a stream of criticism against the nation’s ideology of ethnic homogene-
ity, it is still virtually impossible to effectively evoke the “unity through diver-
sity” rhetoric in Japanese mainstream discourses. 15 °is is in stark contrast to
Brazil, where the history of immigration and story of racial mixture possess
even a mythic value in the construction of national identity. 1²
To this day, migrant—or imin—continues to be a sort of “M-word” in the
social context of Japan. Politicians time and again soothe the public that
they would do everything in their power to battle the shrinking and aging
population before opening the door to even more foreigners. 1³ To Nikkei
Brazilians, such a social climate is a constant reminder that they can never be
“authentically” Japanese, despite their “Japanese blood” that the government in
fact acknowledged for their ancestry-based visas. To be sure, the great major-
ity of Brazilians whom I met were emphatic that they were thoroughly Brazilian;
they did not want to become Japanese just to fit in. Still, one reason why many
“Naturalization: All You Need to Know.” Source: Vitrine, Issue Number ±00.
F IG UR E 3 .
Cover, August ¸0±¹.
Brazilians cannot picture a future in Japan is because the country does not

offer a tangible vision of such a future for them. °e nation’s ethnically purist,
if not racist, narrative of national identity too oﬅen ends up suppressing the
diversity such migrants inevitably bring into the society.
No Time to Live
Over time, many Nikkei migrants come to feel suspended between two futures:
one in Japan and the other in Brazil. Upon initial migration, they saw how
Japan turned out to be anything but the hypermodern First World nation that
Nikkei ethnicity had symbolized in Brazil. °us the migrants did not arrive at
the future in Japan where many thought they would belong. Since then, the
future for many in turn has rested in Brazil, and many talk about returning
there. Unlike the intention of return, however, the materialization of actual
return—especially the return to the ideal future—is rare. Some go back and
forth between Japan and Brazil multiple times over the years, believing at each
crossing that they may finally make it this time to the secure, “better,” future.
Others—especially the younger generations who have only known Japan—may
envision a permanent life in Japan. Currently, however, the dominant rhetoric
of Japanese national identity does not provide a clear path for inclusive and
uncontested belonging for such ethnically and racially diverse Nikkei Brazil-
ians. °us, both futures oﬅen come to gain a quality of phantasm in mi-
grants’ experiences.
If the future becomes difficult to envision, then the present may be what is
leﬅ as a temporal place to cultivate life. But even the present becomes precari-
ous in migrants’ tales. For instance, Takeshi elaborated eloquently on the state
of suspended life:
People went back to Brazil, . . . things went wrong there and they ended up re-
turning here. For one family, looking at each individual family, this has hap-
pened at least once. Sometimes twice. Even three times. You come, go, come,
go, and then come . . . At a certain moment, one realizes, “Oh my God, I am
losing years of my life—because I am depriving myself of living, planning a
future that doesn’t happen. Is it worth putting aside living [deixar de viver]?”
When I inquired what exactly he meant by deixar de viver, he responded, “°ere
exists a difference between living [viver] and surviving [sobreviver].” He
continued:
50 SU S P E N D E D
So when a person lives poorly [i.e., survives], it cannot be considered that he
has lived. He simply hasn’t lived. °at doesn’t exist; that’s like a negative num-
ber because it was bad. A good experience is positive. . . . For me, living is much
more than you being there just doing what others want from you. . . .
Or, [deixar de viver means] that this person doesn’t buy anything because
he needs to save money to live the future. A person doesn’t go to any place
because this would be a waste of money, and he cannot do this if he wants to
save money to live the future one day. A person cannot dress well. Because this
would waste the money that—he is thinking—should be spent in the future.
“And this future oﬅen exists in Brazil?” I asked.
“°at’s what they plan for themselves,” Takeshi answered. Other than “to
put aside living,” deixar de viver more literally means “stop living” or “quit liv-
ing.” Takeshi’s narrative fleshes out how life can actually stop in the experiences
of migrants as they wait and prepare uncertainly for the future—the future
which, as Takeshi aptly observed, oﬅen “does not happen.” In this context of
perpetual temporariness that permeates the migrants’ lives, both the future and
the present become uncertain. Many sacrifice the pleasure in the present to
reach the better future, which, as it turns out, oﬅen does not arrive.
Perhaps, then, the past is the place for life. But Nikkei migrants are already
there—as descendants of Japanese emigrants in their ancestral homeland,
in the nation that their parents and grandparents leﬅ behind, in the country
where they could possibly find their past ethnic roots. Yet very few make an
active effort to explore their ancestral ties to the nation even when they could
identify living relatives in Japan. Like Takeshi, who admitted with frank laugh-
ter that he had “no idea” what kind of place Fukushima is, most migrants are
not keenly interested in such a backward-looking project of return. At the end
of the day, what the majority desires is not a nostalgic rediscovery of pristine
ancestral past but rather an aspirational reaching out for a better future.
When neither the present nor the future enacts little experiential imme-
diacy, migrants feel trapped, because this robs them of temporal locus for ac-
tion. °e feeling of being in limbo, in turn, leads to the ubiquitous symptom
of temporal suffocation that I heard about over and over again during field-
work: “I don’t have time. I work so much. But this is necessary for me to return
one day. Someday.” °e claim that the present does not possess innate experi-
ential immediacy may strike some readers as odd. As Wendy James and David
Mills pointed out, however, “the present is of course a convention, a sort of
symbolic fiction, in itself.” 18 I take fiction to be a synonym for malleable reality,
not for fake construct, while acknowledging the need to be cautious with ex-
treme experiential relativism.1´
°e question then is if and how migrants in this context start reconfigur-
ing their temporal realities in ways that do not lead to temporal limbo, which
Takeshi characterized as deixar de viver. °e short answer is yes. For example,
an increasing number of Brazilians have been making a conscious decision to
“stay” (permanecer) and “live” (morar) in Japan. °ey move toward their new
vision of future by paying mortgages, by making sustained efforts to learn Japa-
nese, and by consciously sending their offspring to Japanese schools instead of
Brazilian ones. I must add, however, that those who can set up long-term future-
oriented plans still form a minority among Brazilian migrants at large. °e
major obstacles are job insecurity, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with
Japanese cultural conventions. Although many form casual friendships with
their Japanese colleagues at work, such interactions typically do not enhance
the sense of embeddedness in Japanese society. °is is partially because those
Japanese employees who find themselves in the vicinity of migrant workers
likewise occupy precarious and marginal positions in Japan’s increasingly neo-
liberal labor system. 2µ
Plasticity of Return
Why does life stop in Japan? It is because the forward-looking temporality im-
plicit in the project of migration imposes the postponement of the present life
to migrants. Migration is oﬅentimes an aspirational phenomenon, or “a proj-
ect of hope,” that is “geared toward the future, toward building a new house,
investing in more land or other property, . . . and generally building the
prestige and the future of the house.”21 As Nikkei migrants in Japan struggle to
materialize this better future, many begin to feel that they have not lived the
present for years and sometimes for decades. In such an aspirational tempo-
rality, one must “work” in the present for the sake of better “life” in the future,
instead of living the moment. °is is why many migrants claim that they are
in Japan “not to live but to work.” What this phenomenon of temporal suffo-
cation suggests is that life is not an automatic process but instead an active work
of temporal enactment.
°e experiences of Nikkei Brazilians in Japan illuminate the plasticity of
return. A physical trip to the location where one’s ancestors grew up oﬅen does
52 SU S P E N D E D
not automatically constitute a return in one’s mind. In other words, return is
not a natural event but instead an achievement of convincing self-transformation,
which builds the old bond to “homeland” anew. For the majority of Nikkei Bra-
zilians, return was neither achieved nor even intended. Instead, upon their am-
biguous arrival in the land of their ancestors, Nikkei Brazilians unwittingly
walked into a temporal maze. What they encountered there was not the ances-
tral past, or the First World future, or the fulfilling present. In response, they
learned to put aside living in the hope of reaching another future that should
be awaiting them in Brazil once they escape the temporal limbo of migrant
labor. But no one could tell for certain when the clock of life would start tick-
ing again.
4
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE
“Welcome to the Favela”
In the evening of June ·, ±999, one van purportedly belonging to a Japanese
right-wing nationalist group and roughly fiﬅy motorcycles with riders in biker-
gang outfits appeared on the streets of Homi Danchi in Toyota City. Circling
around the large housing complex comprising roughly sixty buildings, they re-
peatedly called out, “Brazilians come out!” (burajirujin detekoi). °e provoca-
tion came out of the mounted speaker and vibrated through the neighborhood
while roughly thirty police officers stood guard. No Brazilian residents came
out of their homes. According to a local Japanese newspaper, the intruders were
likely looking for a specific group of Brazilian youth with whom they had had
a run-in about a week earlier.1 Nonetheless, the same article situates the inci-
dent in the general context of “the emotional animosity” (kanjōteki na shikori)
between “the foreigners” (gaikokujin) and “the affiliates of right-wing and biker
gang groups” (uyoku bōsōzoku kankeishara) in the area. °e rhetoric conflates
a fraction of Brazilian residents with the entire foreign community while
keeping the nationalists and the outlaws separate from the general Japanese
population.
°e tension culminated in the arson of a right-wing van parked near Homi
Danchi in the late night of the following day, June 6. Both Japanese right-wing
group members and Brazilians reacting to the news of arson gathered near the
scene, in response to which roughly eighty police officers arrived to keep guard.
54 SU S P E N D E D
Although the situation did not devolve into any violent outburst, the dispatch
of prefectural police riot squad (kenkei kidōtai) attracted the rare attention of
Japanese mainstream media. On June 9, Yomiuri Shimbun—one of the most
widely read daily newspapers in Japan—published a piece titled “°e Dispute
Between Brazilians and Right-Wing Extremists.”2 Again, the article’s rhetoric
juxtaposes the Brazilian residents as a whole with an “extremist” fragment of
Japanese society as if to imply that they are both troublesome outsiders. °e
widely reported “dispute” in ±999 tarnished the image of the neighborhood for
years to come.
When I arrived in Toyota City in ¸0±º to start my yearlong fieldwork, I re-
ceived multiple warnings about living in Homi Danchi from both Japanese and
Brazilian acquaintances. It is messy, dangerous, and unwelcoming, they would
say. “Are you sure you can have a balanced picture by studying the Brazilians
in Homi Danchi?” One Japanese scholar who had studied Brazilian commu-
nities in another city inquired me with a concerned look. A “balanced picture,”
he seemed to suggest, could only be gleaned from neighborhoods reputed to
be more integrated and harmonious. Based on several visits he had made to
the housing complex, he also added that Homi Danchi seemed to “have thorns
[toge] against the surrounding community.”
“I’d recommend other danchis [housing complexes],” said Gabriel, with
whom I had become acquainted during my pilot research a year earlier. He held
a degree in law from a university in São Paulo and briefly tried to establish a
career as a lawyer in Brazil before migrating to Japan in ±99¸ due to financial
difficulties. He himself lived in a dormitory provided by the auto company he
worked for. He continued hesitantly, “It’s really crude in Homi, you know.
People there don’t have culture” (Lá no Homi tem muito barulho né. O pes-
soal lá não tem cultura). When pressed, he explained that the Brazilians who
lived in such an isolated place without real contact with either Japanese or
Brazilian culture end up being “neither here nor there” (nem lá nem cá). “Es-
pecially the young kids who grew up there,” he added. “Me, I know I’m Brazil-
ian. I speak Portuguese. I was educated in Brazil. But the youth in Homi don’t
know who they are—they don’t have either culture. °at’s why they are nem lá
nem cá.”
I was surprised by the fact that many Brazilians—mostly those living out-
side Homi—spoke of their fellow migrants there in such a generalizing way.
But of course, the so-called Brazilian community is not a monolith. It was clear
that many migrants—including some who actually lived in Homi Danchi—
NEITHER HERE NOR THERE 55
perceived the place as occupying the lowest tier of internal social hierarchy. If
those who managed to purchase a house are on the top, those who depend on
subsidized housing or live in presumably bad neighborhoods are at the bot-
tom. Despite the fact that only some buildings of Homi Danchi were subsidized
for families in need, the association of the place with lower-class status seemed
to persist.
Roughly two months into my fieldwork, my paperwork finally went through
and I signed a lease to live in a small apartment in Building ±¸¶ of Homi Dan-
chi. °ree days before my planned move-in date, on October ¸9, ¸0±º, I received
a late-night text message from Beatriz, who lived in Building ±¸7. “Have you
heard about the jumping off [tobiori]?”
“No,” I responded. “I was in factory all day. What happened?”
“A Brazilian man living here threw himself off from the top of Building ¸±,
trying to escape the police. He was stealing car parts, you know, and the
police were trying to arrest him.” I later learned that Frederico Sakamoto, a
forty-year-old Nikkei, hesitated for some eight hours on the top of the five-
storied building, until he eventually jumped off around nine o’clock at night.
°e officers from the Aichi Prefectural Police, who had initially come to arrest
Sakamoto for motor vehicle theﬅ and visa overstay, spent the whole day per-
suading him not to commit suicide while surrounded by Japanese and Bra-
zilian residents who gathered at the scene. In the end, he jumped off and hit
the area of the ground that was not covered by the mattresses the officers had
placed to save him.
Over the next few days, some of my Japanese kin called to dissuade me from
moving into Homi Danchi. I was not changing my plan. Most of my Brazilian
informants acknowledged Sakamoto’s wrongdoing, and although some were
sympathetic, many worried about the event’s potential impact on the reputa-
tion of Nikkei Brazilians. “I believe that things were tough for him and I feel
bad for his family,” one Nikkei resident of Homi Danchi said. “But things are
hard for all of us dekasseguis. Yet most of us don’t go around stealing cars. Did
he think he could escape the justice forever? Our image just got even worse,
thanks to him!” °e media coverage of such extreme events helps perpetuate
the dominant image of Brazilians in the nation as delinquent, if not crime rid-
den. In fact, an overview of all the articles on Brazilian migrants published by
a major Japanese newspaper (Asahi Shimbun) between ±990 and ¸00¶ showed
that the most frequent topic was crime (º± percent), followed by “cultural ex-
change” (±±.¶ percent).3 As far as the mainstream Japanese media are concerned,
56 SU S P E N D E D
then, Brazilians are either hot-blooded transgressors of law or possessors of
unique culture. °ere is little room for nuanced subjectivity or emotional depth
in such depictions of migrants. Stories about the well-known Brazilian enclaves
in Japan oﬅen come to reflect such dichotomous images of the foreign Other.
A few days aﬅer I moved into Homi Danchi, I walked over to Beatriz’s apart-
ment in the evening to chat with her over a cup of coffee. I brought a bag of
Pilão coffee beans that I had bought at the Brazilian supermarket in Homi
called Foxmart. “Oh! You got the expensive stuff for us, thank you!” Beatriz
said, smiling. Since most products at Foxmart were overpriced, many Brazil-
ian residents with cars went elsewhere to do grocery shopping unless they
needed something that Japanese supermarkets did not carry. Beatriz, a twenty-
five-year-old yonsei who grew up in Homi since she was four, asked me in
Japanese how much coffee I wanted as she poured water into the coffee maker.
“Not much,” I said. “It’s getting late and I don’t wanna stay up.”
“You are so Japanese [nihonjin dane],” Beatriz teased. “We Brazilians drink
coffee anytime—morning, aﬅernoon, late at night. We’re used to it.”
As we waited for the coffee to brew, she spoke about how Pastor Cid—who
also lived in Homi Danchi at the time—tried to dissuade Sakamoto from
throwing himself off during the tense eight hours. “He did what he did in the
end, but . . . I wish he had found God.” Beatriz quietly poured hot coffee into
two mugs. °en, with a mischievous smile on her lips, she added, “Homi is a
deep place [dīpu na basho], as you can see. Welcome to the favela [ favela e
yōkoso].” We both laughed. With its solid concrete structures, perfectly func-
tional infrastructure, and lack of gun or gang violence, Homi Danchi was not
exactly a Brazilian shantytown. In fact, Beatriz quickly switched to Portuguese
to utter the word favela, which perhaps signified the foreignness of such places
to herself as someone who grew up mostly in Japan and primarily spoke Japa-
nese. Yet the word captured something vital about the popular image of Homi
Danchi in Japanese society as a place for the deviant Brazilian Other—
something Beatriz had to confront time aﬅer time whenever the media found
migrants like Sakamoto. At the same time, some fellow migrants like Gabriel
would insist that Homi Danchi was not even Brazilian but instead a cultural
limbo of nem lá nem cá, where migrants could not authentically be Japanese
or Brazilian. To him, Homi was a strange nonplace for people suspended be-
tween two cultures.
But are Nikkei Brazilians like Beatriz in Homi Danchi really “neither here
nor there”? To investigate what constitutes the pervasive discourse of cultural
limbo, I will examine a variety of sources ranging from autobiographic narra-
tives to media representations in this chapter. °e rhetoric of in-between
identity, although it is commonplace among transnational migrants, must not
be taken at face value. °is is because such a way of speaking is based on a
rather essentialist view of culture, in which different groups are supposed to
exist as separate entities with clear boundaries. In other words, the rhetoric of
“neither here nor there” assumes that there are clear “here” and “there” to
start with, when the line between the two may instead be porous, flexible, and
subject to constant negotiation. To claim that some people are between Japan
and Brazil is to evoke “methodological nationalism,” a framework that takes
national units as an analytical given.4 Yet the narrative of cultural ambiguity
and the feeling of contested belonging persist among many migrants—and for a
reason. In what follows, I will disentangle the relationship between race, gen-
eration, and affect that has come to shape the rhetoric of cultural limbo among
Nikkei Brazilians in Japan. My argument will take a diachronic approach; it
starts with the stories about migration and family recounted by older migrants
and then moves on to the perspectives of younger generations born or raised
in Japan.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Tales of Lost Families
°e Almeidas were a family of six: Luana, a sansei Nikkei mother; Guilherme,
a non-Nikkei father whom Luana described as “white” (branco); Guilherme’s
Brazilian mother, whom he brought to Japan a few years earlier due to her de-
teriorating health; Beatriz, a twenty-five-year-old eldest daughter who arrived
in Japan at the age of four; Diego, a twenty-three-year-old son who was two
years old when he was brought to Japan; and Sachi, an eight-year-old youngest
daughter who was born much later in Japan.
Having migrated in ±99º, they had been living in Japan for over two decades
at the time of my fieldwork. °ey were among the small but growing number
of migrants in Homi who did not speak of the plan to return to Brazil. °is was
partly because they owned two apartments there. One unit was for Luana,
Guilherme, Sachi, and Guilherme’s bedridden mother. °e other was for
Beatriz and Diego, the two adult children. Although the family lived sepa-
rately, they frequently visited each other, since the two apartments were only a
few blocks away from one another. When I visited Beatriz in the evening for
coffee, I would sometimes see her younger sister clinging to her arm as she
58 SU S P E N D E D
opened the door for me. Her parents usually leﬅ Sachi with Beatriz when they
had to go out at night, typically to attend church-related gatherings at Missão
Apoio Toyota. Everyone in the Almeida family had undergone water baptism
at the church except for Guilherme’s elderly mother, who self-identified as
Catholic, and Sachi, who was still too young to make her own decision ac-
cording to the parents.
I visited Luana’s apartment in Homi Danchi for an interview one aﬅernoon.
She was born in Assaí in the state of Paraná to nisei parents who were, in her
words, “children of Japanese with the face of nihon-jin [Japanese].” When she
was eight, her family moved to the city of São Paulo for the education of her
older siblings. Both in Assaí and São Paulo, “there were many [Japanese] de-
scendants” in the neighborhood where her family lived and she remembered
various Japanese foods and customs from her childhood: the commemoration
of obon (Buddhist custom that commemorates the ancestral spirits); mochi (rice
cakes) her grandparents used to give her as a treat; and undōkai (sports day
gathering) at the local Japanese association, among other things. Due to this
“very Japanese” cultural environment of her childhood, which many of her fel-
low Nikkei migrants in Homi did not have, she also learned to speak some
Japanese when she was still in Brazil. In fact, her maternal grandparents—issei
immigrants from Hiroshima—ran a small home school to teach the Japanese
language to Nikkei youth in their neighborhood. “When the normal school was
over in the aﬅernoon, my parents would round up me, my siblings, and cousins
and drag us to the house of jīchan [grandpa]. We were like, ‘Nooo! We wanna
go play! Nooo!’” Luana burst out laughing. Although our interview was in Por-
tuguese, the Japanese phrases she occasionally interjected sounded fluent.
When she was a student at the University of São Paulo, she met and mar-
ried Guilherme and subsequently leﬅ school without graduating to start a
family. She jokingly described their first encounter as amor à primeira batida
(love at first hit) because Guilherme rear-ended her car in a minor traffic ac-
cident and later fell in love with her. Although her Nikkei parents initially
insisted that she should marry another Nikkei instead of a brasileiro (non-
Nikkei Brazilian), they eventually came to accept her decision. Guilherme was
a high school graduate who ran a small eatery in the city. With the record high
inflation rate at the time in Brazil, he was forced to close down his business
soon aﬅer their marriage. In ±99º, they decided to go to Japan to work and save
money for a few years “because everyone was doing it back then.”
°ey were not the first ones in Luana’s family to migrate. Luana’s nisei father
had already migrated to Japan by himself one year earlier in ±99¸. When she
started recounting the effect of her father’s migration on her family, her face
hardened slightly: “My mother had to stay in Brazil because someone had to
take care of the renovation of the house with the money he sent from Japan—
and over time, there was afastamento [estrangement] between them. We began
to get used to this situation, that he was always gone. . . . As time went by,
more and more afastamento. . . . My father stayed here longer, alone, and my
mother there [in Brazil].” When Luana arrived in Japan with her family, she
tried to visit her father in Gunma, roughly ¸·0 miles east of Toyota. But he al-
ways told her that he was busy. She also noticed that a strange middle-aged
woman sometimes answered her calls to her father’s home phone. When she
brought it up, he explained that he shared a house with a married couple to
save more money to send back to Brazil. Luana continued:
°en one day, he returned to Brazil, he didn’t tell my mother, didn’t tell my
sister, and just showed up at their doorstep. . . . He said, “Because the factory
closed down there [in Japan] . . . so I was fired.” And he leﬅ again to get a job,
actually the same one he had before he went to Japan. He took care of a beach
house in a nearby coastal city. So he went to live there. And one day, he had
something like a seizure and passed away. . . .
When my sister went there to prepare for a funeral, what had happened was,
he was with another woman. . . . He had another wife! But my mother never
knew; he didn’t say a word about it. . . . °is woman wanted to receive his pen-
sion, because there in Brazil a widow can continue to receive.5 But my sister
said, “Um, I am his daughter. And I have a mother, who is his spouse.” °e
woman became like this [wide open eyes]. She didn’t know anything, because
they were by themselves here [in Japan]. °at’s why he didn’t want any contact
with us—he got himself another wife in Japan.
Luana then went on to describe similar situations she had seen among her Bra-
zilian friends: infidelities, divorces, abandoned children, and so on. “It’s tough
to be a dekassegui,” she sighed. Her story highlighted the distancing effect of
migration, both physical and emotional, on family ties.
Luana’s story, although it was narrated from her personal viewpoint, reflects
some structural patterns that apply more broadly to Brazilian migrants in
Japan. A survey conducted by the Brazilian Association of Labor Migrants
in ¸00¹, for instance, showed that ¹º.7 percent of Brazilian men migrated
to Japan unaccompanied by their families. Women, in contrast, tended to
migrate with family members—spouses, children, and siblings—and only
¸¹.º percent arrived in Japan alone. Even among married men, º¶.¸ percent
60 SU S P E N D E D
migrated by themselves, but just ±9 percent of married women did so.² °ese
findings show that gender definitively shapes migratory patterns. One con-
sequence is the prevalence of single-person households among Brazilian mi-
grants in Japan, especially among men. Although they make up roughly
¹0 percent of the Brazilian households in Japan surveyed by the association,
they constitute just ±¸ percent of all the households in Brazil according to the
¸0±0 Brazil Census.³ °ese demographic changes likely exacerbate the sense
of afastamento—the feeling of isolation, separation, and alienation from kin-
ship ties.
Seen in this light, Luana’s resentment toward her father’s infidelity in
Japan is embedded in the larger sociological shiﬅs that accompany dekassegui
migration. Indeed, the majority of my informants narrated similar stories
about what they perceived as “family in crisis.” °is pervasive impression that
migration disintegrates family also echoed in the coverage of dekasseguis
in the Brazilian media. For example, a major Brazilian newspaper reported in
¸0±0 that Japan is “a great refuge for those who do not want to provide
payment” to spouses and dependents among “Japanese descendants—the
dekasseguis.”8 °e article framed its observation primarily in legal terms. °e
Tribunal of Justice of São Paulo—the state with the largest number of Japa-
nese descendants in the country—issued ¸,¹¸· letters of request (cartas ro-
gatórias) to Japan in ¸00· alone. Of these, ±,±¸¸ dealt with alimony, ·09 with
divorce, ·70 with recognition of paternity, and ¸¸¹ with criminal issues. In
roughly ¶0 percent of the cases, the letters did not reach the addressees in Ja-
pan—a situation that the families in Brazil typically interpreted as a sign of
irresponsibility and abandonment. Even when migrants received such letters,
they could in theory ignore them without any legal repercussions due to the
lack of diplomatic agreements on civil and criminal cases between the two
governments.´
A number of grassroots groups appeared during the ±990s to address such
social and legal issues, including the Association of Families Abandoned by
Migrant Workers (Associação das Famílias Abandonadas por Dekasseguis).
Founded in ±99± to unite “widows and widowers of living partners” (viúvos de
companheiros vivos), the association had º00 registered families in ¸0±0.1µ One
of the leaders, Djalma Straube, counted himself as one of the “victims” of aban-
donment. He was living with his Nikkei wife and two mestiça daughters in
Brazil when his wife decided to migrate to Japan by herself in ±99º. A few years
later, however, she stopped sending back remittances, cut off all communica-
tions with the family, and effectively went missing in Japan. Five years later in
¸000, she suddenly returned to Brazil and filed for a divorce.
°ere exist no large-scale statistical data on the frequency of divorce and
child abandonment, let alone separation and infidelity, specifically among Bra-
zilians living in Japan. Consequently, it is difficult to confirm whether the
dominant discourse of “family in crisis” is a numerical reality. My ethnographic
findings, however, unambiguously confirm that it was an emotional reality for
the migrants, and a rather potent one at that.11
Laboring Apart, Growing Apart
Work was another factor my informants frequently brought up when they dis-
cussed what they perceived as the prevalent problem of family estrangement
in Japan. Many spoke of long and unpredictable working hours as the chief
cause of growing emotional distance between spouses as well as between par-
ents and children. Paula was a thirty-one-year-old Nikkei woman who lived
with her husband in Homi Danchi. Aﬅer I taught her some Japanese upon her
request (she decided to quit in a month) and we went out several times to have
dinner together, we started exchanging text messages on a regular basis. One
night, I came across her recent status update on my Facebook wall, which sim-
ply read: “Feeling down [sad face].” I typed a quick comment, “I hope you are
OK. Hugs.” Roughly thirty minutes later, I received an unusually long text mes-
sage from her in Portuguese:
°ank you, Suma. God, I sometimes don’t know what to do—We Brazilians are
here in Japan to work and save money, but our marriage suffers because of this
very purpose—work. Last week, Ken [her husband] was asked to work ni kōtai
[alternating between day shiﬅ and night shiﬅ every week] and, this week, he is
working yakin [night shiﬅ]. He made it very clear when he started working at
this factory that he just wants to do hirukin [day shiﬅ]. But when the factory
really needs it, he can’t say no. I asked for teiji [regular hours, typically from
¶ ».¼. until · ½.¼.] at my factory so that I can be home early to fix him a meal
before he leaves for work. °ey said no, this month is really busy and I have to
do at least three hours of zangyō [extra hours] every day. When I get home
around nine, Ken is already gone, and when I get up in the morning and leave
for work, he is on his way home. I haven’t seen MY OWN [sic] husband in a
week! What life is this?
62 SU S P E N D E D
Night shiﬅ, particularly ni kōtai that alternates between day shiﬅ and
night shiﬅ, can be quite taxing to one’s health. Since many full-time employ-
ees shun it, temporary workers with economic incentive tend to fill the de-
mand, as the wage is typically higher than day shiﬅ. Many migrant workers,
however, found the irregular working hours challenging to maintain close
relationships with their families. °is was especially the case with women,
who were also burdened with the cultural expectation to serve as domestic
caretakers.12 Paula consequently felt trapped between her two roles: compe-
tent migrant worker and nurturing homemaker. Since the common purpose
of migration—at least initially—was to save money to bring back to Brazil,
many women who had not worked full-time previously came to do so in Ja-
pan. As their “temporary” life as migrant laborers became prolonged, how-
ever, what many families regarded as a short-term arrangement to enhance
savings became more permanent.
Paula complained about the challenge her work posed on her effort to
maintain conjugal intimacy. Others expressed the same frustration in regard
to the relationship between parents and offspring. Many working parents
were concerned that they could not spend enough quality time with their
children due to long working hours. For example, Beatriz recounted the fol-
lowing story from her childhood:
Back then, I didn’t see my father at all. I was what, seven or eight, and used to
go to bed long before my father would come home from work. I think he came
home close to midnight. All my friends were Japanese at school, and my mother
spoke some Japanese because she is Nikkei and studied it a little in Brazil. My
father, he is white as you know, and didn’t speak any Japanese. . . .
One day, he tried to speak with me and I didn’t understand what he was
trying to say. I looked up at him like, “What is this strange old man saying?
I have no clue” [Kono ojisan nani itterundaro zenzen wakannai]. °en he started
crying, right then and there, in front of me. I was completely stunned. . . . He
was sad, you know, and he told me later that he felt it was his fault. . . . He let
that happen, you know.
In this narrative, Beatriz referred to her own father as kono ojisan, which means
“this strange middle-aged man” in this context. °is word choice highlights
the widening emotional distance that was growing between her and her father
due to the lack of interaction and, to Guilherme’s distress, the inability to speak
with one another in a common language.
Aﬅer Luana and Guilherme realized that their daughter was forgetting Por-
tuguese, Luana leﬅ her factory work to become a stay-at-home mother and
transferred Beatriz to a private Brazilian school. When her Portuguese im-
proved to the intermediate level two years later, Luana then transferred her
back to her previous Japanese public school. Luana decided not to resume full-
time work and instead started offering Portuguese classes to Japan-raised
Brazilian youth in the neighborhood. “Wow, so you are doing something that
your own grandfather used to do in Brazil,” I commented when Luana showed
me the teaching materials she used in her elementary Portuguese language
class.
“I guess you are right,” Luana said, looking up from the exercise book she
was flipping through. “°en no wonder why my students don’t do homework!
I hated learning Japanese when I was a kid!” We both laughed at this apparent
irony. °e relationship between cultural identity and linguistic adaptation
among children of immigrants is a complicated issue.13 But how language and
generation intersect is slightly more complex in the case of Nikkeis in Japan
due to their history of dual diaspora. Luana grew up in a Japanese neighbor-
hood, which gave her the opportunity to learn some Japanese as a child. Guil-
herme, in contrast, was a non-Nikkei who could not speak Japanese. Beatriz’s
inability to comprehend Portuguese thus shocked him more strongly, since
it foreshadowed the loss of common language between the father and the
daughter.
In addition to illuminating how migrants come to regard work as a major
cause of emotional estrangement within family, such stories also highlight how
gender affects the ways in which they respond to perceived problems. It is Paula,
and not her husband, who insisted on leaving work early so that she could pre-
pare meals for him at home. It is Luana, and not Guilherme, who quit factory
work to care for their children full-time and ensure that they could speak
Portuguese. °us, the sustenance of “home” in diaspora falls heavily onto
women’s shoulders, making them feel more sensitive to and responsible for the
perceived disintegration of family.
Afastamento: The Culture of Discipline in Question
Conflict, infidelity, divorce, abandonment, loss of intimacy, widening genera-
tion gap—these are some of the problems that occupied the minds of Brazilian
families in Japan. Although the specifics of such problems varied, I realized
64 SU S P E N D E D
over time that my informants seemed to have an overarching affective term for
all the issues related to migration—namely, afastamento. As the noun form of
afastar (to distance), the word encompassed the feelings of isolation, estrange-
ment, and alienation from family and kin. Although such an emotive idiom
may be common among many migrant groups, Nikkeis seemed to interpret
and experience afastamento within a particular historical frame of racialized
affects.14 Racialized affect is a “theoretical lens to highlight racialization and
affect as necessarily interconnected, even mutually constituted, political
projects.”15 “Latino hot-bloodedness” and “black delinquency” are among the
better-known examples of racialized affects. In the case of Nikkei Brazilians in
Japan, migrants oﬅen viewed afastamento as a turning point in their shiﬅing
racialized self-images: It signified the end of “Japanese discipline” that their eth-
nicity symbolized in Brazil and the beginning of “Brazilian volatility” that
their race begins to embody in Japan. °is is because afastamento flies in the
face of the common stereotypes associated with Nikkeis in Brazil: “the firmer
structure and more united family life [convivência],” “discipline [educação]
received at home,” and “the gratitude to the family, to the parents, and the an-
cestors.”1² °e idealized picture of “Japanese family” in Brazil is the one of soli-
darity, mutual respect, and intergenerational unity. Luana herself invoked such
a picture-perfect, and somewhat essentialist, image by contrasting it to her
non-Nikkei husband’s “Brazilian family”:
Guilherme, his Brazilian parents fought a lot. . . . So he grew up believing that,
in marriage, happiness did not exist. He used to think, “But what kind of life is
this? I don’t want a marriage like this.” . . . I formed my concept of family
differently. . . . My mother was at home with us, and my father would come
home to have coffee, and my mother would sit down with him and listen to
him. . . . And he would tell her funny stories, and they would laugh together. So
the image I have of family is this. “Wow, I want a family like this,” you know.
Later in the same interview, I asked Luana if she ever thought she would con-
vert to Pentecostalism before coming to Japan, to which she responded with
the following:
Not at all! [Laughs] It was Guilherme who had all these, um, well . . . We nihon-
jin [Japanese] are raised to be proper. We have this cultura de educação [culture
of discipline] already. Parents teach us early on, “Don’t steal. Don’t do wrong
things. You’ll get hurt if you hurt someone.” So this was the teaching among us.
We didn’t know the Word of God, but we knew that we had to walk the right
path. We had these teachings but nothing of Jesus, you know, in my family.
Here, Luana nostalgically paints a harmonious picture of her childhood family.
With the caring stay-at-home mother and respectable father as the bread-
winner, her home was a secure place where children could be “raised to be
proper” and learn “how to walk the right path.” She indicates several times that
her non-Nikkei husband’s natal family was not as happy or harmonious as
hers. In her narrative, his “Brazilian” home figures as a place of constant ten-
sion, volatility, and disorder. Interestingly, she even implies that her Japanese
“culture of discipline” was something comparable to the Christian “Word of
God,” suggesting that she and other Nikkeis knew “the right path” even be-
fore conversion. Probably because it was her husband who was first drawn to
Pentecostalism in Japan, Luana speculates that it was the lack of discipline in
his familial background that made him particularly susceptible.
°e migration to Japan, however, shook the foundation of this “culture of
discipline” that Luana proudly speaks of. Her own father—whom she fondly
portrays as a respectable breadwinner in her reminiscence—found “another
wife” there. With such firsthand experiences of family disintegration, migrants
like Luana found it increasingly difficult to sustain the racialized self-image of
“Japanese discipline” in Japan. Instead, the overwhelming sense of afastamento
gradually developed a new “culture of disorder” characterized by fights, di-
vorces, abandonments, and delinquent acts—the kind of culture that Luana
used to associate with her non-Nikkei “Brazilian” husband’s upbringing. °e
emotive idiom of afastamento thus represented a watershed moment in the his-
tory of racialized affects among Nikkeis—from the civilized discipline of
Asian whites in Brazil to the volatile disorder of foreign Latinos in Japan. It is
ironic that this dramatic shiﬅ took place in Japan—the land of ancestors where
the idyllic “Japanese family” is supposed to originate.
Learning the “Japanese Way”
What makes the perceived decline of discipline among Nikkei families even
more challenging is the difficulty in adapting to Japanese social conventions.
°e migrants’ Japanese coworkers, teachers, classmates, and neighbors oﬅen
attribute Brazilians’ deviance from established norms to the lack of effort to
assimilate, if not the lack of “culture” itself.
66 SU S P E N D E D
One well-known area of friction involves the rules about garbage collection.
In Japan, there are detailed instructions about how to sort out trash into the
burnable, unburnable, and recyclable, including when garbage can be put out
on the curb for collection. Trash must be in specific kinds of clear plastic bags
that can be purchased for a small price beforehand at supermarkets. Addition-
ally, one must contact a local municipality to make a payment and arrange a
collection date to discard a large piece of household furniture such as a couch.
°ese rules can be quite complex, especially for those foreign migrants who re-
cently arrived in the country and cannot understand the Japanese language or
customs. °e regulations about garbage collection in Brazil are generally more
lax. Consequently, some Japanese residents surmise that their Brazilian neigh-
bors have no respect to rules when they repeatedly spot “wrong” trash in
“wrong” bags at a “wrong” time at a “wrong” collection site. Some migrants may
indeed pay little heed to such practices, especially when their plan of immediate
return to Brazil makes them believe that their life in Japan is temporary any-
way. Regardless, the so-called trash problem (gomi mondai) in neighborhoods
with a large number of foreigners such as Homi has received significant media
coverage in Japan, reinforcing the stereotype that Brazilians are disorderly.
°ings are equally challenging in Japanese schools, which the offspring of
working Brazilian migrants started attending en masse beginning in the early
±990s. On top of the language barrier, Brazilian parents also had to deal with
a plethora of unfamiliar customs. For example, the two elementary schools in
Homi had a practice called shūdan tōkō, which required pupils living in the
same neighborhood to walk to school in groups by forming lines. Although
implemented for security reasons, shūdan tōkō also disciplines the bodies of
young children by requiring them to stay in lines on their way to school. De-
viation generates suspicion. One Japanese school teacher whom I interviewed,
for instance, voiced his doubt that a seven-year-old Brazilian pupil in his
class, Kenta, may have ADHD. He reasoned that Kenta’s inability to stay in
the lines during shūdan tōkō—which manifested in “erratic” behaviors such as
dashing, jumping, and driﬅing away—could be a sign of his undiagnosed
mental illness. I was surprised by his statement, especially because he was one
of the rare teachers who were making the effort to learn Portuguese to better
serve their foreign pupils. Since I occasionally visited Kenta’s family, who
lived ten minutes away from my apartment in Homi Danchi, I decided to in-
quire about the subject with his mother the following week. When I asked her
if Kenta had any issues in school, she said she was frustrated with some teach-
ers who thought her son had some mental problems. “He is fine!” She said
emphatically. “Yes, he is full of energy, just like any other seven-year-old boy.
How is that a mental illness?” She then told me about two mothers whom she
knew, one Nikkei Brazilian and the other Nikkei Peruvian, who agreed to
medicate their children for ADHD. “It’s so sad to see their boys sedated with
pills. . . . °ey used to run around laughing.” Although I am unqualified to
determine whether Kenta actually had ADHD, he seemed to be an energetic
and talkative little boy who loved playing with his friends outside. °e story of
Kenta shows how some foreign children and their families have difficulty in
conforming to the established norms in Japanese school, such as bodily disci-
pline expected in collective activities.1³ And some school officials read such
an unconformity as a mental, not cultural, deviance.
Japanese social expectations dictate that mothers must shoulder more work
than fathers in ensuring their offspring’s well-being in school. One common
practice that reflects this culturally inscribed gender role is the preparation of
obentō (boxed lunch). Many mothers prepare boxed lunch for their children
in nursery, in elementary school, and oﬅentimes even up to high school to dem-
onstrate their nurturing care. Although some mothers find it fulfilling to ex-
press their love by making elaborate boxed meals, the quasi-mandatory nature
of this practice also exposes them to the scrutiny of schoolteachers and fellow
mothers. As Anne Allison observed: “°e making of the obentō is . . . a double-
edged sword for women. By relishing its creation . . . , a woman is ensconcing
herself in the ritualization and subjectivity (subjection) of being a mother in
Japan. She is alienated in the sense that others will dictate, inspect, and man-
age her work. On the reverse side, however, it is precisely through this work
that the woman expresses, identifies, and constitutes herself.” 18 °e core of
middle-class childrearing beliefs in Japan is that “nurture, not nature, is criti-
cal in the creation of a successful child.”1´ Obentō is among the most cherished
mediums to cultivate such “nurture,” both physically and emotionally.
Many Brazilian mothers who send their children to Japanese schools can-
not meet this culturally endorsed path to proper motherhood due to challeng-
ing work schedule, lack of skills, or unfamiliarity with such customs. Beatriz,
the daughter of Luana, related the following experience from her childhood:
°e level of obentō that Japanese mothers make is just—unbelievable, you know,
on another level. Sausages cut into the shape of octopus, omuraisu that looks
like Pikachū, the perfect balance between meat and vegetable in terms of color
68 SU S P E N D E D
and nutrients. 2µ . . . So intricate. Can you expect that from a Brazilian mother?
Well, not quite. [Laughs.] I always hid my obentō from my friends and ate it as
quickly as possible, because I was so embarrassed. °eir obentō looked shiny
to me, you know. . . .
Once I asked my mother, “Um, I wish I could also bring a cute obentō to
school.” It was the day of school excursion at East Homi Elementary School.
She said OK. °e next day, when I opened it at lunchtime, I only saw a huge
omuraisu with a smiley face drawn on it with ketchup. °e smile actually looked
distorted and creepy, since it was in my backpack all morning. I sat away from
my friends and ate it quickly while hiding it.
Beatriz’s story demonstrates how food plays a pivotal role in the negotiation of
cultural identity. Her Nikkei “Brazilian” mother could not satisfy her desire to
fit into the “Japanese” school by bringing a cute elaborate obentō. Oﬅentimes,
it is school-aged children who feel such tensions more acutely, due to the peer
pressure common in their daily environment.
Although some Japanese teachers interpreted Brazilian mothers’ apparent
unconformity to school customs as unwillingness to provide “appropriate care”
for their children, others observed that the seeming failure was due to the differ-
ent norms in childrearing between Japan and Brazil. °is is why some non-
profit organizations in Homi Danchi offered classes on how to prepare obentō.
One Sunday during my fieldwork, for example, Torcida—the group that pro-
vided Japanese language classes to foreign children in Toyota—invited the par-
ents of its Brazilian students to a two-hour-long obentō class. A dozen mothers
(and no fathers, I must add) attended the event. °e Japanese instructor, who
was a certified dietician, taught the class with the help of an interpreter. She
gave instructions on how to cut sausage into the shapes of various animals, how
to make rice balls in the shape of Hello Kitty, and how to incorporate small
decorating pieces into the lunch box, among other things. At one point, one
Nikkei mother exclaimed, “Meu Deus [My God], Japanese are so detail-oriented!
Why don’t we just throw in some rice and meat, and that’s it!” Everyone laughed
at her playful tone, including the instructor aﬅer the interpreter translated it.
Such workshops can be quite helpful for Brazilian mothers, but they also rein-
force the normative vision of nurturing motherhood in Japan by imprinting it
onto foreign women with children. Moreover, it is this kind of moments that
made Nikkei women distance themselves further away from their “Japanese”
identity as they performed an easygoing and carefree “Brazilian” character.
°us, many Brazilian mothers struggled to perform the culturally sanc-
tioned gender roles in Japan. °is does not necessarily mean that gender
relations were more egalitarian in Brazil, where patriarchal values, racial hier-
archy, regional differences, and class divides have historically shaped gender
norms in an unequal manner.21 Still, what becomes more pronounced in Japan
is a conflict between the purpose of labor migration (i.e., economic accumula-
tion) and the cultural expectation of proper femininity and motherhood (i.e.,
domestic nurturance). Many migrant women around the globe experience this
dilemma, but those in Japan may be particularly susceptible due to the histori-
cal entanglement of state and family in the nation. °e state-family dyad has
long enshrined the triangulation of nurturance, domesticity, and motherhood
in modern Japan.22 To many Brazilian women who work full-time, learning a
new cultural idiom of care in such a social context can be a daunting task.
Whether it be dealing with garbage collection, going to school in groups, or
preparing obentō, Brazilian migrants struggle to learn the “Japanese way.” As
many stumble in this process, their “Japanese” identity dissolves even further.
What takes hold instead is “Brazilian” self-image and its racialized affects—
slackness, volatility, and delinquency, on the one hand, and informality, spon-
taneity, and easygoingness, on the other.
Lost Generation in Japan?
As the older Nikkei migrants come to feel unambiguously Brazilian, they turn
to the younger generations raised primarily in Japan with an ambiguous gaze:
If we are now Brazilian, who are these youngsters, many of whom can no lon-
ger speak fluent Portuguese? Brazilian or Japanese? As the offspring of nisei
and sansei Nikkeis who migrated on the long-term resident visa, the youth are
arguably sansei and yonsei Nikkeis. Yet many older migrants do not appeal to
this common denominator, “Nikkei,” when they speak of the so-called prob-
lems that haunt the next generations growing up in Japan. °ey instead come
to see “us” and “them” along the generational lines.
One day, I met with Flávio at a coffee shop near Homi Danchi. °e thirty-
seven-year-old sansei college graduate from São Paulo was one of the few
Nikkei migrants whom I knew who did not work in a factory. Although he had
initially done so when he migrated in ±99¶, he made a living as a freelance
consultant at the time of my fieldwork and organized workshops on finances
for Brazilian migrants in the Aichi Prefecture and beyond. Since he could not
70 SU S P E N D E D
understand Japanese very well, he wanted me to go over some materials he was
developing to help Brazilian youth “make healthy life plans.” Specifically, he
wanted to show the variety of career options in Japan outside of the unskilled
manual labor. “Most of these youngsters cannot see their future outside the fac-
tory because that’s what all the adults in the community do,” Flávio sighed. “I
want them to know that, if they work hard, they can do much more than that.”
Aﬅer listening to me translate some Japanese websites that described which
jobs were in demand, he asked me to examine the job aptitude test that he was
draﬅing in Portuguese. “Would this make sense in Japanese? I may need you
to translate it into Japanese. Sadly, some of our youth can’t read or write Por-
tuguese anymore,” he said as he shook his head disapprovingly.
As we were wrapping up the meeting, Daisuke walked into the coffee shop,
since he and I were planning to have lunch together. “Oh, great timing,” Flávio
said, looking up and waving at Daisuke. °e two knew each other from the
church. “I’ll show you just how little Portuguese the young folks can under-
stand.” He then asked Daisuke to read some of the questions in the personal-
ity assessment section of the job aptitude test—for example, “I enjoy analyzing
things.” Daisuke stuttered when he pronounced the word analisar (analyze).
With a smile, Flávio asked if he knew the word’s meaning.
“More or less,” Daisuke answered. Flávio then suggested I write the Japa-
nese equivalent of the word on the paper. I did, feeling somewhat uncomfort-
able, as I saw where he was going with it. Daisuke, an eighteen-year-old high
school dropout born and raised in Homi, could converse in Japanese fluently,
but reading and writing were his weaknesses. Not surprisingly, he could not
read the Chinese characters (kanji) contained in the word (分析 bunseki or
“analysis”). When I read the term aloud, however, he immediately nodded with
comprehension.
“You see?” Flávio said as he gave me an I-told-you-so look. “°e young
people in our community can’t understand Portuguese well, and sometimes
Japanese, either. It is worrying that our next generation is nem lá nem cá [nei-
ther here nor there], not rooted in any language.” I glanced at Daisuke, who
sat calmly with a smile next to Flávio. I could not believe Flávio would say such
a thing in his presence. Later at our lunch, I asked Daisuke how he felt when
adults like Flávio not-too-subtly suggested that he was not really Brazilian. He
responded in a mixture of Japanese and Portuguese: “Bom, shōganai tte kanji.
Ryōhō desho, ore. É verdade, o que eles falam” (Well, I feel like, what can you
do. I am both [Japanese and Brazilian], you see. It’s true what they say).
Over the course of my fieldwork, I heard many Brazilian adults raised in
Brazil make comments similar to Flávio’s. As he eloquently summed up on an-
other occasion, a common concern of older migrants is the “loss of identity”
among their offspring:
I think they [the migrant youth] have a conflict of . . . let’s say . . . what culture
they belong to, you see. °ey are neither Brazilian—because they came to
Japan at an early age—nor Japanese because they live inside a Brazilian com-
munity. So oﬅentimes, they feel neither Japanese nor Brazilian. °ey can
claim, “I am Brazilian.” But they still don’t know Brazil, you see, like the job
market there. . . . So with all this, I think they end up losing their identity;
they don’t have identity.
I was always struck by the composure the youth maintained upon being sub-
jected to such blunt remarks that claimed their lack of identity. Most shrugged
them off with a nonchalant attitude like Daisuke, indicating just how oﬅen they
heard such opinions about themselves.
What is ironic about this intergenerational friction is that although older
migrants lament “the loss of identity” among the younger generations raised
in Japan today, they were on the receiving end of such comments from their
Japanese parents and grandparents not so long ago in Brazil. Despite their
Japanese families’ fear that assimilation would turn them into rootless gaijin
(foreigners), Nikkeis born and raised in Brazil learned to skillfully navigate
their multiple identities, albeit not without some emotional turmoil. °e
same is true with the Brazilian youth growing up in Japan today. Despite
the rhetoric of “neither here nor there” reinforced by older migrants, many
youngsters whom I met could deal confidently with the multiplicity of their
identities. °is does not mean, however, that they never experienced moments
of ambivalence. Some youngsters—especially those who self-identified as
mestiço—had to face the ideology of ethnic homogeneity repeatedly as they
grew up in Japan.
“I Am Half”: Racial Ambivalence
of Brazilian Youth in Japan
One night, I was at the Toyota Station with a group of church members who
were there for weekly evangelization. Beatriz, addressing Japanese passers-by,
started her message in Japanese with the following: “Well, you may wonder who
72 SU S P E N D E D
we are—we are Brazilians, Nikkei Brazilians. I myself am hāfu [half, or mixed-
race].” Hāfu is a word Japanese people use to refer to those whom they consider
racially mixed. Derived from the English word “half,” it points to the Japanese
and foreign “halves” of such individuals. Beatriz rarely used the word during
our conversations, even when she spoke about the ambivalence she used to feel
about her physical appearance. When I asked her later if she really thought
of herself as a hāfu, she responded, “Ah, that was just so Japanese people could
understand more easily. °e only word in Japanese for people like me is hāfu.
I myself don’t really care about how people may perceive me.”
It took Beatriz many years to reach this nonchalant attitude, according to
her parents. Luana and Guilherme vividly remembered Beatriz’s struggles in
school. Guilherme, for instance, recollected an incident when Beatriz was in
kindergarten: “Whenever I finished work early, or on my days off, I went [to
the kindergarten] to pick her up. I noticed that she didn’t run up to me like
other kids; it sometimes took a long time to even find her. Even when I—or
the teachers there—found her, she was still very quiet and wouldn’t come close
to me. She was embarrassed by me, you know. She later told my wife, ‘Daddy’s
nose is weird.’ She didn’t want other kids to see me.” As a small child sur-
rounded by Japanese peers, Beatriz was growing increasingly self-conscious
about the “non-Japanese” parts of herself and her family. Similarly, Lucas—a
twenty-five-year-old Nikkei man who came to Japan at the age of three—told
me the following about the year he spent at a local Japanese elementary school.
His mother was non-Nikkei and his father was Nikkei.
Well, my experience at the Japanese school was—just awful. [Laughs.] From day
one, I was bullied. °ey would leave me behind intentionally when all the
children in the neighborhood were supposed to go to school together in a group.
°ey would hide my shoes so I couldn’t go home. °ey would call me “Butajiru-
jin [Brazilian pig]!” To think about it now, it is quite normal for small children
to pick on those who looked different—with a face like this [points at his face],
I stood out. My Japanese was still very poor, too. But at the time, it hurt me so
deeply. I was only a child.
In the end, his parents transferred Lucas to a Brazilian private school because
the bullying did not seem to stop.
Brazil has oﬅen celebrated racial mixture as the foundation of national
identity, while Japan has traditionally viewed it as a disruption to the vision of
ethnic homogeneity that should unite the nation. In Japanese, the word closest
to the Portuguese term mestiço is hāfu, which does not focus on the unity of
multiple elements but rather highlights the distinctiveness of each of the two
“halves”—Japanese and foreign. “Half” individuals are at times coveted for the
desirability of their exotic foreignness, especially if they appear to possess
“white” features—small round face, big eyes, long legs, pale skin, and so on.
For example, many hāfu Japanese work as models in the fashion industry. °ey
can, however, also be ostracized as a perceived threat to the racial purity that
is the centerpiece of national identity in Japan. °is is why mixed-race children
can be particularly vulnerable to bullying: they seem to disrupt the social
boundary between the Japanese and the foreign.23 Many mixed-race Brazilian
youth become self-conscious of their looks as they grow up in this social con-
text. Although some are greeted with envy for their “ideal” features, others
grow to loathe their foreign “half” that seems to set them apart from their Japa-
nese peers. °ose few in the latter group who try to conceal their Brazilian
identity in the effort to “pass as Japanese” become a frequent topic of conver-
sation among Nikkei migrants: “°e son of so-and-so never brings his Japa-
nese friends home because then they would know that he is Brazilian,” for
instance. Such stories usually elicit gasps, rolling of eyes, or dry laughs from
older migrants. °ey further the widespread perception that family becomes
disintegrated in Japan.
Life at the Margin
What constitutes the in-between subjectivity, or the sense of nem lá nem cá,
among Nikkei Brazilians in Japan? I have discussed its making in three broad
steps. First, the “return” migration to the ancestral homeland transformed
Nikkei Brazilians from Asian whites to delinquent Latinos. Although Nikkeis
enjoy the image of First World discipline—which at times borders on robotic
rigidity—in Brazil, they come to internalize the stereotype of °ird World
volatility—which can encompass fun-loving passion—in Japan. °e pervasive
sense of afastamento, or estrangement from family ties, fuels the widespread
feeling that the “culture of discipline” that Nikkeis once embodied in Brazil is
no more. In place of discipline, afastamento gives rise to disorder and delin-
quency. °ese shiﬅs demonstrate that affect is a racialized, political, and his-
torical force. 24 Second, Nikkei migrant families struggle to learn Japanese
customs such as shūdan tōkō and obentō. As they find it challenging to con-
form to such social conventions, what is leﬅ of their Japanese identity further
74 SU S P E N D E D
disintegrates and Brazilian subjectivity firmly takes hold vis-à-vis the “rigid
and proper” Japanese majority in Japan. °e transition from being Japanese
to being Brazilian is never complete, but many older Nikkeis come to feel un-
ambiguously Brazilian. °ird, the younger generations born or raised in Japan
experience an enhanced sense of contested belonging. Even though the Japa-
nese majority considers them to be Brazilian foreigners, many older Nikkei mi-
grants oﬅen tell them that they are no longer authentically Brazilian. °e
Japanese ideology of racial purity, which deems mixed-race persons “half,”
further renders many migrant youth susceptible to the discourse of “neither
here nor there.” °is does not necessarily mean that all Nikkei youngsters per-
ceive their background as a source of unending cultural dilemma. In reality,
many youth are capable of treating their multiple identities as just that—as
different aspects of the self—with a rather pragmatic attitude. °e rhetoric of
nem lá nem cá, then, endures not necessarily because it is an emotional reality
to all migrants. Rather, it persists because it is borne out of the historical in-
teractions Nikkeis have had over the past century with multiple regimes of
mobility, principles of citizenship, and ideologies of race. And it continues to
evolve today at the borderlands of ethnicity, nationhood, and belonging.
承
Part Three
RENEWED
5
BAC K TO T HE PRES ENT
Encounter with God
Missão Apoio Toyota had a small kitchen and an adjacent eating area that con-
gregants called cantina missionária (missionary canteen) behind the main
room used for Sunday service. °e profit the church made by preparing and
selling various Brazilian snacks supported a number of initiatives over the
years. During the aﬅermath of the Great Tōhoku Earthquake in ¸0±±, for ex-
ample, a handful of congregants drove up to Fukushima to deliver relief goods
purchased by the church. °e “missionary canteen” seemed to kill two birds
with one stone: It financially supported charitable activities while also provid-
ing the taste of home. °e foods and drinks sold at the canteen were all Brazil-
ian: pastel (thin crust pies with assorted fillings), coxinha (teardrop-shaped
fried dough with shredded chicken meat), guaraná (caffeinated soﬅ drink fla-
vored with the seeds of guarana), and so on. My favorite was feijoada bentō
(boxed lunch with white rice and stew of beans and pork), which congregants
prepared on special occasions. It was a marriage of two iconic foods from
Japan and Brazil—hot and steamy short-grain Japanese white rice with a warm
thick stew reputed to be the Brazilian national dish.1 If food is an expression
of who we are, feijoada bentō was no doubt a potent symbol of Nikkei Brazilian
identity.
It was at this canteen that I first met Marcelo, a sansei in his mid-forties,
who regularly helped out in the kitchen. He was a cheerful, talkative, and
78 RENEWED
friendly man. As soon as he found out that I was Japanese, he offered me a pas-
tel and a can of guaraná. “Here, have some Brazilian food!” When I mumbled
with my mouth full that it was delicious, his eyes lit up. He sat next to me and
spoke about his life while I finished my drink. He was from a rural part of São
Paulo where many Japanese descendants lived. He arrived in Japan in ±990 at
the very beginning of dekassegui migration, when there were still few Brazil-
ians in Japan. He could always find jobs easily until the ¸00¶ financial crisis,
when he lost his employment and much of his savings. He was unemployed at
the moment. He was grateful to the church because he received some financial
help in return for his work at the canteen. As we stood up to move to the main
room, where the Sunday service was starting, I asked him if I could interview
him sometime soon. He nodded with a mischievous grin. “You picked the right
person; I have stories to tell!”
He lived in a subsidized housing project in Toyota that was smaller and
older than Homi Danchi. I arrived at his apartment in early aﬅernoon. His wife
was preparing lunch in the kitchen and his daughter was playing an online
game on her phone in the living room. “Sit down on the sofa and make your-
self at home,” Marcelo said. “We don’t have much, but welcome!” He later told
me that the apartment was covered by his unemployment insurance. “I worked
very hard for the last factory, never saying no when my boss asked me to do
zangyō [working extra hours],” Marcelo said with a bitter look. “But in the end,
they just fired me. °ey can drop migrant laborers whenever they want. I really
want to become seishain (full-time employees), but they don’t want Brazilians
for that.”
Marcelo’s financial situation at the time of interview would have made him
an ideal informant to support the narrative of “coping with poverty,” which is
widespread in the study of Global Christianity. 2 °is explanatory framework,
dominant in both academic and popular discourses, explains conversion as a
social strategy to enhance access to economic resources. It hints that converts
are driven by material deprivation, rather than by their own agency. What he
proceeded to tell me that aﬅernoon, however, diverged from such a stereo-
typical story line. For one thing, he converted to Pentecostalism back in ¸00·,
before the financial crisis robbed him of a steady supply of jobs. Instead of de-
bilitating poverty, Marcelo’s conversion narrative started with a vague, almost
faint, sense of crisis that haunted him as he went through his daily routine as
a migrant laborer in Japan:
B AC K T O T HE PRE S E NT 79
Here in Japan, we work so much. In my case, it was normal to have three, even
four hours of zangyō. Sometimes I’d work from seven in the morning until ten
at night. So life turns into a routine of just going back and forth between work
and home—factory, home, factory, home. . . . We want to work a lot because we
want the money, you know, many want to go back to Brazil. But we have to work
as well—sometimes you can’t really say no to your boss. So I spent many years
just going about my life like that. And you never have time. You don’t have time
to stop and really think, really feel. I had this emptiness in my heart, you know,
but I never really paid attention.
He then described how he initially found the repeated invitation from his

Brazilian Pentecostal coworkers for church gatherings annoying because he
used to think “crentes are all fanatics.” °en one day, his wife was diagnosed
with breast cancer:
°at was . . . hard. Very. I became desperate. I went to a church gathering at my
friend’s home, I and my wife. Fortunately her surgery went well and she got
better. °en she said she didn’t want to go any more, but I kept on going. Soon
I started going to church, too. Something filled the emptiness in my heart. °en
I went to Encounter with God [a three-day prayer camp] . . . Oh! °at was
great. I felt that I really had the time just for myself and God, to really think
about my life, my purpose, His plan for me, you know. So aﬅer that, I decided
to convert. I found Jesus, finally.
°e first thing Marcelo said when prompted to recount how he converted
was, “Here in Japan, we work so much.” He then described how power dynam-
ics in the factory, heavy workloads, and migrants’ focus on economic gain
contribute to the exhausting repetitiveness of life. °is monotony of life fueled
the sense of what Marcelo calls “emptiness in heart,” which lasted for years,
since he did not have time to “pay attention” to it. His depiction of his precon-
version life overlaps greatly with Takeshi’s observation about “stop living”
(deixar de viver) in Chapter º. °at is, migrants oﬅen “put aside living” so they
can live the better future purportedly awaiting them in Brazil. Mind-numbing
routine and suspension of life constituted the basic tone of Marcelo’s reality
before conversion. Marcelo initially resisted his Pentecostal colleagues’ invita-
tions for church gatherings and his own desire to go, as he used to believe that
evangelicals were fanatic. He then recounted his wife’s cancer as the final push
that enabled him to overcome initial reluctance. It is important to note here
80 RENEWED
that the suffering from the illness is not the driving theme of his narrative, nor
does the subsequent healing of the disease mark the climax of the story. In fact,
he matter-of-factly admitted that his wife simply stopped going to church gath-
erings soon aﬅer her recovery. °e experience of the illness, then, is a onetime
trigger rather than a long-running undercurrent of the story.
What runs through Marcelo’s narrative from the beginning to the end is
the numbing monotony of life, which causes him a dull sense of crisis: that he
was not stopping to reflect on his life, that life is slipping away like sand be-
tween his fingers, and that by merely going through the motions every day, he
was risking going through his whole life without experiencing anything. °is
theme of “no time to live” also provides the moment of catharsis, which hap-
pens during the prayer camp called Encounter with God. He stated, “I felt that
I really had the time just for myself and God, to really think about my life, my
purpose, His plan for me, you know.” For Marcelo, his conversion was not pro-
pelled by some traumatic suffering such as illness, discrimination, or poverty,
although he recounted all of them to some degree in the interview. Rather, what
made him susceptible to an “encounter with God” is the feeling of suffocation
that time was not allowing him to truly live.
Marcelo’s feeling of “no time to live” is far from an isolated idiosyncratic
experience but a widespread sentiment among Brazilian workers in Japan. Vir-
tually all working Brazilians—male and female, old and young—told me that
they never had time. In the beginning of my fieldwork, this used to baffle me.
Why would they convert to Pentecostalism when this means that what little
time they had leﬅ would now be spent on numerous church activities? Why
do so many come to the church at 9:º0 ½.¼. aﬅer a long day of work on a Tues-
day night to study the Bible, when this likely means a lack of sleep for their
already tired bodies? Why do so many show up to Friday night gathering
around 9 ½.¼., when the long-awaited weekend of free time has just started?
Why would they actively decide to participate in something that takes away
even more of their already scarce time? °e answer lies in the elasticity of time
itself. In this ethnographic context, time was not just a linear quantifiable
construct that simply passed or accumulated. Rather, time stretched, trans-
formed, looped back, and expanded in the moment—and it was Christian prac-
tices that oﬅen helped migrants experience time in new ways.3
Modern Again in Japan?
“What is your work?” Presbyter Guilherme addressed the congregation. A Sun-
day service was in progress and he was preaching about “the meaning of
work” (o significado de obra). “Qual é o seu trabalho?” He repeated the rhetori-
cal question. Aﬅer a pause, he continued, “Yes, I know. We work in factories.
We assemble auto parts. We make wings for airplanes. We make foods for
convenience stores. °at’s our work, right?” He looked over his audience with
a quizzing look and then continued, “But our true job, the most important
work of all, it is to be part of God’s plan in this nation, brothers and sisters.”
While he was evoking a common Christian narrative of spiritual calling, the
parallel he drew next between spiritual work and factory labor was quite cre-
ative. He went on, “You know, our work and God’s work are similar in many
ways. Have you thought about this before? Just like us who assemble auto parts
on the conveyor belt, God is working on us and assembling us so we can be
whole, as we move through our life here on earth.” He leﬅ the pulpit and
walked from one side of the room to the other as if there were a moving con-
veyor belt, with one hand mimicking the motions of assembling auto parts.
Many attendants laughed out loud at his gestures, which likely stimulated the
muscle memory in their own hands as well.
Having reached the wall, he again turned to the congregation and empha-
sized, “And this is where God does a kensa [examination] on us, to make sure
that we are spiritually complete for salvation!” Now everyone laughed. It was
such a good metaphor. Like hirukin (day shiﬅ), yakin (night shiﬅ), and zangyō
(working extra hours), kensa was among the Japanese words related to factory
labor that most Brazilian migrants understood regardless of their Japanese lan-
guage skills. It refers to the final phase of manufacturing when products re-
ceive a quality check. Many migrants who had worked in the kensa department
could tell a handful of horror stories about huryō (“no good,” which was a
shorthand for deficient products). If a worker lets a huryō slip through and has
it shipped out, he or she could be the target of collective shaming akin to a witch
hunt. One informant, for example, told me that he was ordered to write a pub-
lic “apology letter” for his carelessness to the whole factory aﬅer he missed one
huryō. °e fear of generating huryō was exacerbated by the fact that many fac-
tories upheld “zero huryō” as the official goal which, given the human procliv-
ity for mistakes, was virtually impossible to achieve. But God is free of human
82 RENEWED
error, and He would never let a huryō slip through, Presbyter Guilherme

seemed to imply. God’s kensa on the spiritual conveyor belt is impeccable
because, as I was told many times, He judges every soul impartially.
“So never forget what your true job is, brothers and sisters,” Presbyter Guil-
herme reiterated in his message. “Your true job is to contribute to the God’s
great work on this earth, in this nation. °e purpose of your life is much, much
more than just working in factory and making money. Let’s see . . . Have you
ever seen a car on the street, or a sandwich at a convenience store, and felt like
running up to it thinking, ‘Ah, that’s what I make in my factory’?” Many con-
gregants shouted “Yes!” while laughing. He seemed to have struck a chord with
his audience again. Nodding deeply, he stressed, “°at’s how you should feel
in your true work as well. Whatever you see in your daily life, remember that
there is God’s work in it, and that what you do for God matters. We are all part
of God’s great plan.”
In this sermon, Presbyter Guilherme contrasts two different kinds of work:
unskilled wage labor that is all too familiar to many of his audience, on the
one hand, and spiritual work that makes converts become part of “God’s great
plan,” on the other. He even uses two different words for each type of “work”:
trabalho for the former and obra for the latter. According to him, the spiritual
work that contributes to God’s obra is the “true job” (trabalho verdadeiro) of
migrant converts. °e ingenuity of his sermon lies in the humorous compari-
sons between factory labor and spiritual work, which appealed to his audience
precisely because they usually did not regard the two as “similar” in any way.
On the contrary, I oﬅen heard congregants who attended church events im-
mediately aﬅer work claim half-jokingly, “Now my real work starts.” Precisely
because they viewed trabalho and obra in oppositional terms, they found it
funny to picture God perform kensa on the assembly line in heaven. °is un-
expected comparison also made some Christian concepts—such as God’s
judgment—more vivid to the audience, most of whom worked as manual
laborers.
Presbyter Guilherme’s metaphors flavor mundane manual labor with tran-
scendent spiritual interpretations. °e message is clear. You may toil on the fac-
tory floor for days on end, but that is not who you really are. You are more
important than that, and God knows this. °at is why your true work belongs to
Him. “Never forget what your true job is, brothers and sisters,” as he put it. Such
rhetoric of spiritual authenticity is commonplace among migrant churches
around the globe—Ghanaians and Jamaicans in England, Latin Americans in
the United States, and Haitians in French West Indies, to name a few.4 °e stud-
ies about these groups have shown that the sense of spiritual advancement eases
the pervasive self-perception of economic and cultural underdevelopment
among foreign migrants. A similar story line seems to guide Presbyter Guil-
herme’s sermon. °ey may be dispensable foreign laborers with less status than
the Japanese majority in terms of economic and social class, but they are more
enlightened and advanced in spiritual realms. Indeed, many converts made
critical comments about what they saw as “the Japanese tradition” or “culture,”
thereby implying that their ideas and practices were more modern, if not mor-
ally superior. 5 Such remarks sometimes concerned religious practices in Japan.
As Pastor Cid said in one Bible study meeting, “Japanese people make those
little houses and believe that their gods can live there. But God cannot stay in
physical structures that men built for Him because He is omnipresent.” His tone
was not accusatory but instead filled with teacherly concern. He was referring to
buildings at Shinto shrines that supposedly house objects that embody divine
spirits (goshintai), which some converts explicitly referred to as a clear case of
idolatry. Even those who politely refrained from using the word idolatry in my
presence made clear that the practice was morally untenable.
Anthropologists of Christianity have commonly analyzed conversion in re-
lation to the theme of modernity—or at least with implications for forward
temporal movement. Peter van der Veer, for example, characterized the world-
wide growth of Christianity as “conversion to modernities.” ² Along a similar
line, Birgit Meyer observed that Pentecostal converts among the Peki Ewe in
Ghana embrace Christianity as the promising path to modernity, although con-
version comes with an emotional and social price. °ey must cut themselves off
from generations-old obligations to serve their ancestral and lineage gods. Ewe
spirits continue to possess converts, and the church translates them as demons
that must be exorcised in collective services. Meyer summarized, “Pentecos-
talism provides a bridge over which it is possible to move back and forth
[between Christianity and Ewe religion] and thereby to thematise modernity’s
ambivalence.” ³ °us, the global growth of Pentecostalism may have been
conducive to the spread of modern identity in various parts of the world.8
Is the interdependence of conversion and modernity also manifest among
Nikkei converts in Japan, who used to represent hypermodernity in Brazil? My
findings indeed suggest such implications. Just as Presbyter Guilherme asserted
that spiritual work can help converts advance a greater divine cause amid their
stagnant factory labor, Pastor Cid implied that Christian knowledge can help
84 RENEWED
converts see the truth about things that the Japanese majority still could not
grasp. In spiritual terms, then, Nikkei Brazilian converts were no longer back-
ward. In this vein, conversion to Pentecostalism can be read as a collective en-
deavor to restore and rebuild in Japan the modern social status they once had
in Brazil. In other words, the spiritual advancement to “modern” religious sen-
sibility through conversion can counteract the disappointing failure of mate-
rial or social progress that their initial project of migration should have realized
through upward mobility. °ey can be modern again in Japan in spiritual, if
not in economic, terms.
Return to the Present
But is the desire for the return to modern identity all that there is to the stories
of Nikkei migrant converts? Can it explain the powerful emotions that Mar-
celo experienced when he finally had “the time just for myself and God”? Maybe
things are not so simple. In addition to the one geared toward modernity, my
findings point to yet another temporality at work. °at is, conversion as a re-
turn to the present.
Simon Coleman, in his study of charismatic Christians in Sweden, described
the coexistence and interrelation of two distinct temporalities. ´ On the one
hand, church members “invoke” history by acknowledging the repetitive and
mimetic nature of their actions. But they also “make” history by framing their
experiences as new events discontinuous from the past and directed toward
ultimate salvation. °eir emphasis on “right now,” Coleman observed, simul-
taneously engages both perceptions of history and thereby creates a charis-
matic temporality that dovetails the past and the future, the personal and the
collective, and continuity and rupture. It is such a charismatic temporality
that sustains “chronic conversion” couched in the succession of renewals in
the present.1µ Coleman also pointed out how charismatic actions in the pres-
ent are effective in enacting future time. °erefore, the focus on the present
does not necessarily entail the negligence of the future, but a change in tem-
poral locus of action.
°e charismatic temporality of “right now, right here” exerts tremendous
appeal to such migrants as Nikkei Brazilians in Japan, who have been sus-
pended between two futures. Tired of the perpetual suspension of life that the
planned return to Brazil has imposed upon them, many welcome the charis-
matic temporality like a fresh breeze of air. “Do you think your life starts again
once you return to Brazil?” One longtime church member preached to the
congregation one Sunday: “I’ve heard enough people say, ‘I’ll start going to
church again once I’m back in Brazil. I’ll start being a good person again once
I’m in Brazil. Right now, I’m busy saving money.’ God doesn’t work that way.
No, with God, it’s always right now, right here. God doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you can
start working on yourself next week.’ You have to restart your life right now,
right here—in Japan.” She admonished her fellow migrant converts to stop
postponing life until the imagined return to Brazil in the future and instead
told them to restart moral renewal “right now” in Japan.
A session from a Bible study course designed by Missão Apoio drives this
point home. One night, Sara asked me if I wanted to come to a Bible study
group. I accepted her offer, and in the following week, we met at a coffee shop
in a neighboring city of Toyota where she lived. As soon as I arrived, I quickly
realized it was going to be just Sara and I, although I had been under the im-
pression that it was a group study. She clarified that it was actually a one-on-
one Bible study course that her church was developing for those interested in
or new to the faith. Aﬅer we had some back-and-forth about my ambiguous
position as a researcher, I decided to accept the opportunity, thanked her for
her time, and sat down. Aﬅer all, it was true that I was “interested in the Bible
and curious to learn,” as she put it. I quickly found out that the course was de-
signed in part to proselytize Japanese individuals, because the handout Sara
gave me was in Japanese, but the one she kept in her hand was in Portuguese.
She neither spoke nor read Japanese.
Faithful to the handout, she started our first session by telling a story from
the gospel of Mark (Mark ±0:¹6–·¸). Bartimaeus, a blind beggar in the city of
Jericho, hears Jesus Christ and shouts out to him, begging for mercy. When
Jesus asks him what he desires, he asks to be cured of blindness, which Jesus
grants instantaneously, saying that his faith has healed him. Bartimaeus there-
aﬅer follows Jesus along the road. °en Sara moved on to explain the important
points of this story, mostly following the bullet points on the prepared mate-
rial. When it came to the part that discussed “what obstacles Bartimaeus had
to overcome to get what he desired,” however, she put down the sheet and
started telling how she related to the story:
You see how Bartimaeus overcame his complacency [comodismo] and con-

quered his own pride [orgulho]? °is is really, really difficult. It’s hard to get
out of the habit of being satisfied with the routine. It’s even harder, for some
people, to let go of one’s pride, surrender, and just cry out for help.
86 RENEWED
We Brazilians typically came to Japan to work and earn money. Very

quickly, we fall into this spiral of meaningless routine. Home, factory, home,
factory, home, factory, party with friends, sleep, home, factory . . . You know,
it’s really hard to have a sense of purpose in this kind of lifestyle. I hated it. I
only liked the weekend when I could party with friends, but even that was empty
somehow when I look back now.
But once you accept Jesus, life cannot be a routine any more. Every day is
new with Jesus. He fortifies us, and we are renewed like an eagle. But you can-
not make this change happen on your own. You need God for real change.
Taken together with other findings discussed in this book so far, I believe it is
more than a mere coincidence that the story of Bartimaeus marked the begin-
ning of the ten-week Bible course. In many ways, the biblical character embod-
ies the sense of renewal in the present that many migrants come to crave aﬅer
years of suspended life in Japan.
°e stories of Marcelo and Sara show that migration and conversion are
both temporal projects that reshape human life in tandem. As Nancy Munn
observed, “In a lived world, spatial and temporal dimensions cannot be disen-
tangled, and the two commingle in various ways.”11 °rough temporality, mi-
gration and conversion become interlocked in the experiences of migrant
converts.
Flowing in the Holy Spirit
Instead of returning to the future through the forward-looking temporality
of migration, migrant converts find a way to return to the present through
the charismatic temporality of “right now, right here.” But it can actually be
very difficult to focus on the present, or to rein in one’s mind so it will not
wander ahead into the future or back into the past. °is is especially so for
people like Nikkei migrants in Japan, who can look back to their now lost
modern status in Brazil or look ahead to the craved “better future” at the end
of the migratory journey. When it is so easy to become caught up with the past
or the future, how exactly can they return to the present? One obvious path-
way consists of discursive messages. As Sara’s interpretation of Bartimaeus’s
healing shows, migrant converts foster a vision of temporal renewal in the
present by garnering powerful meanings from sermons, testimonies, and
Bible studies.
Another important pathway is prayer. Takie, for example, was known for
being quite skilled in the art of prayer among church members. Since I attended
the weekly Friday night home gatherings hosted by her and her husband, I saw
her pray for and with others many times, and she always seemed absorbed in
the practice. Indeed, she related during an interview how she would sometimes
lose track of time during prayer: “Sometimes, I come out of prayer and think,
‘Wow, it’s this late already? I have to start cooking dinner!’ ” When I asked her
to describe the experience in more detail, she responded, “It’s like a ball of warm
energy getting bigger and bigger inside you. As I keep praying, it swells up and
fills me completely from within like a big warm balloon. °en, sometimes, it’s
like I am not thinking the words anymore, but they are coming out of my
mouth like a river. °at’s when I know that I am flowing in the Holy Spirit [ flu-
indo no Espírito Santo].”
With the phrase “flowing in the Holy Spirit,” Takie seems to be describing
the effects of a mental state called absorption: “the capacity to focus in on the
mind’s object . . . and to allow that focus to increase while diminishing our
attention to the myriad of everyday distractions that accompany the manage-
ment of normal life.”12 My informants at Missão Apoio frequently related
episodes of absorption in prayer, during which one’s sense of time becomes
more elastic. °e majority related stories of absorption during the time they
specifically dedicated to prayer, but Sara had an interesting habit that only a
handful of other converts shared. She oﬅen prayed in her mind as she worked
at an assembly line in a factory. “It’s the best time to pray, really,” she said
with a smile.
Right now, I work on the line for interior panels, you know, the panel that cov-
ers your music player in a car. I do only three things on each piece that comes
my way on the conveyor belt. [Gestures the three steps.] Simple. Any idiot can
do it. [Laughs.] . . .
Aﬅer a while, I’m not thinking anymore. My hands remember what to do,
and if you think, you can’t do it anymore. . . . “Where does this piece go?” You
can’t think that. You take too much time, you disrupt the line, and the hanchō
[team leader] shouts at you. “Ah! You again! At this rate, we all have to do zangyō
because of you!” . . . I used to have panic attacks. What do they think I am, a
robot? . . .
But then I started to pray—when my mind goes blank, I pray. “Please, God,
I want to leave the factory job, my hands hurt.” “I know I have to be loving like
88 RENEWED
you, God, but I hate my boss.” Or, “I want to talk to you, God, I really need a
boyfriend here—are you listening to me?” [Laughs.] It’s the most exquisite ex-
perience [experiência mais gostosa], I can just talk and talk to Him, and God
feels so close there. . . . Sometimes, when I really talk to Him, then next thing
you notice, it’s already lunch break! It used to feel like a whole day from morn-
ing to lunchtime, but with the power of praying time passes so quickly [pela
força da oração o tempo passa bem rapidinho].
Sara seems to be describing two distinct temporalities here. One is a temporal
modality of “clock-time,” or quantified time instrumental to the work-discipline
of capitalism. 13 °e flexible labor system in late capitalism attempts to squeeze
the maximum degree of productivity out of unskilled laborers, which makes
Sara feel robbed of humanity: “What do they think I am, a robot?” In such
an environment, time is a linear construct that is monitored and accumu-
lated because wage is based on the minute-by-minute performance as well
as the quantity of time put into labor. °is time passes very slowly, as Sara notes,
since many workers numb their mind in the present so that they can receive the
monetary compensation in the future.
°e other modality is the charismatic temporality of absorption in the pres-
ent. Instead of simply letting her mind “go blank,” she activates her imagina-
tion to practice prayer, which to many born-again Christians consists in a lively
conversation with God.14 °e focus achieved through prayer can make the time
stretch and expand in the present. Unlike clock-time, this time is nonlinear
and nonquantified. By becoming absorbed in prayer, Sara could transform her
time into something more elastic than a steady progression from one second
to another. In this regard, charismatic prayer is a technique that mediates a
process called temporalization, or a view of time “as a symbolic process con-
tinually being produced in everyday practices.”15 To put it more simply, Sara is
making time instead of just passing it.
°us, many migrant converts learn to access—and create—the charismatic
present of “right now, right here” through absorption in prayer.1² Given that
those with such flow-like experiences oﬅen feel rejuvenated, the temporal-
ization of the charismatic present through Pentecostal practices may have
some therapeutic effect—especially for those who have not inhabited the ex-
perientially immediate “now” for many years.
Break from Temporal Suffocation
“Here we are!” Lucia exclaimed, turning around toward the backseats where
I was seated with her two teenage sons. “Junya, wake up! Everyone is here—they
are waiting for us!” °e boys rubbed their eyes and yawned as they sat up from
their reclined seats. It was almost midnight. Stepping out of the car, I saw a
dozen cars parked on both sides of the narrow mountain road. It indeed seemed
that we were the last people to arrive at the vigília—the late-night prayer gath-
ering that Missão Apoio Toyota held at a small mountain roughly fiﬅeen min-
utes away from the church every Friday night. Although I usually drove there
myself, I decided to ride with Lucia and her sons that night, since she told me
that there was one open seat in her car. “Paz [Peace],” a voice greeted us from
the darkness—there were no street lights—and I recognized that it was Pastor
Cid when he turned on his flashlight. “Ready for a little walk?”
“Paz, Pastor, just a second,” Lucia answered. “We have to put on mosquito
repellent first—they are quite annoying now that it’s almost summer.”
°e group of roughly twenty church members gathered at the trailhead of
the short path that led to the mountain top where there was a small clearing. °e
air was warm and humid, and we could hear frogs croaking in a nearby pond.
“Okay, everyone, let’s go,” Pastor Cid said. We started walking. As usual, he
was using a long tree branch that he had picked up from the ground as an
improvised cane. He also sang worship songs in Portuguese in his low bari-
tone voice, which reverberated beautifully through the dark forest, as he led
the group in the roughly twenty-minute walk. Once we were on the top of the
mountain, we formed one large circle for the first collective prayer. When it
was over, then it was time for individual prayer. Some found their own spots
to pray in the clearing while others went into the forest to look for a more iso-
lated place. Especially in a moonless night, it was mostly through hearing that
people could locate each other aﬅer the circle disbanded. °e darkness soon
filled up with voices. Some were loud and expressive, and others were low and
meditative. Most were in Portuguese, but some were in Japanese. Many prayed
in intelligible words, but some were also speaking in tongues. °e prayer ses-
sion turned into an improvised orchestra of emotive voices, ebbing and flow-
ing in the warm darkness of the summer night. One voice always stood out, and
it was Pastor Cid’s. He usually started out with an expressive praise of the
Father in Heaven that, aﬅer a quick crescendo, always turned into full-blown
glossolalia. It was as if his voice conducted the supposedly individual prayers,
90 RENEWED
taking the lead in everyone’s effort to—as one regular attendant put it—
“experience God more intimately.” When his voice slowly came down from
the climactic fast-pitch utterances to slow and soﬅ muttering, no longer in
tongues, other voices followed him to the anticipated closure. I stood still in
my spot as the wave of voices gradually simmered down, eventually melting
into the chirping of crickets, the rustling of leaves, and the murmur of life in
the dark forest—a pregnant pause that lasted only for a few seconds before
people started to come out of their respective spots in bushes to gather once
again in a large circle.
By the time we walked back to the trailhead and said good night to one an-
other before driving off, it was past º ».¼. As usual, I was exhausted. So were
Lucia’s two young sons, who quickly curled up and started sleeping on our way
back to Homi Danchi. I sat in the passenger’s seat and made small talk with
Lucia, but my eyelids were heavy. Since I was not used to such late-night ac-
tivities, I always found vigília rather time consuming and physically tiring.
I turned to Lucia, who spoke excitedly about her family’s plan to drive to a
beach during the summer. “Lucia, can I ask you something?”
“Of course, querida, what is it?”
“Um, why do you come to vigília every Friday? I mean, it’s late and some-
times you feel sleepy, don’t you?”
Lucia laughed soﬅly. “Well,” she responded, “Here in Japan, we work so
much. And I have kids too so I am literally running around all the time. When
I come here or go to church activities like Encounter with God, it’s just really
nice, because I have the time for myself. It’s like I can finally breathe.” She rolled
down the window to let some fresh air into the car. Maybe she did feel sleepy,
too. “Factory, home, factory, home, factory . . . You just have this . . . emptiness
[vazio] in your heart when you live your life like that. °at’s why I need the
time just for me and God. It feels good in that place. I feel truly alive.”
When migrant converts speak of having time “just for me and God,” they
are clearly not referring to clock-time, which saturates their experience of un-
skilled wage labor. Since the majority tolerate the work-discipline imposed by
clock-time to save money and return to Brazil, seeking time outside of work
means the pursuit of time that is not spent on the preparation for the future.
In other words, they are looking for the time in which they can live the pres-
ent without postponing or sacrificing it. °is other time is the charismatic
temporality of immediate present, which converts learn to cultivate through
Pentecostal prayer practices.
As I have pointed out above, many Nikkei migrants approach their con-

version to Pentecostalism as a move toward modernity, or a restoration of their
modern status in Japan. °e stories of migrants such as Sara and Lucia, how-
ever, demonstrate that there is another experiential aspect to the Pentecostal
movement. °at is, conversion also mediates a break from the symptom of tem-
poral suffocation. It is a return to the present.
Temporal Tandem
I have thus far elaborated on how migration and conversion hinge upon a set
of heterogeneous temporalities and yet become interlocked in the subject for-
mations of migrant converts—the kind of relationship that may be termed a
“temporal tandem” of migratory and religious movements. By temporal tan-
dem, I mean a joint production or reconfiguration of time—or temporalization—
that simultaneously draws on and drives seemingly disparate and yet closely
related projects.
Rijk van Dijk’s work on the relationship between migration and religion
can illuminate the concept of temporal tandem well. He wrote about the dif-
ferent modalities of time and modes of subjectivity manifest in Pentecostal
practices in two contexts: one in the migrants’ home country of Ghana and
the other in the host Dutch society. In Ghana, leaders at prayer camps em-
phasize the “breaking” with kinship ties and tradition as well as the move
toward individuality by focusing on participants’ past sins and the long-term
future. In diaspora, in contrast, scrutinizing the past for potential sins be-
comes taboo so as not to expose the vulnerability of some migrants with
painful memories (e.g., illegal status or prostitution). Of particular relevance
here is van Dijk’s observation about the relationship between conversion
and migration:
Hence, prayer camps introduce the person to transnational and transcultural
relations as an emergent stranger; as somebody detached from the bonds with
the family, . . . and therefore unconstrained in the attempts to “make it to the
West,” to “get the papers” and to become prosperous. . . . °e prayer camps’ dis-
course promotes a sense of strangerhood that starts at home and serves as a prep-
aration and incubation to what they might expect when they travel to the West.1³
My research among Pentecostal Brazilians in Japan builds on van Dijk’s in-

sight and expands it beyond the case of “strangerhood” in Ghanaian diaspora.
92 RENEWED
In transnational mobility, conversion and migration oﬅen become mutually
reinforcing as seemingly disparate temporal modalities commingle to shape
migrants’ subjectivities in dynamic ways. In this sense, migrant converts ex-
perience a temporal tandem. °rough temporality, they experience the fun-
damental interworking of spatial movement and spiritual development.
In the case of Nikkei migrant converts in Japan, the working of temporal
tandem is apparent in how the prolonged suspension of life anticipates the char-
ismatic temporality of “right now.” Indeed, it is through temporalization that
migration and conversion become firmly interlocked to generatively shape the
realities of migrant converts. I must also add that temporal tandem works in
multidirectional ways. For instance, many migrants, once converted, start to
frame migration as a mission driven by higher purpose, for they are to evan-
gelize a modern and yet “pagan” nation such as Japan. In this view, Japan once
again becomes the potential future of the migrants, but this time, the future
of the worldwide Christian frontier. Other migrants return to Brazil express-
ing less anxiety and fear of failing to actualize in Brazil the rosy middle-class
future. Charismatic rhetoric typically flattens out geographical, temporal, and
cultural differences that we oﬅen associate with national borders.18 To Pente-
costal migrants, life should be the same—equally difficult and equally
rewarding—whether in Japan or Brazil, as long as they are in the presence of
God. It is one time—one temporality—that must reign over both countries,
which is an endless and continuous succession of renewals in the present.
6
T H E C U LT U R E O F L O V E
Graduation Ceremony of Love
Love! Love you! Love Forever! No matter where I turned in the room, the word
jumped into my eyes. °e main room of the church was decorated with color-
ful flowers and red heart-shaped balloons with “love” in English on them. It
was the day of formatura, or graduation, for a course called Casados para Sem-
pre that Missão Apoio Toyota’s marriage ministry taught twice a year. °e
leaders encouraged married members to take the course—even with uncon-
verted spouses, if they agreed—to learn how to achieve what the title prom-
ised: casados para sempre, or “married for life.” Participants attended the weekly
class for thirteen weeks before receiving the certificate of completion at the
graduation ceremony. Roughly fiﬅeen couples joined the first class of ¸0±¹ and
they were going to be certified as new graduates on this day.
One by one, graduating couples walked into the room with big smiles on
their faces. °ey walked slowly from the back of the room toward the front pul-
pit on the rolled-out red carpet while the invited guests—mostly friends and
families—clapped warmly from both sides. °e attires and proceedings of the
ceremony were reminiscent of a wedding except that, instead of her father, each
woman was escorted by her husband. All were dressed in formal clothes, with
men in suit and tie and women in dress and makeup. °e program also in-
cluded a ballroom dance party aﬅer the certification ceremony, during which
the attendants danced to Brazilian gospel ballads. All the graduates offered
94 RENEWED
their testimonies at some point of the day. “First of all I would like to thank
God,” they would typically start, “for giving these ferramentas [tools] for bet-
ter marriage through the Word.” °en many would elaborate on particular top-
ics that made a strong impression, ranging from the idea that marriage was “a
covenant not a contract” to the necessity of forgiveness for one another. “I hope
you are standing here today knowing a bit more about the presence of God in
our marriage,” Presbyter Bruno said during his sermon. “± John ¹:¶ tells us
that whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. So every
Christian must learn how to love, and this is especially true in our marriage. . . .
Marriage is not just about us; no, on the contrary, it’s about much more than
us. By loving your husband or wife, you are keeping the eternal covenant be-
tween men and Christ.” He congratulated the graduating couples for their
contribution to the Kingdom of God through the hard work they put into
their marriage and family. “Family is the building block of God’s Kingdom,”
he stressed, “and by loving, you are being a fierce fighter for God.”
°e highlight of the graduation ceremony was confissões de amor (confes-
sions of love), in which each couple expressed their renewed affection for one
another. Again, the enactment of romantic courtship was palpable. °e hus-
band would get down on one knee with the wife’s hand in his, look up into her
eyes, and declare his unwavering love for her. “You are just as beautiful as the
day when I first met you, there on the beach in Santos [a port city in the state
of São Paulo],” one husband said. “I remember your long dark hair dancing in
the wind. . . . You looked so pretty and I couldn’t get my eyes off of you. °at
day was the beginning of our story, written by God. Because deep down in my
heart, I knew that I wanted to marry you.” °e wife, a nisei woman in her late
thirties, giggled and glanced at the audience with an embarrassed but happy
smile. Everyone was cheering, clapping, whistling, and occasionally shouting
teasing words such as “I’m jealous!” I was giggling, too. It was such a playful
and joyous moment. It was clear that couples were speaking not just to each
other but to the other attendants as well, and in that sense, they were perform-
ing love and romance for the rest of us to witness.
Another couple whom I knew walked up to the stage. Takie and Jun, both
sansei from the state of Paraná, led the home group that I attended in Homi
Danchi. Jun went down on one knee and looked up into Takie’s eyes without
saying a word for a few seconds. °en he started, “°e first time we met, we
were both working, weren’t we, at Morishita [a nearby automotive factory].
Everyone was so tired and stressed. Nobody was smiling. Nobody was happy.
T H E C U LT U R E O F L O V E 95
F IG UR E 4. Confession of love at the graduation ceremony of Casados para Sempre

(Married for Life) at Missão Apoio Toyota, ¸0±¹. Photo courtesy: Luiz Harada and Wilson
Narita.
Me, too, I was so irritable and depressed back then; it was before I found
Jesus.” Jun then reminisced about the organizational change at their workplace
that brought him to the same assembly line as hers. “And when I saw you, the
whole factory lit up. We were in those ugly uniforms, working and sweating, but
meu amor (my love), you were so pretty. . . . I may not have realized this right
away, but it was very special. God made you for me.” Takie, like other women,
listened contently with a smile as her husband went on to thank her for being
such a great mother for their two children despite all the difficulties of being a
dekassegui. “Te amo, minha querida, para sempre” (I love you, my dear, for-
ever), Jun said firmly. “Eu te amo também . . . muito, muito, muito” (I love you,
too . . . so, so, so much), Takie responded, choking up in tears.
History of Love
Love constitutes a key emotion in many Christian cultures. From Asia to Af-
rica to the Americas, Christians around the world speak about love, weep tears
of love, and act in the name of love. In California, the members of Vineyard
96 RENEWED
churches strive to practice love and compassion through immersive prayer. 1 In
Russia, those enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program run by the Orthodox
Church try to reconfigure their moral subjectivities through the experience of
love. 2 In Brazil, Pentecostal Afro-Brazilians reclaim pride in their black iden-
tity by speaking about God’s universal love.3 In Zambia, Christian gay men
claim their belonging in the nation by fusing the rhetoric of queer empower-
ment with the notion of God’s unconditional love.4
This apparent ubiquity of love leads many believers to think that love is
therefore a universal Christian emotion. And the members of Missão Apoio
Toyota were no exception. °e single most important message from Jesus, many
converts would tell me, was love—timeless, transcendent, and transformative.
Love consequently served as the central theme in many church events. At the
graduation ceremony in the opening scene, for example, love figured as an emo-
tion at once divine and romantic. It was divine because it came from God and
cemented their marital union as a covenant. It was romantic because it helped
converts become more expressive and affectionate toward their companions.
But is this kind of love, which fuses the rhetoric of holiness and the aspiration
for romance, as universal as converts claim it to be? Is it possible that love, de-
spite its rhetorical ubiquity among Christians, has particular historical con-
notations within the cultural settings inhabited by Nikkei converts? Put more
simply, what is love and what does it do to Brazilian migrant converts in
Japan?
°eir claim for the universality of love has some ground in that such a dis-
course enjoys global circulation today. °e trope of romantic courtship and
companionate marriage has spread to various parts of the world, making
many couples to opt for “modern” love marriage instead of “traditional” ar-
ranged marriage.5 °e course Casados para Sempre itself is also a case in
point. Casados para Sempre is the Portuguese translation of Married for Life, a
seminar developed by American evangelical authors Mike and Marilyn Phil-
lipps back in ±9¶º. Today, the course and textbook of the same title are popular
among many evangelical churches around the globe. °e Missão Apoio
churches in Japan regularly received the shipment of Portuguese-language
textbooks from Brazil, where many Pentecostal churches taught the class.²
°us, a quick look at the distribution chain of the seminar materials already
reveals the transnational connectedness of evangelical and Pentecostal net-
works, through which the trope of Christian love has been gaining traction in
many societies around the world.³
Love, however, is inseparable from the everyday politics surrounding gen-
der, race, class, and kinship. In Mozambique, for example, young women par-
ticipate in the “love therapy [terapia do amor]” administered by the Universal
Church of the Kingdom of God to strive for companionate marriage that they
view as more modern than traditional marriage mediated by kin. °ey find the
therapy attractive because it offers a new way to approach marital union as a
relational commitment grounded on interpersonal intimacy between spouses.
Love therapy thus provides young upwardly mobile women with space, ideas,
and practices to give meaning to their newfound economic independence and
social autonomy. It also helps them disentangle themselves from their extended
kin and traditional expectations, which many perceive as oppressive.8 As real as
the transnational connections of Pentecostal networks may be, love is not utterly
transcendent from the sociopolitical contexts in which Christians live.
At Missão Apoio Toyota, too, love was not detached from the migrants’
struggles and aspirations. Jun narrated that love felt all the more powerful in
his ugly factory uniform. He felt that love literally “lit up” the gray sterile sur-
roundings that he endured as a migrant laborer. His confession of love points
to the necessity to situate love within the political context of Nikkei trans-
national mobility.
Learning to Love
It smelt delicious. I looked up from the conveyor belt, where I was packaging
puddings. A large pile of baked cheesecakes fresh out of the huge oven rolled
into the room on a squeaking cart. I quickly looked down just in time to put a
sticker on the next pudding, then the next, and then the next. Roughly five of
us were working at the line to package the puddings that were going out for
local convenience stores in the next delivery truck. °e batch we were work-
ing on was almost done, so I guessed that my next task was at the small moun-
tain of cheesecakes. °e team leader indeed called my name and those of
several other workers. I stood next to Camila, a thirty-four-year-old married
sansei woman with two little boys, whom I knew from my home group in Homi
Danchi. She was a short, plump, and well-humored woman and I enjoyed be-
ing around her a lot. Standing side by side, we took out cheesecakes from
round steel pans to soﬅly place each one in a large silver tray. “I like this task
because you can chat while you work,” Camila said. “We don’t need to work at
the pace of the conveyor belt.” I nodded in agreement.
98 RENEWED
She then started telling me about the last class of Married for Life, which
she was taking with her husband. °e seminar was unexpectedly good, Camila
told me. “I decided to take it simply because Bruno [the presbyter] was so per-
sistent. I was like, ‘Fine! I’ll take it!’ But it’s actually good; I feel some real change
already.”
“For example?” I asked, picking up another pan of cheesecake. Since I could
not attend the Married for Life seminars as a single woman, I was always in-
terested to hear stories from the participants. She elaborated:
°e other night, I became very emotional [emocionada]. We were supposed to
confess anything that we hid or had not told our spouses, because between hus-
band and wife, there can’t be any secrets. And . . . João, he started telling me
about this one time he cheated on me. I was stunned. I never knew. . . . He was
crying so much. I had never seen him cry like that. “I’m sorry, so sorry.” At first,
I was angry. Apparently this happened when we were dating—if I had known,
I would not have married him and had kids! . . .
He says he is so much happier and feels more affectionate toward me now. It’s
like this stone has been liﬅed from his heart and now he doesn’t have any obstacle
to truly love me, you know. Secrets are like rocks that block true intimacy. . . . So
it’s good that we faced it together, I guess. It was painful, but it was good.
Camila highlighted the emotive force of this experience (“I became very emo-
cionada”) by recounting her husband’s tears, her anger, and her eventual for-
giveness. °e confession took place during the lesson on intimacy, when each
participant was encouraged to recognize one’s past sins, repent, and forgive.
°e textbook assigned in Married for Life draws on the biblical passages about
Adam and Eve to explain the rationale behind this practice:
Genesis ¸.¸· reveals God’s plan and the potential of our life of “One Flesh” as
husband and wife. . . . °ere was no shame or darkness (sin) between them.
Imagine oneself completely naked in all the senses—physical, emotional,
and spiritual—together with your spouse, without any shame, without any
obstacle! . . . “Transparent” in spirit, soul, and body; free to be just themselves,
with total openness and sincerity. . . . °is is God’s plan for your marriage as well.´
°e Married for Life seminar promotes a marital relationship that is “open”

and “transparent” in the “physical, emotional, and spiritual” senses. In such a
view, any obstacle to the expression of “true love,” including secrets, must be
overcome.
°e ideal conjugal relationship at Missão Apoio seems to echo the vision

of companionate marriage—a marriage in which romantic courtship, mutual
sincerity, and emotional intimacy play a pivotal role. People around the globe
who have taken to the idea of companionate love have embraced it as a token
of modern individuality, oﬅentimes by contrasting it to “traditional” ways of
union such as arranged marriage.1µ °is seems to be the case with Brazilian
Pentecostal converts as well. My informants oﬅen criticized what they saw as
the Japanese way of marriage as something morally backward compared with
their view of Christian union. A pastor at one Missão Apoio church once told
me: “I heard that couples here treat each other like air aﬅer years of marriage
and they think it’s normal. °ey even have a word for it: kamen hūhu [“masked,”
or inauthentic, marriage]. It’s horrible. Marriage is an alliance of love that unites
two individuals forever. . . . Japanese couples don’t even show love to each
other!” He later added, “But younger generations are changing it now, and that’s
great. Japan is changing in a good way. When I came to Japan fiﬅeen years ago,
I didn’t see any couple being affectionate [carinhoso] toward each other. Last
week I saw this young couple kissing at the station, really passionately, you
know, they were in love!”11 Here, the pastor contrasts loveless Japanese mar-
riage and loving Christian relationship. By asserting that “Japan is changing
in a good way” with younger generations who are not afraid to express love,
he suggests that the Japanese are becoming emotionally more modern, but
perhaps not quite as modern as Christians. To the pastor and many converts,
then, love was a quintessentially modern affect.
Cold Japanese, Warm Brazilian, and Emotional Pentecostal
Many congregants thus spoke of love as a universal Christian emotion that led
converts into modernity. At the same time, they oﬅen referred to love as a dis-
tinctly Brazilian emotion. To many of my informants, love was apparently a
layered construct.
Mayumi, a sansei in her forties from Paraná, offered the following testimony
at a home group gathering one night. She began by telling the other attendants
where she and her husband had been the previous weekend, on October ±¸
and ±º, ¸0±º. °ey drove to Kyoto—which is three hours away from Toyota—
to attend an event called Empowered ¸± All Japan. It was jointly organized
by a number of Pentecostal and charismatic churches in Japan and beyond.
Roughly a third of the speakers included in the two-day program were from
10 0 R E N EW E D
abroad, including Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and the United
States. One of the cofounders of Missão Apoio was among the featured speak-
ers. Mayumi and her husband decided to go aﬅer seeing a poster for the event
at the church. Mayumi first showed us a short video she had recorded with her
iPhone. °e phone’s camera panned almost ±¶0 degrees from one side of the
hall to the other to capture the excited crowd that filled the venue. Many par-
ticipants were praying aloud fervently to a dramatic tune played by the band
on the stage. “Please listen. °e people around me were praying in Japanese; it
was so emotional,” she said. We indeed heard a man’s voice, distinct due to his
proximity to her phone, uttering words such as kamisama (God/god), kansha
shimasu (I’m grateful), and idai na ai (great love). He sobbed as he prayed.
When the video was over, she continued:
I could only make out kamisama, but I was moved that Japanese people—

Japanese people, I’m telling you [japoneses mesmo, sabe]—were praying with
so much emotion, shouting, crying, and even jumping. I had never seen that
many Japanese filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with faith [cheio do Espírito
Santo, cheio de fé]. We Brazilians oﬅen think that Japanese are cold [japone-
ses são frios], but we are wrong! When the Spirit touches you, they too cannot
help but express joy and gratitude.
A few other people who had also attended the event nodded in agreement. Ap-
parently, the sight of expressive Japanese charismatic Christians had made a
lasting impression on them. One congregant chimed in, “We sometimes feel
that all crentes are Brazilian, but that’s not true!”
°e scene unfolds in two diverging and yet interrelated tropes. On the one
hand, Mayumi and others uphold the transcendence of Christian fellowship
from ethnic boundaries such as the one between “Japanese” and “Brazilian.”
°is is a rather common claim in the speech genre of Christian testimony. She
interprets emotional expressiveness as reflective of the capacity to feel the Holy
Spirit, a key quality that mediates charismatic kin-making. By declaring that
some Japanese indeed possess such a capacity, she is testifying to the uni-
versality of Christian love while simultaneously legitimizing and buttressing
the Christian identity of those in the room through her testimony. As Peter
Stromberg observed in his study of born-again conversion narrative, many
Christian speech genres are “constitutive.” 12 °at is, they are not mere “factual”
accounts of life events but rather transformative mediums that create and
fortify Christian subjectivity.
T H E C U LT U R E O F L O V E 1 01
On the other hand, the remarks by Mayumi and her fellow congregants

point to the widely shared images of Japanese and Brazilian ethnicities: Japa-
nese are cold and Brazilians are warm (japoneses são frios; brasileiros são
carinhosos). Statements such as “We Brazilians think that Japanese are cold
but we are wrong!” paradoxically indicate that to many migrant converts, the
fervent style of Pentecostal worship is something stereotypically un-Japanese.
°ey instead consider it as more compatible with the supposedly Brazilian
affects such as carinho, which encompasses emotional openness and affective
warmth. Despite the frequent attempts to free Pentecostalism from any par-
ticular ethnic associations, my informants still let out remarks that subtly
contradicted their own claims about God’s universality (or universal acces-
sibility, at least).
Affective openness, which shows through embodied practices such as
“shouting, crying, and jumping,” thus connects Brazilian identity to Pentecos-
tal subjectivity. Japanese people, in contrast, are stereotyped as more reserved
and emotionally flat, which makes it surprising whenever some of them act
with fervor in public. °is triangulation of cold Japanese, warm Brazilian, and
emotional Pentecostal led to a widespread perception that, unlike Brazilians
or Pentecostals, Japanese were not very loving. Being Pentecostal was affectively
in alignment with being Brazilian because the two subjectivities were
connected by open expression of intimate emotions. °is meant that, in the
Pentecostal landscape of emotions, Brazilians were more apt than Japanese to
experience love—the marker of modern personhood.
Ancient-Style Modern Women
°us far I have focused on the modern connotations of love. To the congre-
gants at Missão Apoio Toyota, however, this was only half the story. °e other
half concerned the ancient quality of love. My informants used the word an-
cient (antigo) to refer to the attributes derived from what they saw as the time-
less, unchanging, and universal truth authorized by the Bible. To them, love
was not just modern but also ancient. °ese seemingly opposite characteris-
tics seemed to form two sides of the same coin.
Culto para Mulheres, or Worship for Women, was a monthly event at
Missão Apoio Toyota, organized and attended just by women. °e structure of
each gathering was similar to a regular Sunday service: worship songs, mes-
sages, testimonies, and sermons. What was different was the fact that it had a
10 2 R E N EW E D
particular theme every month. One Saturday evening, I walked into the church
to see large letters cut out of cardboard hanging on the front wall behind the
pulpit. °e words read: Mulheres Modernas à Moda Antiga (Ancient-Style
Modern Women). °at was the theme of the service that night. To the roughly
hundred women who gathered, Pastora Ester began her sermon with a ques-
tion: “Some people say that we are not modern because they think we embrace
old irrational values. But are we really?” She then listed three definitions of
modern women. Modern women take up challenges; they take good care of
themselves; they are financially independent. She then argued that many fe-
male figures in the Bible embodied many of such attributes. Abigail, for in-
stance, was an intelligent, articulate, and wise woman who protected her hus-
band whenever he was in trouble. She did so while remaining respectful of
male authority because she was deeply pious. She met at least the first two defi-
nitions of modern women because she faced challenging situations with grace
and she took good care of her spiritual health as a godly woman. “Abigail was
brave, bright, and humble. She was ancient and modern [Ela era antiga e mod-
erna]. She is a superwoman from the Bible [Ela é uma supermulher da Bíblia].”
°e last of her three definitions of modern women, that of financial inde-
pendence, seemed slightly thornier than the other two as the pastora spent
more time on it. She assured her audience, many of whom were full-time fac-
tory workers, that working hard to help one’s family did not go against Chris-
tian ideals. “If anything, you should be ready to work just as hard as men to
help your family.” °e pastora made it clear, however, that women’s labor should
always be for the sake of assisting others and never for personal achievement.
To her, it was the purpose of work that made women’s work Christian or
un-Christian. She then told a story about one female congregant to drive her
point home:
A while ago, a sister came up to me, all frustrated. “Pastora, my husband is driv-
ing me crazy! I work so hard! I do four hours of zangyō [extra hours] every day
but he does teiji [regular hours]. He comes home at five and just sits there doing
no house chores. When I come home at ten, exhausted, I have to do all the work
at home! He says we don’t need to do zangyō to survive and it’s my choice.” . . .
I said, “You don’t need to but chose to do zangyō? °en it’s your responsi-
bility. You are trying to be a man, but earning is men’s role. When you try to
take that role, something goes wrong in the family. . . . Since many of us work
in the factory side by side with men, I see a lot of women trying to be like men.
TH E C U LT U R E O F L O V E 1 03
Do not do it because there won’t be any peace at home if you do. . . . If anyone
tells you that men and women are just the same and should do the same
thing, then think about this: Aﬅer all, we women are not paid the same
amount for the exact same service we provide, right, sisters? [Many women
nod deeply.] Right, at so many factories? Men get ±,000 yen per hour and we
get ¶00 yen. °ink about it.
°e pastora advanced a sharp social critique here. She was aware that many
nonconverts perceived evangelical churches as antimodern for supposedly pro-
moting outdated and unequal gender roles. In response, she pointed out that
the equality between men and women was not always a reality but instead a
mere pretense in Japan. Despite the Employment Gender Equality Law (danjo
koyō kikai kintōhō) that passed in ±9¶·, some companies continued to pay less
to women for the same or similar kinds of tasks performed at work. °e women
at church knew this well from experience. In fact, wage inequality was a fact
of life that women still faced in both Brazil and Japan.13
°e pastora thus suggested that the Pentecostal gender roles that she up-
held made sense in this state of gender affairs. “°ink about it.” When the
broader social system was implicitly telling them that men and women were
not equal, why should they dream otherwise? Was “trying to be like men” a
wise choice in such an environment where a level playing field for both gen-
ders may be an illusion? She thus implied that Pentecostal gender ideals, which
appoint men to the role of breadwinner, were a rational response to the labor
condition that continued to be shaped by patriarchal values. °e seemingly “an-
cient” Christian gender roles could be adaptive and sensible in the supposedly
“modern” capitalist context. We are modern in our own way, the pastora pro-
claimed: Ancient-Style Modern Women.
Ancient Love
Gender role was a central topic in the Married for Life classes, which advocated
for a “complementary” model of marital relationship. °e chapter on “Papéis
[Roles]” in the textbook listed a number of “natural” roles for each spouse. °e
husband should ideally be a “leader,” “provider,” “fighter,” and “model of God’s
sovereignty”; the wife’s roles included “assistant,” “supporter,” “administrator,”
“companion,” and “reflection of God’s love.”14 °e husband leads and the wife
accompanies, the textbook affirmed, and that is the way God has intended
10 4 R E N EW E D
humans to build family since the beginning of time. °e naturalization of male
authority is evident here. °e women at Missão Apoio Toyota, however, were
not stereotypical victims of patriarchy in that they were not servile, submissive,
or subjugated. On the contrary, many were energetic, capable, and self-assured.
Without the unofficial leadership of women, quite a few church activities would
have been difficult or impossible to continue. Although only pastors and
presbyters—all men—could give regular sermons, women spoke from the pul-
pit just as confidently at every service, delivering messages and testimonies. °e
tacit consensus seemed to be that women could be as active as men as long as
they did not publicly challenge male authority.
Why do women, who constitute the numerical majority in Pentecostal
movements around the globe, voluntarily embrace overtly patriarchal values?
Many researchers of Global Christianity have answered this long-standing
question by arguing that Pentecostalism provides a nuanced form of agency
to its female participants. 15 Elizabeth Brusco famously analyzed that Pente-
costalism works in women’s favor by obligating men to marital fidelity and
provision for family.1² She argued that Pentecostalism is a “strategic” women’s
movement by which they can redirect to the household the income their
male partners used to spend on activities associated with machismo—the
public performance of aggressive and exaggerated masculinity such as drink-
ing, smoking, and illicit affairs.1³ “Aggression, violence, pride, self-indulgence,
and an individualistic orientation in the public sphere are replaced by peace
seeking, humility, self-restraint, and a collective orientation and identity
within the church and the home.”18 Brusco’s study shows that, if not symboli-
cally, women pragmatically benefit from the Christian reconfiguration of
gender roles.
To the majority of Brazilian migrants in Japan, the biggest challenge to
family life was not necessarily machismo but afastamento, or the sense of es-
trangement from family and kin. As I detailed in Chapter ¹, they felt that labor
migration triggered and exacerbated afastamento, which in turn led to loneli-
ness, conflict, infidelity, divorce, and overall disintegration of family. It is per-
haps not surprising, then, that many converts felt that the Pentecostal gender
roles helped cure the ailment of afastamento and brought families back to-
gether. °e most common narrative in this regard concerned a “woman who
acts like a man,” a wayward figure who lost sight of her proper role in her strug-
gle as a migrant worker. Marcela, for instance, had the following to say about
“so many women who come to Japan to earn money and forget about family”:
°ey work in factories side by side with men. In most cases they earn as much
as men. °ey have their own money for the first time in their life, in their own
bank accounts, every month. . . . °ey start buying things just for themselves.
°ey start complaining that their husbands are not working as hard as they
do. . . . °ey start acting like decision makers at home. “Do more zangyō!” “I
worked on Saturday last week; you should do laundry!” . . . I used to be like that.
[Laughs.] I wanted to save enough money to go home to Brazil as quickly as
possible, so it was all about work, work, work. . . . But then I realized there can’t
be peace in the family if women compete with men. Men and women have dif-
ferent roles, and we should complement each other, you see.
Marcela still worked full-time at a nearby factory even aﬅer taking Married

for Life, but she believed that God saved her marriage by teaching the proper
roles for husband and wife. Now she did her best not to work extra hours or on
weekends so that she could “protect home” by running household chores. By
staying home longer, she could also perform a number of tasks her twelve-year-
old daughter’s school expected from parents (more specifically, mothers).
Her Facebook feeds sometimes featured elaborate obentō that she had pre-
pared for her daughter. “I’m getting better! My daughter so happy,” read the
caption for a photo of boxed lunch with rice balls in the shape of Hello Kitty.
She also felt that her husband became more willing to work long hours because
he really understood that it was his role to provide for the family. °ere were
fewer fights at home aﬅer they took Married for Life, she said.
Especially during the first years in Japan, when the majority of migrants
are determined to quickly return to Brazil with enough savings, married
couples tend to work equally long hours. In factories, men and women engage
in the same kinds of unskilled labor, oﬅentimes side by side at the same as-
sembly lines, which demonstrates that men and women are not very different
in essential ways. Furthermore, many women gain more financial indepen-
dence from their male partners and start demanding a reassignment of
household chores, although most of them continue to serve as the primary
domestic caretakers. °ese changes in the labor, economic, and domestic con-
ditions oﬅen stimulated a feeling of anxiety concerning the shiﬅing gender
roles, which led many migrants—both male and female—to claim that women
were becoming like men. To those who thought that migration—especially
the conditions of factory labor—caused afastamento, the perceived disruption
of gender roles was part of the problem. In such a context, the Pentecostal
10 6 R E N EW E D
gender ideals, reinforced by a community of people who held each other ac-
countable, provided couples with an opportunity to rearrange their marital
relationships. Converts thus felt that the patriarchal roles and values, which
represented the “ancient” side of Pentecostal love, helped reunite migrant
families struggling with afastamento.
Love was a prominent theme not just in Married for Life and Worship for
Women. It also dominated the stories from another seminar called Veredas An-
tigas, which was specifically for parents and children. Again, the invocation of
“the ancient” was apparent; veredas antigas means “ancient paths” in Portu-
guese. Missão Apoio Toyota organized the weekend retreat at least once a year
to “restore eternal family values” (restaurar os valores eternos da família),
according to the circulated poster. °e church leaders promoted it as an op-
portunity to heal the “emotional traumas and frustrations” that haunted many
migrant families.
On the Sunday following the Veredas Antigas in ¸0±º, one middle-aged
woman walked up to the pulpit to share her experience. She started by recol-
lecting her first years in Japan as a teenage daughter of two Nikkei migrants.
“I hated my parents. I felt so lonely because they were never at home. °ey did
so much zangyō and yakin [night shiﬅ] to earn more money. °ere was afasta-
mento in the family.” During the retreat, however, she realized how unrealistic
her expectations toward her parents had been. She was a mother herself today
and she too sometimes had to leave her own child at home while she worked.
“°is realization humbled me. In this world, only God is perfect. So we must
love one another just as He loves all of us.” In tears, she begged for forgiveness
from her family. Her husband and son walked up to embrace her, soﬅly repeat-
ing “Te amo” (I love you). °e pastor then invited the whole congregation to
pray for the family “so that God’s love will fill their hearts.” With their hands
held together, the family faced the other congregants to receive prayers.
In sum, the ethnographic findings from the various church-led initiatives
for “family restoration” demonstrate that to many migrant converts, the an-
cient and the modern were not antithetical to one another. Quite the opposite.
°e ancient was firmly embedded within the modern, and the yearning of
migrant converts for the timeless truth seemed to only grow at a time of con-
stant mobility and rapid change. In this sense, the ancient love was as much a
product of modernity as the modern love. Migrant families thus navigated
their tumultuous path to the better future by envisioning a return to the eter-
nal Christian past.
Disorderly Brazilian, Disciplined Japanese,
and Righteous Christian
With the vision of ancient love, Nikkei converts strived to recover family soli-
darity, which was once the hallmark of their “culture of discipline” in Brazil
but had been undermined by afastamento in Japan. In this sense, Pentecostal
love recuperated something vital of the imagined “Japanese family”—that is,
harmonious unity—not in ethnic but in spiritual terms. Love thus offered Nik-
keis a way to reclaim their “culture” without resorting to their Japanese
ethnicity. Although they used to be the possessors of “Japanese culture” in
Brazil, their culture this time—the culture of love—is Christian, and they cul-
tivate it as they live amid the Japanese majority in Japan.
Interestingly, quite a few converts thought that their “Christian culture”
made them more compatible with the life in contemporary Japanese society.
Vinicius was a nisei man in his thirties who had migrated to Japan at the age
of sixteen with his father. When I asked if he felt “Japanese” since he had natu-
ralized more than a decade earlier, he responded in Portuguese: “No, I don’t
feel Japanese. It’s hard. I only know the environment at the factory; that’s the
only social context that I’m used to. I don’t know much else. But at the same
time, I’m not really Brazilian either. If I go back to Brazil, people there would
find me strange. I don’t have the accent of my land [sotaque da minha terra]
anymore, for example. I have been living here for too long.” Although Vini-
cius felt neither Japanese nor Brazilian, he felt firm and clear about another facet
of his self, which was Christian:
Also, I am a crente today. I converted here. So I can’t follow certain practices
that are very common in Brazil. Like, that crazy jeitinho [accomplishing some-
thing by circumventing rules and conventions] of Brazilians—people lie and
break rules to get what they want, you know. As a crente, I can’t do it anymore;
it’s not right. Actually, living as a Christian is easier here since the Japanese are
more honest—everything by the book. Japanese follow the rules and respect
authority. Generally they have better discipline [mais educação], you see.
In this response, Vinicius relates to Japan not in ethnic but in moral terms. He
transforms the perceived politeness and honesty of Japanese people into ir-
refutable markers of their tacit Christianness: “Living as a Christian is easier
here since the Japanese are more honest.” He then juxtaposes his claim of
Japanese politeness with the perceived prevalence of law-bending behaviors
10 8 R E N EW E D
(jeitinho) in Brazil, arguing that Japan is in fact the right place for righteous
Christians. What some Nikkei migrants laugh at as the rigidity of rule-
obsessed Japanese thus turns into a desirable ethical trait called honesty to
migrant converts such as Vinicius.
Another Nikkei convert, Luana, also spoke during an interview about the
modesty and respect of Japanese people. Aﬅer she criticized what she viewed
as the excessive sensuality of Brazilian culture (such as the Carnival), which
she thought made it harder for men to live without sinning, she added, “If my
Sachi [her eight-year-old daughter] were in Brazil, she would be walking around
freely in a tiny top, her belly and legs all bare. So I prefer it here; it’s more
modest.”
It seems that the inherent Christianness that some converts see in Japanese
society lends legitimacy to their evolving born-again identity in Japan. °is is
because a discourse that emphasizes ethical qualities of Japanese people can
consequently construct Japan as the right country to live in for Christians con-
cerned with moral righteousness. Coupled with a common sense of a mission
to evangelize the non-Christian nation, many migrant converts begin to em-
brace Japan as a place to be, if not as an uncontested home. °e rhetorical
triangulation of disorderly Brazilian, disciplined Japanese, and righteous
Christian thus helps some migrants to craﬅ a new sense of citizenship in Japan
in spiritual terms.1´
From the Culture of Discipline to the Culture of Love
Although Pentecostal conversion can restore the sense of family solidarity and
cultural status to Nikkeis, this new Christian “culture of love” is distinct from
their old Japanese “culture of discipline.” °is is because Christian love, which
converts place at the center of their ethical aspiration, adds the element of
affective warmth to the supposedly rigid “Japanese culture.” Marianne’s story
can illuminate this point. She was a sansei Nikkei and related her childhood in
Brazil as follows:
When I was young I thought my mother didn’t love me. All of my friends at

school, their mothers kissed them, hugged them, called them “my little love”
[amorzinho] and “my pretty thing” [fofinha] and everything. I had none of it. . . .
I was thirsting for love, but I could not get it, because my parents were very Japa-
nese. °ey didn’t say any warm things to me, didn’t hug me, didn’t even kiss
each other! When I realized that she didn’t know how because of this, you know,
this way she grew up, I was so moved. I forgave her. She is only human, you
know, that’s all she knew, because that’s the only culture she grew up in.
She subsequently framed her conversion to Pentecostalism in Japan as a way
to overcome the “cold Japanese culture” of her childhood.
Love overcame the potential flaws of “Brazilian culture” as well. Although
many Nikkei converts saw some parallel between “Brazilian expressiveness”
and “Christian love,” they were also quick to add that Brazilians are prone to
confounding love with sexuality.2µ Love in Brazil, these Nikkei Pentecostals
would observe, is entangled with sensuality, carnality, and sin (“Just look at
the Carnival!”). Christian love, in contrast, is holy. In such rhetoric, migrant
converts evoked Christian love as a morally higher version of Brazilian love.
To Nikkei migrant converts, then, “family” in the new culture of love thus
embodies the best of both worlds—“Brazilian warmth” (carinho) and “Japa-
nese discipline” (educação). It is at once affectionate and unified, spontaneous
and stable. What is more, not only does it combine the positive characteristics
of both Japanese and Brazilian affective worlds but it also augments them by
drawing upon Christian aspirations. According to migrant converts, “Japanese
family” may have been stable, but it was cold and rigid. “Brazilian family” may
be more expressive and warm, but it is prone to disorder and dissolution. By
merging carinho and educação, “Christian family” can transcend both “Japa-
nese” and “Brazilian” cultures to constitute the basis for the third, transeth-
nic, culture. In this imaginative landscape of racialized affects that Nikkeis
inhabit, Pentecostal love is certainly a “Christian” emotion but also “Japa-
nese” and “Brazilian” in more implicit ways.
I am not suggesting here that the kind of love Nikkei converts experience
in the various ethnographic scenes is actually a mere ethnoracial trope. Instead,
my argument is that this Christian love is a historical affect, a fruit of more
than a century-old transpacific diasporic circuits that have shaped and been
shaped by Nikkei migrants. In this sense, I have illuminated the temporal
depth of emotion by focusing on the “history of everyday rupture,” which
points to the “contexts of continued instability and change induced by mi-
gration.”21 Creatively drawing on their migratory, racial, and affective histo-
ries, migrant converts continue to move toward the culture of love.
転
Part Four
CONTESTED
7
O F TWO BLOODS
The Japanese Blood and the Blood of Jesus
One Sunday aﬅernoon, I was interviewing Miyako, a sansei woman in her for-
ties, in the communal area of Missão Apoio church in a neighboring city
of Toyota that I was visiting. Miyako served the church as a Japanese-Portuguese
interpreter and chose to answer most of my questions in her fluent Japa-
nese. Although she could only speak Portuguese when she arrived in Japan at
the age of twenty, she made a colossal effort to learn Japanese as she worked
full-time in a factory. She spoke eloquently about her childhood in São Paulo,
her migration to Japan, her conversion to Pentecostalism, and her marriage to
another Nikkei migrant whom she met at the church. When we moved on to
the topic of her yonsei children, who were born and raised in Japan, her tone
became a little tense:
In my family’s case, my kids here have Japanese faces and names. But Japanese
kids still say to them: “You are Brazilian, a foreigner. Get out.” “Don’t come to
this school.” “Die.” We went through all of that. Utterly, one hundred percent,
it’s Japanese blood that runs through our veins [mattaku, hyaku pāsento, ni-
honjin no chi shika kekkan ni nagaretenai noni]. I also gave Japanese names to
my kids. But they would still say, “We don’t need you foreigners.” Once, my
daughter was bullied. She was pushed, and fell down the stairs. We went through
a lot—a lot.
11 4 C ONTESTED
Aﬅer we spoke more about her concerns for the future of her children, I thanked
her for her time and wrapped up the interview because the time for Sunday
service was approaching. We moved from the church canteen, where we had
been conversing, to the main hall.
It was the day of monthly santa ceia, or the Lord’s Supper, in which con-
verts consume a piece of bread and a small cup of grape juice that symbolize
the body and blood of Christ to reflect on His self-sacrifice. I sat down next to
Miyako and listened to worship songs, sermons, and testimonies. °en it was
time for santa ceia. When the person next to me passed a tray of bread and
juice to me, I passed it on to Miyako without touching because I was not a con-
vert. Santa ceia made me feel a little nervous since it highlighted the line be-
tween converts and nonconverts—or the saved and the unsaved—more starkly
than other church activities. I observed everyone around me eat a piece of bread
and then drink a cup of juice with a look of deep concentration. Many kept
their eyes shut and muttered prayers. Aﬅer a few minutes, the church band
started playing a song called “Alvo Mais que a Neve” (“Whiter than Snow”).
One by one, congregants came out of personal prayers to join the collective
voice and sang along:
Blessed may be, the Lamb Bendito seja o Cordeiro
Who on the cross for us suffered Que na cruz por nós padeceu
Blessed may be, His Blood Bendito seja o Seu sangue
°at for us there He shed Que por nós ali Ele verteu
Look, washed in that blood Eis nesse sangue lavados
With such pure white clothing Com roupas que tão alvas são
°e redeemed sinners are Os pecadores remidos
Already before their God Que perante seu Deus já estão
Whiter than snow Alvo mais que a neve
Purer than snow Alvo mais que a neve
If washed in that blood Se nesse sangue lavado
I will be whiter than snow Mais alvo que a neve serei
I was relieved to be able to participate by singing along. Since the congrega-
tion at Missão Apoio Toyota also sang “Whiter than Snow” at the monthly
Lord’s Supper, I knew it almost by heart. I glanced sideways at Miyako, who
was singing with her eyes shut and palms open toward the ceiling. “If washed
in that blood . . . I will be whiter than snow . . .” °ere were trails of tears on
her cheek.
O F T WO BLO OD S 1 15
Kinship, Citizenship, and Religion Through
the Lens of “Blood”
Two kinds of blood shape the lives of Nikkei Pentecostals in Japan: the blood
of Jesus and the “Japanese blood.”1 On the one hand, the sacrificial blood of
Jesus serves as a potent medium of Nikkei Pentecostals’ born-again identity
and sense of belonging in the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, the fact
remains that their Pentecostal churches are flourishing in Japan, which the ma-
jority of migrants entered on the ancestry-based visa by proving that they are
carriers of “the Japanese blood.” Here, then, is an apparent irony: °ey see
themselves as active participants in a transethnic and transnational Pente-
costal movement when the legality of their life in the nation—and, by exten-
sion, the continuation of their churches—depends on the specific ethnoracial
substance. In what follows, I will delve into the tensions surrounding the rela-
tionship between the two bloods by exploring the contentious intersection of
kinship, citizenship, and nation-state.
Miyako’s experience of the “Japanese blood” is ambivalent to say the least.
She seems to resent how her children’s peers rejected her family’s belonging in
Japan despite their “fully Japanese” lineage and active effort to integrate: “Ut-
terly, one hundred percent, it’s Japanese blood that runs through our veins. I also
gave Japanese names to my kids. But they still said, ‘We don’t need you for-
eigners.’ ” Her remark illuminates the ambiguity of the “Japanese blood.” It
provides the foundation of national identity in Japan and, by extension, un-
derpins the legal recognition of Nikkei foreigners’ proximity to the national
kinship. At the same time, it is never a total guarantee of national belonging
for people like Miyako who do not conform to the narrow definition of Japa-
neseness as the convergence of “blood,” language, and culture.
Her experience of Jesus’s blood through rituals and songs, in contrast, seems
emotionally fulfilling, even therapeutic. As the lyrics of “Whiter than Snow”
suggest, “the blood of the Lamb” plays a central role in the making of Pente-
costal culture. It symbolizes selfless sacrifice made by Christ (“Blessed may
be, His blood that for us there He shed”), promise of ultimate salvation
(“Washed in that blood . . . the redeemed sinners are already before their
God”), and desire for moral and spiritual transformation (“If washed in that
blood I will be whiter than snow”). °e symbolism surrounding Jesus’s blood,
then, seems to enhance a sense of belonging in the Pentecostal community. But
does this mean that—as my informants oﬅen told me—“Jesus is the solution
11 6 C ONTESTED
to the afflicted world,” meaning Jesus can cure the malaise converts experi-

ence? In the context of Japan, where the rhetoric of blood has powerfully
fused family, nation, and citizenship in its modern time, the story may not be
so simple.
Blood is not the essence but a metaphor of kinship, as generations of an-
thropologists have observed.2 Yet consanguinity persists as a powerful im-
agery to demarcate common social belonging. Japan is a country where
deep-seated cultural ideas and practices concerning blood abound, and Nik-
kei migrants’ identities are certainly affected by the essentialist notion of
“Japanese blood.” Pentecostal converts, in contrast, describe the blood of Je-
sus as a “symbolic” and “supernatural” matter. Not only is it theologically
important as the symbol and promise for salvation, it is also a mediator of
spiritual kinship: “We are one big family in Jesus Christ.”3 In fact, many impor-
tant rituals in church life—such as the Lord’s Supper—are aimed at produc-
ing and sustaining spiritual kinship united in the blood of Jesus. °us, the
focus on the trope of blood can illuminate how the lives of Nikkei Pentecostal
migrants in Japan are deeply intertwined with competing and yet coexisting
models of belonging: one based on naturalized ethnonational kinship and the
other grounded in spiritual kinship that unites “brothers” and “sisters.” 4 °eir
experiences show that kinship is an evolving logic intertwined with multiple
sociopolitical forces such as law, nation-state, and religion.5 Japan’s preferential
treatment of foreigners of Japanese descent implicitly attributes supposedly in-
nate relatedness to the nation’s diasporic populations. °e social construction
of “return” is therefore the politics of kinship writ large. It is not difficult, then,
to imagine that Pentecostal conversion in this context would be greeted with
some contestations.
Japan: Blood Endures, Blood Corrupts
In modern Japan, common descent has long been the centerpiece of national
identity. °e country’s political ideologies have deployed blood ties to conflate
family and nation, constituting them as mutually reinforcing entities. Amid
the national effort for modernization and centralization in the late-nineteenth-
century Meiji period, the rhetoric of “family nation-state” (or “national
family,” kazoku kokka) emerged and took hold: “°e kazoku kokka (family
state) was projected as an enduring essence, which provided the state with an
elevated iconography of consanguineous unity, enhanced the legitimacy of new
economic, social, and political relations, and provided the Japanese people with
a new sense of national purpose and identity.” ² °e family-state system dictated
that the emperor was the benevolent “father,” or the “head of the household”
(kachō) of one big “national family,” and the citizens were his “children.”³ He
also fulfilled an indispensable role as a chief priest in State Shinto, in which he
carried out a set of liturgies as a descendant of mythic lineage that could sup-
posedly be traced back to the first gods of the nation. °e ideology of family-
state, then, was intimately tied to the nationalization of Shinto—a name given
to a disparate mixture of rituals practiced for gods, deities, and spirits in
Japan. In this historical context, nation-state, politics, kinship, family, and re-
ligion were not separate domains but instead ontologically inseparable, together
constituting “the Japanese people.”
Blood figured as the powerful, almost mythic, essence in the creation and
maintenance of the family-state. Terms such as minzoku (people, or ethnic
group), which gained large circulation during this period, oﬅen conflated “phe-
notype, geography, culture, spirit, history, and nationhood.”8 Such modern
“semantic and semiotic inventions” were later incorporated into the postwar
constitution of ±9¹7, which “retained the definition of nationality and citizen-
ship as a right of blood.”´ Although the explicit ideology of family-state ceased
with Japan’s defeat in World War II, the central significance of blood in the
creation of national identity persisted. To this day, “Jus sanguinis aligns nation-
ality with kinship; the nation is, by virtue of its shared blood, an enormous
family.”1µ °e demarcation of national belonging as the narrow convergence
of language, culture, and “blood” also persists to this day.
Nikkei Brazilians figure ambiguously in this field of discourses on blood
and Japaneseness. °e long-term resident (or Nikkei-jin) visa that enabled their
initial migration to Japan was granted on the basis of descent. °is require-
ment of Japanese ancestry constitutes potential migrants as Japanese, at least
partially. Most Nikkei migrants who arrived, however, were born and raised
in Latin America and did not embrace the qualities the “Japanese blood” was
expected to embody. 11 Although the dominant political ideology in Japan re-
gards the “Japanese blood” as an essence that transcends generations, it also
dictates that the blood can become too diluted over time. °is is at least the
implicit logic behind the restriction of the Nikkei-jin visa only to the children
and grandchildren of Japanese emigrants. Many third-generation migrants
recount the difficulty that arises if children they are trying to bring to Japan
are over eighteen years old.12 I heard, on more than one occasion, parents
11 8 C ONTESTED
exchanging information about visas for their yonsei children: “Have you ever
had a difficulty in getting the visa for your son? Mine is almost eighteen and
in Brazil. It’s a nightmare.” °e legal boundary of Nikkei-jin primarily falls
between the third and the fourth generations. Culturally speaking, however,
the line is arbitrary to say the least, especially due to the fact that many yonsei
Brazilian youth are born and raised in Japan.
°us the social construction of “Japanese blood” as an essential and yet per-
ishable substance puts many Nikkei Brazilians in an ambiguous position.
Some may have what the Japanese majority views as pure bloodline and Japa-
nese appearance, but not the linguistic and cultural competence. Younger
Brazilians may feel native in the Japanese language and culture, but they may
still be judged gaijin (foreign) in terms of appearance and legal definition.
To reiterate, the taken-for-granted unity of “Japanese blood” and the Japa-
nese people is a modern “semiotic invention” as well as a cultural “iconography.”
°ese terms provide me with clues to develop a semiotic analysis of “Japanese
blood” as a mediator of “material kinship.”
Material Kinship: Forms of Signification
in Japanese Nationalism
Webb Keane characterized forms of signification that are not arbitrary as
“material”; for instance, the ebb and flow of the tides form a material sign of
cyclical time because the signifier (i.e., the tide) is directly affected by the sig-
nified (i.e., the cycle).13 In this sense, tide is a noncoincidental index of time.
Building on such an observation, Keane also highlighted “the social power of
naturalization” facilitated by the materiality of signs:
Indexes do not only presuppose some prior causes of which they bear the ef-

fects, they may also have entailments. . . . °e social power of naturalization
comes from this: not simply the false reading of indexicals as if they were di-
rectly iconic of some prior essential character, but rather the misconstruing of
the possible entailments of indexicals—their effects and possibilities—as if they
were merely expressing something (such as character) that already exists.14
Put more simply, some signs can be construed as indexical and material—and,
by extension, innate, natural, and preexistent—even when they are not neces-
sarily “directly iconic of some prior essential character.”
I take the “Japanese blood” to be one such sign because its aura of materi-
ality helps naturalize the conflation of nation, family, phenotype, and culture.
°e “iconography of consanguineous unity” is an ingenious way to character-
ize this conflation, for it captures the materiality, inviolability, and touch of sa-
credness that emanate from the sign.15 It is in this sense that I characterize the
social belonging bound by the “Japanese blood” as material kinship. In mate-
rial kinship, the recognition of arbitrariness between what binds and what is
bound is minimized because people learn to perceive the two as one and the
same. Furthermore, material kinship tends to foreground the state of being kin
rather than the process of becoming kin, since materiality can make the opera-
tion of signification appear as a natural fact. °e case study of Nikkei migrants,
however, helps expose the nonnatural foundation of the material sign that is
the “Japanese blood.” °eir stories and experiences can serve to disintegrate
the domains the sign fuses—nation, culture, “blood,” and so on. I now turn to
some of such narratives.
Migration: Blood Acts
What the Japanese officials who penned the ±990 Revised Entry Regulation Law
may not have fully realized is the malleability of kinship. In many forms of kin-
ship, including the actual ramifications of consanguineous system, blood is
oﬅen not the defining essence but a flexible actor. °e story of Vinicius can il-
luminate this plasticity of kinship. Vinicius’s father was two years old when
his family emigrated to Brazil from Okinawa around ±9··. Okinawa is the
present-day southernmost prefecture of Japan, which comprises hundreds of
tropical islands called Ryūkyū Islands. Until the annexation by the Meiji gov-
ernment of Japan in the late nineteenth century, Okinawa maintained politi-
cal autonomy as Ryūkyū Kingdom. Its culture, including the language, remains
distinct to this day.1² Okinawan emigrants and their descendants in Brazil con-
sequently developed ethnic identity different from—and sometimes opposed
to—the rest of Nikkei Brazilians. For instance, they use the Okinawan terms
Uchinanchu (Okinawan) and Yamatonchu (mainland Japanese) to refer to Nik-
keis of Okinawan descent and of non-Okinawan descent, respectively, even in
Brazil.1³ Vinicius’s father grew up in one of such Okinawan Nikkei communi-
ties in São Paulo. Legally speaking, his father is issei (first generation) and Vini-
cius is nisei (second generation). When Vinicius came to Japan with his father
12 0 C ONTESTED
at the age of sixteen, he filed for naturalization in Japan, knowing that his
father’s Japanese nationality and his status as a minor made the process easier
for him. He had been a Japanese citizen for over fiﬅeen years at the time of in-
terview. His two Japan-born children also have Japanese nationality, but not
his wife. Being a fourth-generation Nikkei Brazilian, she would have to go
through a more rigorous process if she were to naturalize.
When Vinicius’s father met his mother in Brazil, she was already pregnant
with him from her previous relationship, but he married her regardless. When
Vinicius was born, his father simply registered him as his own son. On paper,
Vinicius was impeccably Japanese—in terms of descent and nationality. “It’s
funny, right?” Vinicius said with a smile, “I am Japanese but I have no Japanese
blood [sangue japonês] in me whatsoever!” Although he had been living in Ja-
pan for over a decade, his father quickly went back to Brazil aﬅer several years,
completely disappointed with his “native” country. Vinicius recounted:
¾¿À¿Á¿ÂÃ. °ings were tougher for him. At least I have a face of gaijin
[foreigner], European too, and tall, so Japanese colleagues were
fascinated by me. “Kakkoī [cool, handsome],” they would tell me. My
father has a Japanese face, but his Japanese was an issue. What he
thought was Japanese, because he grew up speaking it in his family,
was actually a language of . . . what was it . . .
ÄÂ¼». Uchinanchu [“Okinawan” in the language/dialect in
Okinawa]?18
¾¿À¿Á¿ÂÃ. Right, Uchinanchu. So he looks Japanese and is Japanese,
but when he opened his mouth, people were like, “What is this
guy?” He hated it here. So he leﬅ aﬅer saving money and never
came back.
Vinicius’s family story challenges the normative assumptions underlying jus

sanguinis of Japan in three ways. First, Japanese descent—or nationality—does
not always equal the continuation of “Japanese blood” per se. Second, the
“Japanese blood” does not ensure an affinity for Japan or a grasp on Japanese
language and culture. °ird, Japanese society is not ethnically homogeneous or
seamlessly unified, as the ideology of “Japanese blood” suggests. °e voices of
historically oppressed minorities such as Koreans, Okinawans, Buraku-min,
and Ainu people complicate the dominant narrative of national unity.1´
Between Two Names: In the “Gray Zone”
on the Gradation of Japaneseness
°e ideology of “Japanese blood” constructs Nikkei migrants as “quasi-
Japanese”—more Japanese than non-Nikkei foreigners but less so than the
Japanese majority in Japan. °is ambiguous social position in turn leads to a
distinct form of discrimination, namely, demanded conformity. As Vinicius’s
narrative of his father shows, Japanese appearance—or Japanese descent in and
of itself—can increase the expectation for assimilation from the Japanese
majority.
Many of my Brazilian informants shrugged off the signs of imposed con-
formity with pragmatic nonchalance. One night, Paula—a thirty-one-year-old
Nikkei woman—came over to my apartment in Homi Danchi to have me trans-
late and fill out the forms her company had required her to submit. °e pro-
cedure was to change her status from temporary worker to full-time employee.
As we sat down, she exclaimed, “I’m so happy I’m turning seishain [directly
employed full-timer]! With this better health care coverage I can finally start
planning for a child!” I started filling out the forms, checking with her in Por-
tuguese. When I had finished all the forms, she asked me to write her name on
the nametag for her new factory uniform as a full-time employee. Since her
registered last name, which appeared on her Japanese driver’s license, was
Okuda Santos (オクダ・サントス), I was going to write the same name on the
nametag. But she stopped me, saying, “You have to write just Okuda, and in
kanji (奥田).” When I responded in confusion that her registered name in
Japan seemed to be in katakana, one of the three alphabets of the Japanese
language used for people and objects of foreign origin, Paula responded:
Because I am Nikkei. If you can write your name in kanji, that’s better. If you
are just a temporary employee maybe they don’t care that much, but I’m not
anymore. Name in kanji is better; that looks more Japanese. . . . If you have
Nikkei family names, many factories ask you to write them in kanji, you know.
°is factory is better than before. At my first factory I had to dye my hair black.
My hair is naturally brown, and I dye it blonde now; you know, back then,
I had to dye it really black, like Japanese.
Puzzled, I asked her if the practice of dyeing hair black to appear more Japa-
nese was common. She responded calmly that it depended on the factory but
many of her friends had done so at least once.
12 2 C ONTESTED
A mechanism of inclusion and exclusion is at work in her story, and I call
it the gradation of Japaneseness. On this spectrum, Nikkeis oﬅen fall into the
“gray zone” between the utterly foreign and the purely Japanese. Consequently,
they measure and fine-tune their outward Japaneseness according to the con-
text. °e social pressure for assimilation increases in the full-time sector of the
labor market. °is is why Paula felt compelled to foreground her Japanese iden-
tity as she shiﬅed from the more marginal temporary labor force to the more
stable full-time employment.
°e ways in which Vinicius and Paula invoked and enacted their “Japanese
blood” attest to both its materiality and its malleability. On the one hand, they
intuitively understood the basic tenet of Japanese nationalism: that the “Japa-
nese blood” indexes the unity of phenotype, nation, language, and culture. °is
is why Vinicius prefixed his story with “It’s funny, right?”—because he knew
that his biological lineage and appearance did not match the stereotypical im-
age of “the Japanese,” but his nationality and social lineage did. Similarly, Pau-
la’s strategic performance of her Japanese identity hinged on her firsthand
understanding of what is expected of the “Japanese blood”—and therefore of
being Nikkei—in Japan. Although Nikkei migrants have an intuitive grasp on
the materiality of the “Japanese blood,” they treat it not as an inviolable
“iconography” but rather as a flexible marker. Paula’s fine-tuning of her
Japaneseness as an outward expression demonstrates the performativity and
malleability of racial identity in people’s actual lives.2µ °is is also in line with
the documented fluidity of racial categories in Brazil, where people tend not
to equate race with biological essence; instead, racial identity is a negotiable
sum of skin tone, social and economic class, volitional self-presentation, and
conventional perception by others.21 °e performance of Japanese race among
Nikkeis in Japan may therefore be influenced by their cultural upbringing in
Brazil as well.
Many Nikkei migrants perform—and occasionally defy—the “Japanese
blood,” but those converted to Pentecostalism, in a sense, go a step further. °ey
attempt to transcend material kinship by cultivating another form of related-
ness that is “symbolic” and “spiritual.”
Pentecostalism: Blood Separates, Blood Unifies
Also referred to as the blood of the Lamb and of eternal covenant, the blood of
Jesus has long signified manifold ethical ideals for Christians: self-sacrifice, pu-
rification of sins, ultimate salvation, and unbroken relationship with God, to
name a few. Consequently, its theological meanings and ritual functions are
numerous. Here I focus on one cultural significance of the blood, which is its
sanctifying power that separates the converts from the presumably sinful world.
One major ritual illuminates this function of the blood well: water baptism
(batismo nas águas). Missão Apoio Toyota held it once a year in Yahagi River,
which runs through the center of the city. °ose wishing to participate—and
to officially convert—were required to attend a study session prior to the rit-
ual. To the two dozen people who gathered that night, the church leaders
explained that water baptism at once meant death and resurrection. “It is like
getting a death and birth certificate at the same time,” Pastor Cid elaborated:
It means that you are cut off [sepultado] from the world and therefore dead to
the world, and to your old self. °en you are born again by being baptized in
the blood of Jesus. Now, don’t take what I say literally. [Laughs.] °e blood of
Jesus, for us Christians, is a symbol of life. °anks to his sacrifice, because of
the blood he shed to cleanse our sins and to save us, we can be born again as
new creatures united in God.
°e blood of Jesus is a “symbolic” (simbólico) substance that mediates the

rite of passage into born-again life. It is a potent symbol because of its twofold
significance, death and rebirth. By symbolizing death to the sinful way of
life and rebirth in the new sanctified life, the blood of Jesus marks born-again
identity and separates it from what is deemed worldly. In so doing, the blood
also separates converts from the way of life centered on “traditional” familial
ties.22 Churchgoers—especially those who converted despite their families’
opposition—stressed the primacy of their personal relationship with God over
familial obligations. Larissa, for instance, drew on Bible verses to express her
feeling toward her parents who followed a religious group called Seichō-no-Ie:
“I love and respect my parents, but that does not mean I should blindly obey
them when my faith is at stake. As Jesus said, sometimes true family means
brothers and sisters in God.”23
Larissa’s remark points to another significance of Jesus’s blood in Pente-
costal culture: the nexus of spiritual kinship. Perhaps the most common trope
in this regard is that “the Church is one family under God.” It was, in fact,
one of the first things I was repeatedly told as an anthropologist studying the
role of migrant church networks: “You know, the church is like a big family.
We dekasseguis are oﬅen here alone, without families, so church is like a real
12 4 C ONTESTED
family to us.” °ere is a grain of truth in such a statement. Many Brazilians

indeed leﬅ their families in Brazil, and even those who brought families to
Japan were still without the support of extended kin network. °e church of-
ten came to fulfill the role previously taken on by relatives, occupying a more
intimate place in the lives of congregants. One long-term member related:
My friend who converted in Japan has recently returned to Brazil and called

me, shocked. She was like, “Aline! Crentes here don’t spend all day together on
the Christmas Day and the New Year’s Eve! °ey spend those days just with
their own families and friends! How sad!” I was like, “Of course they don’t; they
have families there! °at’s what we do just in Japan.” But she misses that, you
know, how intimate church feels here in Japan.
Such remarks demonstrate that church networks provide migrant converts
with another source of kinship outside of their immediate families. A number
of linguistic conventions, both Brazilian and Christian, enhance the sense of
intimacy in such new kin relationships. At Missão Apoio Toyota, for instance,
congregants referred to God as “Father” (Pai) while situating themselves as
“children” ( filhos) dependent on His grace. During conversations, they ad-
dressed each other as “brother” (irmão) or “sister” (irmã). Furthermore, mem-
bers with age difference frequently used kin terms such as tio (uncle), tia
(auntie), filho (son), and filha (daughter) while speaking to each other, which
is a practice common in Brazil. Together, these linguistic utterances helped
create a sense of community where many could feel at home. Some scholars
may interpret the human bond sustained by such cultural customs as an ex-
ample of “fictive kin.”24 °e term fictive kin, however, implies that the kinships
mediated by blood and marriage are innately more real than those facilitated
by, say, conversion. Yet marriage can be just as culturally construed as conver-
sion, and so is “blood,” as I have demonstrated in my above discussion of the
“Japanese blood.” I would therefore view the relationships fostered at churches
like Missão Apoio Toyota as another—not “alternative” or “fictive”—form of
kinship. To my informants, this type of kinship figured as spiritual relatedness.
Common metaphors also suggest that church is not only “one big family”
but also “one big body.” Missão Apoio adopts the so-called cellular vision (visão
celular), or the strategy of church growth based on small home groups, as its
ministerial model. Each cell (célula), or home group, strives to have around a
dozen members. When a cell grows in size, it splits in half, and each new cell
group aims to double the number of members so that it can multiply again. It
is a decentralized system that mobilizes lay practitioners’ social networks as

the chief resource for the church’s organizational expansion. In this corporeal
idiom, each home—where the weekly célula meeting is held—is a “cell” that
should multiply to contribute to the growth of the larger “body” that is the
church. °e family metaphor and body metaphor fuse with one another to en-
hance the sense of unity among church members. Missão Apoio seems to owe
much of its success among the migrant communities in Japan to this cellular
system.25 In Homi Danchi alone, there were dozens of células that met on a
weekly basis at congregants’ homes. No one, not even the pastor, kept track of
exactly how many células there were, which again demonstrates the decentral-
ized character of Pentecostal organization. Within the organic metaphors of
family and body, congregants’ social networks turn into the veins through
which the blood of Jesus can circulate to nurture the church-family-body.
As the mediator of spiritual family and body, the blood of Jesus frequently
appeared in sermons. One day, Pastor Cid delivered a sermon titled “What Is
the True Church?” (Qual É a Verdadeira Igreja?). Aﬅer asking rhetorically what
kind of church Jesus would build today, he went on to elucidate, one by one,
the four “keys” (chaves) of the true church: conquest of death, repentance, evan-
gelization, and Jesus’s blood:
Anyone who is born again is living through His blood. Now, open your Bible—±
Peter, chapter ±, verse ±¶. . . . Great, now let’s read together, until verse ¸º. Ready?
“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold
that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from
your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish
or defect. . . . For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of im-
perishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”
Brothers and sisters, turn to the person next to you and say this: “You are
a new creature in the blood of the Lamb!” [°e congregants repeat.] Say, “Jesus
Christ the Lord united us!” [°e congregants repeat.] Amen and amen.
Given the central significance of Jesus’s blood in Christian theology, such a
message in and of itself is perhaps unremarkable, possibly typical of the genre
of preaching. It is when we step back to assess the social context of this ser-
mon that its unique appeal becomes more apparent. °at is, the majority of
attendants were Nikkei Brazilians who were permitted to migrate to Japan
precisely because of their Japanese ancestral lineage. Some themes of the ser-
mon then stand out as particularly pertinent, namely, the contrast between
12 6 C ONTESTED
“perishable” matters associated with ancestors and the “imperishable” blood
of Jesus and Word of God. °rough the active cooperation of attendants,
who reaffirmed their Christian identity through mutual vocalization, the
pastor valorized, encouraged, and glorified the latter—the blood of Jesus.
°e overall message is clear. It is not material heritage from ancestors (sil-
ver, gold, and seed) but the transformation through Jesus’s sacrificial blood that
makes them who they are. In this instance and others, migrant converts oﬅen
highlighted the separation of spirit and matter, which is a common framework
in Protestant cultures.2² In doing so, they also stressed the higher value of “sec-
ond spiritual birth” over “first material birth.” 2³ Such rhetoric facilitated their
understanding of spiritual kinship as transcending ethnic, national, and racial
boundaries. °is boundary-crossing power of spiritual kinship mattered all the
more when the other kinship that initially brought them to Japan—the natural-
ized “Japanese blood”—only offered precarious belonging in the nation.
Spiritual Kinship: Forms of Signification in
Pentecostal Community
Arguably, both the “Japanese blood” and Jesus’s blood mediate claims for re-
latedness. Although both serve as signs of kinship in this sense, the primary
form of signification for each is distinct. °e discourse of “Japanese blood” em-
phasizes the indexical materiality of the sign and naturalizes the boundary of
the Japanese people as a single race. Pentecostal converts, in contrast, invoke
Jesus’s blood as an explicitly symbolic and immaterial matter, thereby imply-
ing that spiritual kinship goes beyond naturalized kinship.
When church leaders warn those unfamiliar with or new to born-again
community not to take their words about Jesus’s blood “literally,” they are im-
plicitly contrasting their understanding of the sign against that of Catholics.
Similar to the Pentecostal converts in Brazil, the majority of the members at
Missão Apoio Toyota were at least nominally affiliated with the Catholic Church
prior to conversion.28 In Pentecostal semiotic ideology, or “basic assumptions
about what signs are and how they function in the world,” the materiality of
signs in Catholic rituals appears dubious.2´ My Pentecostal informants fre-
quently made critical comments about Catholic practices, ranging from in-
fant baptism to rosary prayer to the Holy Communion, by arguing that they
“do not make sense” (não faz sentido). For instance, they would observe that
sacramental bread (hostia) cannot literally and materially be the body of Christ.
It symbolically represents the body of Christ, they would stress. °eir effort to
distance themselves from material understandings of signs’ effectiveness was
manifest in how they conducted the Pentecostal equivalent of the Holy Com-
munion, the Lord’s Supper (santa ceia). °e act of consumption was always pre-
ceded by a reading of relevant biblical passages and encouragement from the
pastor to sincerely consider whether one deserved to consume the symbols.
Without the understanding of articulable meaning invested in the objects and
the right intention during the act, converts would say, they would be consum-
ing mere breadcrumbs and grape juice. Unlike material signs that oﬅen come
to embody meaning in themselves, symbolic signs call forth an intentional and
sincere subject for meaning to be realized.
°us, converts evoked the blood of Jesus explicitly as a symbolic sign. For
them, the relationship between the signifier (i.e., Jesus’s blood) and the signi-
fied (i.e., Christian fellowship) was not a given but in need of conscious and
continuous work for it to sustain itself. Indeed, it was a truism among converts
to say that no one is born Pentecostal but becomes one. Put otherwise, one must
be born again to become born-again. °is is in stark contrast to the ideology
of the “Japanese blood,” which holds that no one can be unequivocally Japa-
nese unless he or she was born Japanese in the first place. Unlike the semiotic
relationship between “the Japanese blood” and “the Japanese,” the blood of Je-
sus and “the Christian” are not fused in indexical materiality to constitute a
naturalized entity. Instead, converts are urged, in moments ranging from water
baptism to the Lord’s Supper to daily prayer, to consciously reflect on the sym-
bolic meanings of the signs to reaffirm their identity as Christian. What I refer
to as spiritual kinship, hence, diverges from material kinship in its greater pre-
supposition of and reliance on the sincere intentional subject.
Intentionality, interiority, and sincerity have oﬅen constituted the sources
of the “modern” self in the West as well as in many other parts of the world.3µ
It is hardly surprising, then, that Pentecostal converts oﬅen position themselves
in alignment with “modernity” while downplaying “tradition” as something
that must be overcome. In the case of Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostals in Japan,
they oﬅen put the label of “traditionalist” (tradicionalista) on two main groups:
other Brazilians who are not born-again (e.g., Catholic) and the non-Christian
Japanese majority in Japan. Such a Pentecostal moral narrative of modernity,
however, collides with the dominant rhetoric of national identity in modern
Japan, which emerged from a model of personhood distinct from that of sin-
cere subject.
12 8 C ONTESTED
The Marriage of the Two Js—Japan and Jesus
In the making of the modern imperial subject in Japanese history, Christians
have occupied an ambiguous place. On the one hand, Christianity represented
enlightenment, civilization, and Western reason, especially in the late-
nineteenth-century zeal for industrialization and modernization. It is during
this period that the Christian population in the country saw a small but sig-
nificant growth, mostly among the educated elites who traveled to Europe and
North America. On the other hand, Christianity also signified moral deviance
from the Japanese Spirit (yamato damashī) due to its presupposed foreign and
unpatriotic character. °e negative perception of Japanese Christians as the in-
ternal Other intensified as the government introduced and consolidated a
number of new rituals as part of State Shinto. °e political leaders naturalized
the fusion of Shinto practices and budding nationalism by claiming that Shinto
was a timeless tradition indigenous to Japan since time immemorial, despite
the fact that many liturgies were invented during the modern period. Since the
emperor, whose lineage could supposedly be traced back to the first gods (kami),
served as both the head of state and the icon of State Shinto, politics and
ethics were necessarily intertwined in the making of modern Japanese sub-
jects. In fact, Japanese leaders did not uphold the separation of church and
state in the same way as many Euro-American nations did at the time. °ey
argued that the practice of State Shinto did not involve any “religious beliefs”
but instead constituted “civic duties” of all Japanese citizens, a stance that
caused many Japanese Christians a moral dilemma. 31
In ±¶9±, for instance, a Japanese Protestant intellectual Kanzō Uchimura
(±¶6±–±9º0) received a storm of public criticism when he refused to perform a
State Shinto ritual. A graduate of Sapporo Agricultural School and Amherst
College, Uchimura was baptized by the American Methodist missionary Mar-
riman Colbert Harris during his school years in Japan. Although he was a
strong nationalist and supporter of the emperor, he was troubled by the deifi-
cation of objects that saturated State Shinto rituals. As someone who renounced
the worship of gods aﬅer Christian conversion, he found the ceremonious sanc-
tification of ritual objects idolatrous. Uchimura recounted what unfolded
during his time as a faculty at the First Higher Preparatory School in Tokyo—
which later came to be referred to as the “lèse-majesté incident” (hukei jiken)—
as follows:
Aﬅer the address of the [principal] and reading of the [Imperial Rescript on

Education], the professors and students were asked to go up to the platform one
by one, and bow to the Imperial signature affixed to the [rescript], in the man-
ner as we used to bow before our ancestral relics prescribed in the Buddhist
and Shintō ceremonies. I was not at all prepared [for] such a strange ceremony,
for [it] was the new invention of the [principal] of the school. . . . Hesitating in
doubt, I took a safer course for my Christian conscience, and in the august pres-
ence of sixty professors (all non-Christians, the two other Christian professors
beside myself having absented themselves) and over one thousand students,
I took my stand and did not bow. . . . For a week aﬅer the ceremony, I received
several students and [professors] who came to me, and with all the meekness
I could muster . . . I told them also that the good Emperor must have given the
[rescript] to his subjects not to be bowed unto, but to be obeyed in our daily
walks in life.32
In this narrative, Uchimura resists the ritual performance of “civil ethics”
by stating that the rescript was “not to be bowed unto, but to be obeyed in our
daily walks of life.” He thus implies that the “correct” mode of moral cultiva-
tion consists not in bodily disciplining through ritual action but instead in
continuous and conscious examination of the inner self. °at the principal
demanded the external behavior (i.e., bowing) and not necessarily the inter-
nal sincerity (i.e., conscience) made Uchimura hesitate because, to his sensi-
bility, the two must correspond with each other for the act to be effective.
°e non-Christian Japanese officials, however, clearly did not share
Uchimura’s view because they explicitly positioned State Shinto rituals as some-
thing devoid of personal belief. In fact, they argued that anyone could and
should participate regardless of his or her inner religious conviction on the
ground that such ceremonies did not intervene with the individual’s deep in-
teriority. °eir strategic emphasis was on public participation and bodily ges-
ture. °is downplaying of individual interiority, which justified mandatory
participation, did not necessarily mean that the moral transformation that
resulted from ritual action was shallow and superficial. Rather, the state capi-
talized on a vision of ethical personhood different from the individual with
sincere interiority—that of disciplined selves, which I will elaborate on in
more detail in Chapter 9.
Uchimura was soon removed from his position by the Ministry of Educa-
tion. Both Shinto and Buddhist figures issued public criticisms against
13 0 C ONTESTED
Uchimura, arguing that Christianity must be un-Japanese in its essence. One
of the critics, the philosopher Tetsujirō Inoue (±¶··–±9¹¹), summarized the con-
flict between the Imperial Rescript and Christian ethics as the incompatibility
between “particularistic patriotism” and “indiscriminate universal love.”33
Although Uchimura did not agree with such critics, he nonetheless had to
acknowledge the tension between what he called the “two J’s”: Japan and
Jesus. He wrote in ±9¸6: “I love two J’s and no third; one is Jesus, and the other
is Japan. I do not know which I love more, Jesus or Japan. I am hated by my
countrymen for Jesus’ sake as Yaso [a Japanese word for “Christian” at the
time, which could be pejorative], and I am disliked by foreign missionaries for
Japan’s sake as national and narrow. No matter; I may lose all my friends, but
I cannot lose Jesus and Japan.”34 In fact, much of Uchimura’s lifework focused
on the reconciliation of the tenuous relationship between his Japanese and
Christian identities.
Transethnic “Imperishable” Spiritual Kinship
°e sentiment that Christianity is somehow foreign to the so-called Japanese
way of life remains pervasive to this day. Despite the long history behind such
a perception toward Christianity, some contemporary writers reify it as some-
thing derived from the Japanese psyche. Moreover, the Pentecostal insistence
on exclusive affiliation further entrenches the line between Pentecostal iden-
tity and Japanese identity. All the leaders and most of the members at Missão
Apoio Toyota thought that authentic conversion required the renunciation of
ancestral memorialization. In the context of contemporary Japan, this Pente-
costal expectation for purified religious boundary oﬅen meant the discontin-
uation of Buddhist practices.35 °is stance elicited ambiguous reactions from
the few Japanese people who regularly visited the church at the time of my
fieldwork.
Yamada-san was a quiet and reserved single man in his late forties with a
slight limp. He seemed to genuinely enjoy the friendship with Nikkei Brazil-
ian youth from the church. One night, we struck up a conversation as we sat
together listening to the young church members sing worship songs at a street
evangelization. “So, how do you find the church?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s really great. People are so warm. I feel so welcome,” he answered.
He then straightened his back and whispered, “But I’m not sure about baptism
yet. I mean, I heard during the Bible study that the commemoration of ances-
tors [senzo kuyō] was not compatible with Christian way of life. °at makes
things difficult. I’m the eldest son and senzo kuyō is my duty. I can’t imagine
how much that would upset my family.” °e other regular Japanese visitor,
Hagino-san, was also unmarried at the time, being a divorcé with two adult
children. Like Yamada-san, he also stressed the significance of ancestral com-
memoration in his daily life. Especially aﬅer his mother’s death roughly ten
years earlier, he had seldom missed a day in tending the Buddhist altar at home
with fresh water, rice, and flowers. “I also chant sutras in front of the altar every
day. Sutra is the daily food for our ancestors [okyō wa gosenzosama no gohan].
So I do this with a lot of care.” Hagino-san was more optimistic than Yamada-
san about the compatibility of Buddhist and Christian practices because, to
him, “both were about love.” Although he was aware that the church did not
encourage the rituals for ancestral spirits, he still did not think that his love
for his deceased mother would be a problem for his budding interest in
Christianity.
°us, the brief overview of Christianity in modern Japan illuminates the
still-contested nature of spiritual kinship in this social context. °e dominant
traditions such as Shinto and Buddhism have historically played a significant
role in shaping familial, ethnic, and national kinships. In fact, the “Japanese
blood” has served to fuse these different levels of kinship into one singular con-
sanguineous unity, initially within the prewar ideology of “family-state.” °e
Pentecostal logic of spiritual kinship inevitably faces some resistance in such
a cultural environment insofar as it positions itself as incompatible with and
transcendent from material kinship. Yet it is precisely such an immaterial qual-
ity of Pentecostal kin-making that appeals to Nikkei migrants, who find
themselves at the margin of Japanese national kinship. In this sense, they are
striving to achieve through one blood what they could not accomplish with the
other blood: uncontested belonging. °e irony, of course, is that their legal sta-
tus in Japan hinges on the first blood that they attempt to transcend with the
second.
°ere is one more aspect of Jesus’s blood particularly pertinent to the next
generations of Nikkeis growing up in Japan. °e blood of Jesus in Pentecostal
semiotic ideology, unlike the “Japanese blood,” does not become “diluted” over
time because it is an explicitly symbolic sign unattached to material substance.
Furthermore, its point of origin in personal history is typically located at the
time of conversion, during which one is reborn as a “new creature” in the sac-
rificial blood of Jesus Christ. Since the experience of conversion is commonly
13 2 C ONTESTED
understood as repeatable—in fact, continual—at any moment of born-again
life, spiritual kinship mediated by Jesus’s blood is in theory also renewable at
any given time. When contrasted with “Japanese blood,” the biblical charac-
terization of Jesus’s blood as “imperishable” holds some truth in the following
sense: By attempting to overcome the materiality of signs and naturalized blood
ties, the blood of Jesus gains more power as the mediator of transethnic and
transgenerational relatedness. °is is an important ramification of spiritual
kinship especially for the younger yonsei generations who are coming of age
in Japan today. What will happen to them in the future, when the nation’s
legal system will tell them that their “Japanese blood” has thinned so much
that it does not provide even the slightest veil of national belonging? °ey
are of two bloods.
8
ANCES TORS O F GOD
Belief in the Eye of the Beholder
“God told us that our time in Japan is over. Time to return to our country,”
Luan affirmed with a smile, sipping his aﬅer-meal coffee. He had told me over
the dinner that he used to drink a lot, but God had cured him of his sinful habit.
Now coffee and guaraná were all he needed to feel satisfied aﬅer a good meal,
especially because his fiancée, Kana, cooked each one with “a lot of love.”
“Yes, it is time to return!” Kana chimed in from the kitchen where she was
doing the dishes. I had offered to help, but she told me to remain at the dining
table with Luan because I was a guest. I looked around the dining space again,
which was part of the larger living room. °e apartment was filled with open
moving boxes, which made sense given that their planned move-out date was
only a week away. I could see a wide-screen TV, vacuum cleaner, and desktop
computer lurking out of thick cardboard boxes of various sizes.
“You are bringing a lot of things back,” I commented, pointing at them.
“Oh yes, of course,” Luan said, rolling his eyes. “We have to. You won’t be-
lieve how expensive electronics are in Brazil. In Japan, they are cheaper and
better in quality. It doesn’t make sense to leave them here. We are bringing the
washing machine, too.”
“A washing machine? From Japan to Brazil?” I gasped.
Luan and Kana giggled, amused by my shocked expression. “We already
bought a plan with lots of space with the moving company—two meters in all
13 4 C ONTESTED
the directions—so they’ll all fit. We need all of them to start our new life there,”
Luan explained. °ey smiled at each other. °eir wedding was scheduled sev-
eral months aﬅerward in Kana’s hometown in Paraná, Brazil. “Japan has been
great—above all, we now have faith and will bring it back to Brazil to start our
new life together with God,” Kana said, wiping her wet hands with her apron
as she sat down at the dinner table. Judging that it was the right time, I put out
a voice recorder and asked if I could start the interview—the original purpose
of my visit. °ey nodded. “Ask anything!” Luan said cheerfully.
°e interview lasted for about ninety minutes. When I turned off the re-
corder, Kana offered another cup of coffee, which I hesitated before accepting
because it was already ±± ½.¼. Taking tiny sips, I waited for a good time to ex-
cuse myself to go home as we made small talk. It was then that Kana and Luan
started speaking about a “strange” festival in Komaki, a city one hour’s drive
away from Homi Danchi. °e festival had taken place the previous week (on
March ±·) and they came across its footage online. °e Hōnen Festival at Tag-
ata Shrine is best known for its ¸¶0 kg (6¸0 pound), ¸.· meter (9¶ inch)–long
wooden phallus. While the wooden phallus is carried around on the street,
people try to touch it, as it is the embodiment of harvest, prosperity, and fer-
tility. “Nossa [Oh my]! °ese women flock to the phallus and try really hard to
touch it! °ey believe they can get pregnant that way!” Luan exclaimed. Taken
aback by their incredulous expression and critical tone, I asked if they thought
such Japanese women actually “believed [crer].” “Yes!” they responded in uni-
son. “°e way they tried to touch it was intense!”
Right aﬅer I leﬅ Kana and Luan’s place, I sat down on a bench on the street
side on my way home, which was only a five-minute walk away. First I jotted
down the conversation about the Hōnen Festival on my notebook. “°is always
happens,” I thought to myself, half amused and half frustrated. “°ey always say
the most interesting stuff off-tape!” °en I picked up my cell phone and called
a friend who lived in Ichinomiya, a city located right next to Komaki where
the festival took place. She and her friends had actually invited me to go to the
festival, which I turned down since I had a Japanese class to teach at a local
nongovernmental organization that day. Junko answered my call aﬅer a few
seconds. Aﬅer apologizing for calling so late and briefly describing the context
of the question, I asked if she “believed” in the power of the phallic object that
she touched during the event.
“Believe? Believe what? [shinjiru tte, nan’no koto?],” she responded. I hesi-
tantly explained if she was convinced of its impregnating power. Junko laughed
ANC E S T ORS OF G OD 1 35
for a good few seconds. “I touched it but I don’t expect to get pregnant! I don’t
have a boyfriend right now to start with.” She then added, “I can’t speak for
others, but I feel it’s not really about believing. Just look at all the foreign tour-
ists who came!1 No one would ask you about what you believe there, that’s for
sure.”
As Junko herself admitted, she “cannot speak for others” and it is not my
purpose here to speculate on the inner psychological states of the visitors at
the festival. Instead, this ethnographic scene can illuminate how some Pente-
costal converts project their own understanding of belief onto non-Christian
practices that they witness. In the comments made by Luan and Kana, Japa-
nese Shinto festivals (matsuri) figured as a mirror on which their own ideas
about what belief did were reflected. To them, participation in ritual (i.e., touch-
ing the phallus) and self-aware belief in its meaning (i.e., impregnation) were
supposed to be welded together. °is is why they deduced that everyone who
made an active effort to touch the object must “believe” in its meaning and ef-
fect. °eir reaction to the ritual, however, reveals more about Pentecostalism
than about Japanese religions, as Junko’s response implies. Belief may be in the
eye of the beholder.
Faith Beyond Belief
In that they were trying to make sense of unfamiliar acts with the familiar cat-
egories they knew, Luan and Kana were being lay anthropologists in a foreign
land. In their own cultural idiom, the “intense” action they witnessed could
not have been explained without the preexisting psychological attitude of “be-
lieving in meaning.” As it turns out, this formula of belief-to-action-via-
meaning has been influential among professional anthropologists who have
theorized about culture and religion as well. Clifford Geertz, for instance, char-
acterized belief as a cognitive readiness to find meaning in the otherwise
meaningless world: “He who would know must first believe.”2 In his view,
belief created the path to knowledge in religion. By stressing the distinction
between “common-sensical perspective” and “religious perspective,” he also
implicitly painted religion as a separate realm that remains beyond the reach
of nonbelieving minds unless the entry permit—belief—was obtained.3
If Geertz envisioned belief as a profound well of human creativity that made
another reality possible, his contemporary Rodney Needham suggested pre-
cisely the opposite: He noticed that there was something “empty” about belief
13 6 C ONTESTED
in the common English usage of the term. Based on his fieldwork among the
Penan in Borneo, he described how his observations eventually came to chal-
lenge the category he had long taken for granted. Needham’s informants oﬅen
spoke of Poselong, a preeminent supernatural being that Needham translated
as “God” in English. Although he initially surmised that the Penan “believed
in their God,” he soon came to question his own cultural framework that he
had projected onto the people. Although the term belief implies a certain psy-
chological interiority, he had to admit that he did not have any “linguistic
evidence” about the Penan’s “psychic attitude toward the personage [Posel-
ong].” All they did, as far as Needham knew, was to “speak of its existence.”
Yet he first found it natural to equate external speech with internal state by
resorting to the idea of belief.4
So, why did Luan and Kana feel compelled to ascribe the Japanese women’s
action during the Hōnen Festival to their preexisting belief in the phallic ob-
ject? Neither the Penan nor the Japanese gave the observers the necessary
verbal evidence to support the hypothesis of the believing mind. And yet the
concept of belief as “a mental state of assent to a proposition already con-
tained in the mind” seems to persist as a powerful explanatory model.5 Talal
Asad famously pointed out that the prioritization of belief in the study of reli-
gion is largely due to the legacy of Protestant Christianity that continues to
shape both popular and academic discourses about how the human mind
functions. He was particularly troubled by the bias toward individual, cog-
nitive, and conscious assent to discrete propositional truths: “Geertz’s treat-
ment of religious belief, which lies at the core of his conception of religion, is a
modern, privatized Christian one because and to the extent that it emphasizes
the priority of belief as a state of mind.” ² In his view, to assume an interiority-
oriented posture toward belief, and to make it inseparable from all things re-
ligious, is to unwittingly invoke a Protestant scheme of salvation consumed
with the individual acceptance of core doctrines. Not all traditions prioritize
belief, or such a vision of belief at least, as the core driving force of moral sub-
ject formation. He thus called attention to the inadequacy of belief as a
cross-cultural category.
What is ironic is that, with the flourishing of Global Christianity today, an
increasing number of people outside the West are speaking precisely in the lan-
guage of internal belief. Brazilian Pentecostals in Japan are among such
people. As Luan and Kana exemplify, not only do they speak to the ethnogra-
pher with the concept of belief, they also interpret their encounters with the
perceived cultural others in the same analytical framework. Clearly, then, the
category of belief gains a renewed significance, both theoretically and politi-
cally, in such a transnational site of boundary making where “us” and “them”
take shape. How do Nikkei Brazilian converts in Japan build and deploy their
vision of belief—or crença—in the process of subject formation as migrant con-
verts? Does their collective endeavor to cultivate faith ( fé) really prioritize
“belief as a state of mind”? Given that conversion is a painstaking process, what
are some of the ambiguities and contestations that the ideal of sincere belief
faces in the context of “return” migration in Japan?
Roadmap to Water Baptism
To inquire why Kana and Luan reacted the way they did, I first turn to the Pen-
tecostal ritual that best illustrates the church’s official view on the relationship
between ritual, meaning, and faith: water baptism, or the baptism in the waters
(batismo nas águas). Like many other evangelical Christians, my informants
generally regarded water baptism as the definitive moment of conversion.
Missão Apoio Toyota held it once a year on the riverbank of the Yahagi River,
which runs through the center of the city.
°e church invested a considerable amount of time and energy to ensure
that all the new converts “knew what it meant” to take part in water baptism.
Initiates had to be completely sure, the leaders would say, because there was
no way to “deconvert” aﬅer water baptism. Prospective converts had to go
through several steps. Several months prior to the ritual, which was scheduled
in August, the leaders of my home group started asking whether anyone un-
converted had the intention of participating in the baptism that year. “If you
want to be baptized, please come talk to us,” they would say, “because you want
to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into.” °ose who were
judged ready for water baptism by home group leaders then attended the pre-
paratory study session, which took place roughly two weeks before the
ceremony. Pastor Cid lectured on the meaning of conversion every born-
again Christian must know, such as the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the sav-
ior. In the next step, prospective converts filled out and turned in a form to
demonstrate their sincere intention. Aside from basic personal information,
the form included items such as “Describe Previous Experiences with God.”
Finally, the weekend before the day of water baptism, those who had fulfilled
all the previous requirements performed the “confession of faith.” One by one,
13 8 C ONTESTED
prospective converts stood before the whole congregation to give a short
speech about their sincere desire to follow Jesus Christ. As the process shows,
the church laid out a closely monitored roadmap to the moment of conversion
“to make sure everyone understands what the ceremony means,” to borrow
the pastor’s phrase.
In ¸0±¹, the water baptism took place on August ±¸, Tuesday, during a pe-
riod commonly referred to as obon yasumi (obon vacation) in Japan. Obon is a
Japanese Buddhist custom to commemorate the spirits of ancestors who are
said to return to the world of the living for roughly three days around August ±·.
It is customary to travel back to one’s hometown and visit the ancestral grave,
which is the official reason why many employers grant multiple holidays around
obon. °e majority of Brazilians in Japan, however, are not Buddhist and the
custom of obon does not concern most of them. But the obon vacation is a dif-
ferent matter. It is typically seven days long in the so-called Toyota calendar
adopted by the factories that have direct and indirect business relations with
the Toyota Motor Corporation.³ Since most congregants at Missão Apoio
Toyota worked in factories that granted the obon vacation based on the calen-
dar, it was virtually a collective weeklong summer vacation for everyone. Some
families leﬅ for a beach in Southern Aichi, neighboring Mie, or tropical Oki-
nawa as soon as the vacation started. Most of those who remained in Toyota
gathered on the riverbank of the Yahagi River to welcome the new members of
the church. I arrived barely in time, having just returned from Hyogo that
morning aﬅer visiting my ancestral graves there the previous weekend. To my
relatives who insisted that I should stay longer to show respect to ancestors,
I mumbled apologetically that I had research to conduct.
Around noon, those who were going to be baptized—roughly two dozen
of them—put on white robes and formed a circle, which was in turn surrounded
by all the other attendants. °e ceremony started with a reading of biblical pas-
sages about the baptism of Jesus Christ by John the Baptist. °e microphone
went back and forth between Pastor Cid and Lucas, the interpreter, aﬅer each
verse to provide a bilingual procession. Although the majority of new converts
understood only the pastor’s words in Portuguese, the younger ones—two
of them born in Japan, as far as I knew—likely listened primarily to the inter-
preter’s Japanese translation. Aﬅer the reading, the pastor reviewed the mean-
ing of water baptism once again. It is a reaffirmation of a life in sanctity sepa-
rate from the world; it is grounded on your own decision to have a personal
relationship with Jesus; it is a moment of death to the old self and rebirth of
F IG UR E 5 . Two pastors and two initiates who are about to immerse in the water at the
Yahagi River, Toyota City. Photo taken by the author during the water baptism in ¸0±¹.
the new self. °en, led by the pastors and presbyters, the initiates started down
the riverbank toward the water. Due to the typhoon that had just passed, the
water was brown and the current was faster than usual. °e pastors, the pres-
byters, and the first initiates to be baptized stepped into the water with caution.
“Sister Aline,” Pastor Cid started:
Å»ÃÆÇÈ. Is it your free and spontaneous will to be baptized?
ÊË¿ÀÌ. Yes.
Å»ÃÆÇÈ. Do you believe that our Lord Jesus died and resurrected for
your sins?
ÊË¿ÀÌ. Yes.
Å»ÃÆÇÈ. Do you promise to serve and love Him every day of your life?
ÊË¿ÀÌ. Yes.
Å»ÃÆÇÈ. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
I baptize you.
As soon as the pastor finished his last word, he immersed her into the water
and then pulled her up with the assistance of a presbyter. °e crowd clapped and
congratulated her with hallelujahs. Baptism proceeded swiﬅly from there. °e
line of initiates became shorter and shorter, and as each new convert got out
of the water, family members and friends dashed to embrace his or her
soaked body in joy.
14 0 C ONTESTED
The Line Between Bath and Baptism:
Faith as Sincere Belief
°e church leaders stressed two interrelated objectives as prospective converts
moved through the process of water baptism, from its preparatory steps to the
culminating moment of immersion into water. One was the understanding of
symbolic meaning associated with each ritual action, and the other was the sin-
cere acceptance of the core tenets of born-again faith. °ey strongly discour-
aged participation for participation’s sake and warned the youth that pleasing
one’s parents could not be the underlying motive. By the day of water baptism,
participation was ideally an expression of preexisting sincere commitment to
the relationship with God, not a means to achieve or strengthen social ties with
significant others.
One reason why converts insisted on the self-aware understanding of mean-
ings in signs and acts is that without it, their rituals would resemble those of
Catholics. °at was something they wanted to avoid. During the study session
for prospective converts, for instance, one woman stood up and asked if she
could be baptized again when she had already been baptized in the Catholic
Church at birth. Pastor Cid responded that to born-again Christians, infant
baptism was not authentic because it was not based on the participant’s inten-
tional decision with a clear understanding of the act. He then went on to rec-
ollect his mother’s experience of water baptism, which took place in a small
town in São Paulo when he was a child. When she stepped out of the small in-
door pool where her Pentecostal church was holding the ceremony, the first
thing she told him was that it was “a good bath” (bom banho). He chastised his
mother, saying that it was not a mere bath but a moment of death to the old
self and rebirth in the life-giving blood of Jesus Christ. “Without this deep re-
flection on the meaning of the act, you’ll be just taking a nice bath during
water baptism, just like my mother,” the pastor added. “And she reverted to her
old ways soon aﬅer the baptism.” He himself underwent water baptism several
years aﬅerward and remained active as a church leader to this day, which pre-
sumably means his baptism was not a “good bath.”
°e leaders at Missão Apoio thus placed the efficacy of ritual action in the
inner sincerity of the participant rather than the ritual of water baptism it-
self. A set of implicit views on language, meaning, and belief supported this
official stance. First, they designed the ritual process in ways that encouraged
interiority, individuality, and intentionality. At every step, each participant
was urged to reflect on one’s inner intention to ascertain that oneself—and no
one else—was the author of one’s own decision. °e leaders also placed strong
emphasis on the learning of each action’s symbolic meaning because they
thought that decision unfounded on articulate comprehension was ultimately
void (e.g., infant baptism). Sincere intention required conscious understand-
ing of meanings invested in objects and gestures. Many congregants thought
that without such a mental state, there would be little difference between Pen-
tecostal water baptism and Catholic infant baptism.
°e church leaders also privileged the referential aspect of language, that
is, a view that words represent preexisting entities and states. In such a way of
thinking, each word or action has symbolic meaning, standing for something
else other than the utterance or act itself. Immersion into water represents death
and rebirth; bread and grape juice symbolize the body and blood of Jesus; say-
ing “yes” right before immersing into water stands for one’s inner sincerity. °is
referential framework shapes the “gestalt” of Protestant language practices:
“Viewed as a gestalt, then, the Christian language ‘ideologue’ . . . could be iden-
tified by a rather small though recurrent constellation of features, chief of
which are a marked predilection for sincerity, interiority, intimacy, intention-
ality, and immediacy as an ethics of speech, and a privileging of the referen-
tial aspects of language.” 8 With its emphasis on sincerity, interiority, and
intentionality as an “ethics of speech,” water baptism constructs faith as sin-
cere belief, or intentional assent to articulable meanings. Seconds before the
immersion into water, initiates are asked one last time to verbally confirm
their assent to the three core propositions on which Pentecostal faith rests:
spontaneous free will, belief in Jesus Christ as the savior, and commitment
to the relationship with Him. All the previous preparatory steps ascertain
that each convert truly means what he or she says in this crucial moment.
But does this official account of water baptism by the leaders actually re-
flect the experiences of the initiates? To probe possible divergences between the
public narrative and personal sentiments, I now turn to the story of one woman
whom I will call Leticia.
Burn Me with My Ancestors: Leticia’s Story
Fiﬅy-three-year-old Leticia Kikuchi had been living in Japan for roughly twenty
years—thirteen years of which were in Homi Danchi—when I became ac-
quainted with her during fieldwork. Having lost her husband to cancer in
14 2 C ONTESTED
¸009, she was living with two of her four children, twenty-five-year-old Kenji
and sixteen-year-old Sakura. Sakura was born in Japan and schooled only in
Japanese schools. Whenever Leticia talked to her in Portuguese, she would re-
spond in Japanese. Kenji, in contrast, was six when he was brought to Japan
and spent four years of his adolescence with his uncle in Brazil. Although he
could speak both Japanese and Portuguese, he oﬅen described his language
skills as chūto hampa (half-baked). Since the education he received in each
country was intermittent, he felt that his vocabulary and reading skills of each
language were incomplete. Due to his fluency in spoken Japanese and Portu-
guese, however, he frequently received requests for translation from his Bra-
zilian friends. He found some of them difficult, especially when they involved
reading and writing Japanese. It was Kenji whom I first became close to because
he occasionally asked me to assist him with the translation of Japanese texts.
Since I did not find Leticia and Kenji alike in appearance, I did not realize
that they were related for several weeks. One Sunday, the presbyter asked if
there were any volunteers who wanted to testify on their experiences at the
church event called Veredas Antigas (see Chapter 6). Kenji raised his hand and
walked up to the front. Slowly, he related how the conversation with God dur-
ing the retreat made him realize that he still held unresolved bitter feelings
toward his parents for painful childhood memories. “But God told me that, you
see, everyone is human. We have to forgive just as Jesus forgives us and loves
us.” His eyes were teary and his voice was trailing off.
°e presbyter then asked Kenji’s mother to step forward for a moment of
reconciliation. Leticia—who had also participated in the retreat—walked up
to embrace her son affectionately. “I love you, son.”
“I love you, too, mother.”
Since Leticia always spoke passionately of God, I assumed she was also a
convert like Kenji and Shinji, her two sons who attended Missão Apoio Toyota.
One spring aﬅernoon in ¸0±¹, I visited her apartment for an interview. Like
most of my interviewees from Missão Apoio, one of her first questions was
about my religious identity: “So, when did you convert?” Some assumed I had
to be a rare Japanese born-again Christian to decide to study a place like their
church.
I responded that I was not a Christian but instead a “non-practicing Bud-
dhist” (budista não praticante).
“Oh, so you are not crente [born-again Christian]?”
“No.”
“Me either.” I was rather taken aback. She added, “My sons are, but I am
not . . . not yet, at least.”
Leticia was born in ±96± in a neighborhood in the city of São Paulo with a
sizable Okinawan community. In Brazil, Nikkeis of Okinawan descent—those
who have ties to the present-day Okinawa Prefecture in Japan—have developed
an ethnic identity distinct from the rest of Nikkeis. When I asked Leticia about
her family, for instance, she immediately responded, “My father is from the
Higa family and my mother from Shimabuku. You know, they were both
Okinawa-jin [Okinawan]!” Aside from the distinctly Okinawan surnames, her
parents also maintained the Okinawan vernacular in their household, espe-
cially when Leticia’s grandparents were still alive. As a third-generation Nik-
kei, she herself grew up speaking mostly Portuguese. When she was eight, the
family moved to Sorocaba, where they lived in a “mixed” neighborhood with
non-Nikkei Brazilians. In the new city, the family was no longer embedded in
a tight Okinawan network because the few Nikkeis they became acquainted
with were nihon-jin (Japanese)—which, to Leticia, is quite different from
Okinawa-jin (Okinawan).
Leticia’s upbringing was shaped by Roman Catholicism as well as Okinawan
rites of ancestral commemoration. She was raised in the Catholic Church
because her mother was active in the local parish. When it came to her kin,
however, she stressed that “we are Shintoist because Okinawan is Shintoist—
Okinawan is not Buddhist.”´ Although she spoke of Catholicism as a fact of
public life in Brazil, Shinto was a distinct marker of Okinawan identity to Le-
ticia since she associated Buddhism with non-Okinawan Nikkeis and Japa-
nese people (japoneses). When I asked her what Shinto was for her, she answered
that it primarily consisted in taking care of the family altar in gratitude toward
one’s ancestors. “°ere, have a look,” Leticia said as she slid open the door to
the next room. On a wooden dresser, at eye level, was a small black house-
shaped altar with a triangle roof and double doors. “°at’s the altar.”
“Many Okinawans have one?” I asked.
“Yes, but this one is from Seichō-no-Ie, because that’s where I learned how
to take care of my ancestors.” To my puzzled look, Leticia continued her story.
When she was twenty-three years old, her mother passed away. °e death
sensitized her to the question of how to venerate the spirits of the dead accord-
ing to the traditional ways of Okinawan culture, which her mother had firmly
embraced throughout her life. It was a critical issue that troubled Leticia for
several years aﬅer her mother’s death but, to her frustration, her six siblings
14 4 C ONTESTED
did not seem to share her concern. In fact, all of them married brasileiros (Bra-
zilians, by which she meant non-Nikkeis) one aﬅer another during this pe-
riod. It seemed to Leticia that the eldest son, who was supposed to continue
the veneration of ancestral spirits by looking aﬅer the altar he inherited, was
not doing much to keep the tradition going. Not being the eldest male of the
household, she did not own a family altar. “It was this desire to learn how to
properly look aﬅer the family altar that drew me to Seichō-no-Ie, because
I wanted to take care of my mother’s spirit.” °ree years aﬅer her mother’s death,
Leticia joined the local chapter of the organization. Seichō-no-Ie does not have
any historical ties to Okinawa, as it was founded by a Japanese man named
Masaharu Taniguchi in the Japanese mainland in ±9º0. What attracted her
was the primal emphasis Seichō-no-Ie places on the veneration of the ancestral
spirits. °e founder, for example, wrote a whole book on the spiritual neces-
sity of commemorating the dead, titled Commemoration of Ancestors Deter-
mines Our Life (Jinsei wo Shihaisuru Senzo Kuyō). 1µ In his words, “°e earth is
God, the root is ancestors, the trunk is parents, and I am the branch; for the
branch to grow flowers of prosperity, one must first look aﬅer the ancestors
who reside at the root.”11 Seichō-no-Ie officially encourages everyone—including
those who are neither male nor the eldest—to engage in the practices to vener-
ate the dead. To her joy, Leticia also found out that Seichō-no-Ie upholds the
principle of bankyō ki’itsu (All Teachings Return to One), a view that all reli-
gions are one and the same at the root. °ere were no rigid rules as to which
style of family altar members must acquire. It could be Shinto-style (kamidana),
Buddhist (butsudan), or something else. She obtained a small altar for herself.
Seichō-no-Ie provided her with philosophies, practices, and communities with
which to strengthen the perceived ties with the ancestors in ways that did not
conflict with her desire to maintain Okinawan heritage.
Soon aﬅer she joined Seichō-no-Ie, she met another Nikkei member who
served as a lecturer at the center she frequented. He was a naichi (inland), which
means non-Okinawan Nikkei Brazilian in this context. °ey married within
a year and had three sons in the first five years of their marriage. In ±99·, the
family migrated to Japan due to financial hardship in Brazil. Like many Nik-
kei migrants at the time, they intended to stay in Japan for “a year or two, save
money, and go home.” Leticia and her husband were so sure about their plan
of immediate return to Brazil that for the first year, they did not send their sons
to school. Aﬅer a year, the municipal education committee of Seto City showed
up at their doorstep because the neighbors had notified the city that several
school-aged children were at home without receiving education. °e children
started going to Japanese elementary school, Leticia became pregnant with
another child, and Sakura was born. A year turned into two, then five, and then
a decade. When her husband passed away in Japan in ¸009, she realized that
“there was no way” they could go back to Brazil and start a decent life there.
Since there were no branches of Seichō-no-Ie that she knew of in either Seto
or Toyota, the two cities in which the family had lived since their migration,
they could not maintain active participation in Japan. It took them roughly two
hours by bus and train to reach the closest center in Kariya City from Homi
Danchi. Soon aﬅer her husband’s death, around ¸0±0, her two younger sons—
Kenji and Shinji—started frequenting Missão Apoio Toyota. “At first, I found
it wonderful, you know, that they were searching the path of God [caminho de
Deus],” Leticia reminisced. “But as soon as they started messing with me, we
had a conflict.” What troubled her was the Pentecostal emphasis on purified
religious boundary. Because she was someone who had never found fault with
multiple identities and moved seamlessly between Catholicism, Okinawan an-
cestral worship, and Seichō-no-Ie, her sons’ “lack of tolerance” toward other
religions felt like an “attack” to her sense of self. As her sons learned the Pen-
tecostal ideal of immaterial faith, they also started interpreting her relation-
ship with the family altar as “idolatry.” °at is when her inner turmoil reached
its peak. “Eles abominam, eles não querem, não aceitam” (°ey just abominate
it, do not want it, do not accept it), Leticia said, using some of the strongest
words to describe her sons’ distaste toward the altar. “Now what? What’s going
to happen? Who will take care of the altar when I die? What will happen to
our ancestors, and my mother?” Although her eldest son was not converted,
he had been living in Tokyo for years to make his career in Japan and was sim-
ply indifferent to such matters. °ere was “no peace” in her mind.
I was speechless. Having interacted with her only in the context of church,
I could never have imagined the extent of her inner distress until then. Remem-
bering the scene of reconciliation that I had witnessed at church several
months earlier, I asked if the conflict still continued. Leticia responded no.
“What sensitized me,” she explained, “was prayers of my sons. When they told
me, with tears in their eyes, that they were praying for me with all their might,
I finally stopped to think. It was the biggest giﬅ in my life, because that’s what
I wanted—someone praying for me. I had been praying for others all my life,
you know.” She gradually opened up to her sons and began to participate in
church activities. At the same time, she visited the Seichō-no-Ie center in Kariya
14 6 C ONTESTED
to “ask for permission.” She explained to the leaders there that she did not want
the “disharmony in the family” to continue because of the conflicts she had
with her sons. She was reassured to hear the leaders affirm that “God is one
and the only, including Jesus Christ. Walk with your friends and relatives,
because family cannot walk on two separate paths for there to be harmony.”
In addition to the religious leaders, she also sought permission from God
in Seichō-no-Ie: “And God, as time went by, made things clearer for me, showing
for me, you see. ‘Yes, my child, you know the truth. °e truth is one. Take the
path with your sons because I will be with you. Independent of others, what
you have already learnt will continue within.’ Here in my mind, in my heart.
‘So, do not worry,’ God told me.” As Leticia prayed, not only God but also her
ancestors came to understand her decision. Instead of the scriptures of Seichō-
no-Ie, she started reciting some passages from the Bible to the altar, and she
thought she sensed their approval. “My ancestors, too, understand, because
what matters is family—family is important,” Leticia said. By the time of my
fieldwork, Leticia had been participating in the church activities just like any
other member, if not more actively. Every Sunday, she attended a service at
Missão Apoio Toyota with her three children. Her Bible was covered by sticky
notes, with passages marked with highlighters and the margin full of hand-
written notes.
However, there was one thing Leticia had not conceded to her sons. She in-
sisted that the family altar would stay until her death. To her sons, who
thought that “there was a way” to discard it, Leticia explained that an altar
could not be thrown away “just anywhere, in whatever way” (em qualquer lugar,
de qualquer jeito). She elaborated, “I already asked for permission, so there is
no connection. But, . . . ‘I want you [her sons] to place it in my coffin.’ If I die
here in Japan, I want that, um, to be cremated together with them [ancestors].
°ey will be cremated together with me. Because I asked for the permission
that way.” She sighed. “As long as they can do this, my soul will rest in peace
[minha alma vai ficar tranquila].”
Leticia then asked me if my family commemorated the spirits of ancestors.
I told her that I had actually traveled to my mother’s natal city several months
earlier to attend a Buddhist ritual for the first anniversary of my uncle’s death.
“I have to go visit my family’s graves again soon, you know, because obon is in
August,” I added.
“°at’s wonderful,” Leticia said as she nodded with approval. “You are
blessed. Continue respecting your parents, because the ancestors of the
parents are the ancestors of God [Continua reverenciando e respeitando seus
pais, porque avós dos pais é avós de Deus]. Do you understand?” I nodded and
answered yes. I realized that all the rituals of ancestral veneration that I took
for granted, and even found bothersome as a child, were something Leticia
had fought hard to maintain as a way to make sense of her diasporic identity
and cultural belonging. I thought of Kenji, with whom I had had many lengthy
conversations as we worked together on translation. I had never heard the
word okinawano from his mouth. What was more, he would likely have been
troubled by what his mother had just said about the “ancestors of God”
because he, like other converts, upheld that God was utterly transcendent
from human kinship.
Leticia did convert that year, together with her daughter Sakura. Leticia was
one of the last initiates to step into the river water and did so with a big bright
smile. Her sons were behind her, happily capturing the moment with their
iPhones. Leticia gave a firm and loud yes to all the three questions, and then
she was under water. “Eitcha Glória [Glory to God]!” She exclaimed as she
walked back to the bank all soaked, with her arms up to the sky. Her sons helped
her get out of the river and hugged her while the entire congregation surrounded
them with warm smiles and congratulations. Several weeks later, I visited Le-
ticia’s apartment in Homi Danchi again to help her read some documents
Sakura brought back from her Japanese school. At one point, Leticia opened
the sliding door to ask Sakura, who was taking a nap in the next room, when
the forms were due with the parent’s signature. °e altar was still there, qui-
etly sitting on the black dresser.12
Between Ancestral Personhood and Sincere Self
Leticia’s experience diverges from the church’s official view on faith in a num-
ber of ways. For example, how she envisioned God differs from the dominant
narrative in Pentecostal culture, which emphasizes the transcendental char-
acter of God and the radical break between the human and the divine.13 To Le-
ticia, who creatively combined a number of approaches accumulated through
her past affiliations, what characterized the space between humans and dei-
ties was not a radical rupture but gradual continuity. °is is the most obvious
in how she related to the ancestral spirits, including her own deceased mother.
In her view, living humans eventually transitioned into ancestral spirits,
making the continuous character of human-divine relationship tangible. °is
14 8 C ONTESTED
human-divine continuity across generations was essential to Leticia’s sense of
cultural identity, which was Okinawan. She cherished the family altar as a ma-
terial medium that crystallized her continuing ties with the ancestors, spir-
its, and homelands. Additionally, the altar was a tangible nexus of what Jacob
Hickman called “ancestral personhood,” or “a particular view of the life
course as eternally embedded in kinship-based relationships and hierarchies
that are enacted through ritual and discourse.”14
Initially, she was deeply hurt by her children’s insistence on immaterial faith
and purified religious boundary, which undergirded the accusation that she
was practicing idolatry.15 Although she eventually opened up to her sons and
started participating in church activities, her narrative still resists the radical
break from the past that oﬅen accompanies Pentecostal conversion. Indeed, she
asked for permission to convert from the Seichō-no-Ie leaders as well as the
ancestral spirits, which shows her effort for peaceful transition rather than sud-
den rupture. She also rejected her sons’ request to discard the family altar.
Although she “severed the tie” with the object, she insisted that the ancestral
spirits gave her permission to do so only on the condition that they would be
cremated with her upon her death. Furthermore, her motive for conversion also
defies the model of individual sincere belief that church leaders upheld. To
Leticia, “what matters is family—family is important.” Her participation in
Pentecostal activities was in large part driven by her desire to restore “har-
mony” in the family, which runs counter to the primary emphasis the church
leaders placed on the individual relationship with God.
Faith as Relational Commitment
Does all this mean that her conversion was inauthentic? Or, to put it more
bluntly, did she lie when she answered “yes” to all the three questions seconds
before immersing into water? Although no one except Leticia can ever know
what was going through her mind during water baptism, many of her fellow
congregants would likely perceive her action as inauthentic should they
discover the altar at her home. As far as the official views of the church are
concerned, maintaining an ancestral altar contradicts the tenet expressed in
one of the questions—to “serve and love Him every day of your life”—because
doing so is to allow the presence of other spirits to linger on. Leticia’s desire
for familial harmony, along with the principal role it played in her decision to
convert, may also go against the church’s interpretation of “being baptized
out of your free and spontaneous will.” Although the firmness of her will is
hardly contestable, she seemed to draw her strength from her connectedness—
with her children, family, and ancestors—rather than from her individuality.
Conversion driven by the sense of commitment to family was something that
the church typically frowned on, since it was ideally the personal relationship
with God that should move one to such a decision.
Of course, that the church had to repeatedly stress the individuality of con-
version experience indicates that there were always some who failed to meet
this ideal. A handful of congregants at Missão Apoio Toyota indeed told
me that they had initially undergone water baptism out of the sense of obliga-
tion to their converted family members. Beatriz, for instance, told me matter-
of-factly that she underwent baptism “following everyone’s lead [nori-de]” at
the age of fiﬅeen. “Everyone was getting baptized, so I thought it was only
natural for me to do the same thing.” Not surprisingly, such an admission of-
ten came from “second-generation crentes,” or the younger generation who
grew up in the church. Typically, it was their parents who migrated from Bra-
zil and converted to Pentecostalism in Japan. °e church leaders were aware
of this generational shiﬅ, along with the moral threat it posed to what they
viewed as authentic conversion experience.
Aﬅer the reading of biblical passages during water baptism, Pastor Cid
called two prospective converts to his side. He wanted them to speak about
their experiences with God before the immersion into water. °e first man,
seemingly in his forties, spoke about his difficult life as a migrant laborer in
Japan, indulgence in sinful ways of life to fill the emptiness he felt within, and
eventual encounter with Jesus Christ as the savior. Before he passed the mi-
crophone to the next person, a teenage girl with a shy smile, the pastor inserted
his view on “the new generation of crentes.” “Since she grew up in a godly home,
she never experienced the world [aproveitou o mundo]. Sometimes this makes
it more difficult to understand how precious the encounter with God is, but
here she is—she wants to have an individual relationship with God for the rest
of her life!” Her parents—a third-generation Nikkei mother and a non-Nikkei
father who had converted together in Japan right before her birth—were smil-
ing with pride in front of her. °e pastor’s remark ironically suggested that a
sizable number of converts—particularly the younger ones raised in Pentecos-
tal homes—went through water baptism in ways that did not live up to the
ideal of individual sincere belief. And many church leaders were aware of such
a phenomenon—conversion as familial obligation and social conformity.
15 0 C ONTESTED
And this is where I would like to highlight relational commitment as an in-
tegral part of faith in this ethnographic context. Most of my informants, of
course, would disagree with me. To them, those who converted primarily to
commit to their families and friends were being inauthentic. As an ethnogra-
pher, however, my concern encompasses both the exemplary and the prag-
matic, that is, both envisioned ideals as well as actual practices. When a
sizable number of my informants consistently diverge from the ideal scenario,
I must entertain the possibility that they are not a group of outliers but rather
a legitimate constituency that shapes shared cultural reality. Moreover, I am
not the first to point out that Christians—even charismatic Christians—are
not quite the believers that they claim or appear to be. Granted, Protestant
branches of Christianity have been interpreted first and foremost as cultures
of sincere belief.1² However, an increasing number of ethnographers have been
reevaluating the equation of belief with individualized propositional assent.
°omas Kirsch, for example, advocated replacing belief, defined as an achieved
interior state, with believing defined instead as a condition that is constantly
sought aﬅer and always in the process of being internalized.1³ Similarly, in an
article entitled “Faith Beyond Belief” based on a study of American evan-
gelical churches, Omri Elisha asked: “Is it possible that evangelical Protestants
are not quite the believers that they appear to be?” 18 He then suggested that
the analytical vocabulary of anthropologists should attend to faith, which
shapes “the practice of performative rituals and religious disciplines.”1´ Along a
similar line, Brian Howell argued that the cross-cultural study of Christianity
would benefit from recasting belief as commitment. 2µ °e Filipino Baptists of
his ethnography were less concerned with whether everyone affirmed the
same doctrines than with whether everyone was equally invested in everyday
ritual life. James Bielo also observed that the “emerging evangelicals” in the
contemporary United States “have shiﬅed the organizing logic of their reli-
gious selves from doctrinal belief to the cultivation of community relation-
ships.”21 In fact, such Christians “seek a faith where human-human relation-
ships are a precondition for human-divine relations to flourish.”22 Taking
cues from these scholars, I suggest that faith as a cultural reality at Missão
Apoio is more than just an individual cognitive belief; it is also a relational
commitment to social and spiritual others. Seen in this light, Leticia—or any-
one else who converted to foster human-human relationships, for that matter—
was not necessarily being inauthentic during water baptism. Characterizing
her conversion as insincere is to privilege the referential aspect of language
and action. Words, however, do not merely represent but also act, achieve, and
perform. 23
If “yes” in water baptism was a speech act rather than a descriptive state-
ment, what did it achieve? °e most obvious answer in the case of Leticia is
that it performed faith as relational commitment. By uttering “yes” to a circle
of audience members who were there to bear witness, she publicly declared and,
to some degree, achieved her commitment to social others. If the personal
relationship between oneself and God were truly the only dimension of faith,
water baptism would not require the presence of witnesses—social others who
watch, listen, embrace, and applaud new converts. Yet it very much does. Water
baptism was a collective and celebratory occasion at Missão Apoio, as it is at
innumerable other churches around the world.
Communion: The Ontological Unity of the Social
and the Religious
In fact, the ceremony of water baptism itself was only a small part of the day’s
gathering. By the time the new converts—still in soaked clothes—were par-
taking in their first Lord’s Supper on the riverbank, we could already smell
burning charcoal in the air. As soon as the “official” part ended in the early
aﬅernoon, the roughly one hundred attendants quickly gathered around a
dozen barbecue grills that they had set up and started a festive churrasco (bar-
becue party). °ey ate thick meat chunks, drank guaraná soﬅ drinks, grilled
banana for dessert (something Japanese people seldom do), played soccer when
they became full, and listened to Brazilian gospel music pouring out of the large
speakers someone had brought on a truck. °e party went on aﬅer dark as well
with the help of portable camp lights. Surrounding one such light, my home
group members sat in a circle and sang worship songs to the tune of the guitar
Presbyter Bruno played. Aﬅer a whole day by the river, everyone looked relaxed
and content.
“Crentes gostam muito de comunhão, né?” [Born-agains love communion,
right?], Presbyter Bruno said as he put down his guitar on the ground. “Actu-
ally, that’s the first impression people have about us. We are always getting
together. Church, Bible study, prayer group, fundraising party, and churrasco.
It’s true, it’s like having a second job to be a crente.” Everyone giggled. “But we
do this for God, to praise the name of Jesus, to offer our fellowship to the glory
of His Kingdom.” He paused and then added, “°e biggest error we men can
15 2 C ONTESTED
make, the most serious error, is to think that ‘I can do it alone.’ We can’t. We
need God for everything. Let’s not forget that we are completely dependent on
Him. It’s very important to have an intimate and constant communion with
God [É importantíssimo ter uma comunhão íntima e constante com Deus],
okay?” Note the multiple connotations of comunhão, which shares the same
Latin root with such words as comum (common), comunicar (communicate),
and comunidade (community). On the one hand, comunhão refers to the close
companionship of those who self-identify as Christians, or what they call
“brothers and sisters in faith.” Presbyter Bruno half-jokingly characterized the
dense human relationships facilitated by the church as a “second job.” To him,
this was among the main features of Pentecostal life that outsiders took notice
of at first glance. On the other hand, comunhão also means the intimate and
personal relationship that each convert ideally cultivates with God. Presbyter
Bruno emphasized that the “intimate and constant communion with God” was
integral to the moral subjectivity that he described as “complete dependence
on God.” At churches like Missão Apoio, prayer was key to this latter kind of
comunhão. In fact, some converts compared prayer to water; prayer was to co-
munhão as water was to life. °ey would also add that comunhão was in fact
life itself, because human life depended on divine grace.
°e layered import of comunhão becomes even more apparent in light of
yet another meaning of the word: the Eucharist, or the Holy Communion based
on Jesus Christ’s last meal. Although this usage of the term is commonplace
in the Portuguese language, the congregants at Missão Apoio Toyota referred
to their Pentecostal Eucharist as santa ceia (the “holy supper” or the Lord’s Sup-
per) and never identified it as a comunhão. °ey used comunhão to refer to the
Catholic Eucharist, as Catholic Brazilians themselves did consistently. At first
glance, this is a straightforward linguistic tactic to construct a desired theo-
logical boundary: comunhão for Catholics and santa ceia for Pentecostals. But
the fact that Pentecostal converts reserved the word comunhão for relational-
ity, both human-human and human-divine, points to something more pro-
found. °is rhetorical choice is, first, a refusal to contain the connotation of
communion within a bounded ritual setting and, second, an attempt to per-
meate human sociality with divine presence. Ideally, even a churrasco party is
just as much of a communion as the formal Lord’s Supper to the extent that
the upheld purpose is to “praise the name of Jesus.” °e multivocal character
of comunhão as a concept points to the inseparability of social fellowship and
charismatic faith. How the day of water baptism unfolded also supports this
observation. °e water baptism and the first Lord’s Supper were followed by a
festive barbecue party, which congregants considered as an equally effective
occasion for fostering comunhão. From the very outset of one’s life as a crente,
then, the human-human relationality is an integral part of, and even the very
condition for, the cultivation of human-divine relationality.
°ere is something ontologically significant about the collapsing of the dis-
tinction between “the social” and “the religious” that the Pentecostal concept
of comunhão seems to strive for. °is is so because it defies the conventional
line that generations of social scientists have reified by discussing various
“social” motives and benefits surrounding religion. Religion is about “social
support,” “social network,” “social solidarity,” “social strategy,” and “social
capital,” just to name a few. 24 To the extent that such interpretations resonate
well with the view of religion as collective effervescence, they attest to the en-
during influence of Durkheimian legacy in the study of religion.25 Such an
analytical prioritization of the social, however, implicitly reinforces the
conceptual split between the secular and the religious as well as the public
and the private. Not all cultural realities adopt these dichotomous categories,
which are modern discursive configurations first articulated in the West.2²
Pentecostalism is a case in point. As David Smilde observed in his study of
evangelical Christianity in Venezuela, “°ere is no natural distinction be-
tween religious and nonreligious goals; this common distinction always de-
pends on the religious meanings used to conceptualize it.”2³ Depending on the
aim, process, and intent, the same act can be “holy and Christian” or “unholy
and of the world.” Scholars must take seriously the fact that Christian converts,
like any other cultural group, are creating, reaffirming, and sometimes con-
testing their own concepts and theories about the world. °e Pentecostal no-
tion of comunhão shows that there is no given or fixed distinction between
“social network” and “religious faith” in this ethnographic context. By weld-
ing together the human-human relationality and human-divine relationality,
converts defied the ontological separation between the social and the religious
and instead upheld another epistemological category that they called the
espiritual.
°is is why I argue that relational commitment is not a by-product but an
indispensable element of faith. At first glance, converts like Leticia appear to
directly contest the dominant narrative of charismatic faith. Seen in the ana-
lytical light of comunhão, however, they are not necessarily inauthentic pre-
tenders but instead genuine practitioners of faith.
結
Part Five
RETURNS
9
ACCOMPANIED SELF
Sincere Nonsense?
Aﬅer a church service one Sunday, I carpooled with a dozen young congre-
gants to a nearby restaurant for kaiten zushi (rotating sushi). I shared a table
with Leonardo, Shunsuke, and Shunsuke’s girlfriend. Being young men in their
early twenties, Leonardo and Shunsuke picked up plates of sushi that “rotated”
on the conveyor belt rather quickly, one aﬅer another. Although Shunsuke’s
girlfriend and I could eat only five plates of sushi, they devoured at least a dozen
each. Rotating sushi was a popular choice of restaurant among my informants,
partly because they did not need to speak Japanese to order or to pay. One only
needs to take whatever looks appealing from the conveyor belt and let an em-
ployee count the number of empty plates on the table to calculate the bill. As
we sipped green tea and chatted aﬅer the meal, Shunsuke—Leonardo’s younger
brother—asked me where I had been the previous Sunday. “I didn’t see you at
church. Were you sick?” With some hesitation, I told him that I had to travel
to my mother’s natal city to attend a Buddhist commemoration ceremony called
isshūki for my deceased uncle.
“Oh,” he responded, “You mean, like, a ceremony where a monk does chants
[ faz rezas] for ancestral spirits?” I confirmed that chants were indeed part of
the ceremony.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Suma,” Leonardo, the older brother, interrupted
with a concerned look. “But look, God doesn’t hear those meaningless chants
15 8 RETU RN S
very well. He wants His children to speak to Him in simple, honest words, like
you are talking to your best friend.”
“Yeah, um, I see,” I mumbled, scratching my head.
Although I had heard similar comments about Buddhism (and Catholi-
cism) many times, this particular exchange with Shunsuke and Leonardo
stood out for one reason. Earlier in the evening, I had heard them speak in
tongues during the special prayer session led by a visiting pastor from Brazil.
Aﬅer a vigorous sermon, he invited the congregation to step forward to receive
blessings. °ey quickly moved all the chairs to the sides to make more space
and moved closer to the pulpit, from where the visiting pastor started praying
fervently. Some congregants remained on foot while others knelt down. Almost
everyone prayed with eyes firmly shut, arms up in the air, and palms open to
the ceiling. Many were sobbing. Several minutes into this collective prayer, a
handful of attendants started speaking in tongues. Shunsuke and Leonardo
were among them. Leonardo then started shaking and fell down to the floor
while being assisted by the people around him who noticed his erratic move-
ments. °e Resting in the Spirit, a form of charismatic bodily expression that
involves falling onto the floor, was a relatively rare occurrence at Missão Apoio
Toyota.1 °at two people did by the end shows the fervor of this particular
prayer session. I happened to be standing next to Shunsuke and saw tears
streaming down his cheek as he uttered nonsensical syllables. °e wave of col-
lective voices gradually toned down aﬅer five minutes or so, as if there were a
shared sense of rhythm that they all could feel with their skin.
Speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, is a free-flowing vocalization of speech-
like syllables that lack any readily comprehensible meaning. Although the
speaker does not understand the words coming out of his or her mouth, con-
verts say, God certainly does. Charismatic Christians thus consider tongues
to be the divine language of heaven, due in part to its radical departure from
daily language whose meaning is accessible to the speaker. Put otherwise, the
shared appreciation of tongues as a giﬅ from the Spirit hinges on the transcen-
dence of its meaning beyond human comprehension. Authentic tongues must,
at least on the semantic level, be “nonsense.”
Given that both Shunsuke and Leonardo prayed in nonsensical utterances
just hours earlier, I decided to probe why they were so confident in character-
izing Buddhist chants as “meaningless.” It was true that many Buddhist chants
lacked transparent referential meaning to the majority of lay Japanese practi-
tioners today. “But,” I thought, “so does tongues in Pentecostalism.”
AC CO MP A NIE D S E LF 1 59
“Look,” I started hesitantly, “it’s true that most Japanese people probably
don’t understand what chants mean. But when you speak in tongues, you also
don’t understand what you are saying, right?”
°ey looked at me with a blank expression and my heartbeat quickened
slightly. Leonardo spoke aﬅer a few seconds. “But speaking in tongues edifies
the faith and edifies oneself [edifica a fé, e edifica a si mesmo]. 2 It’s not the
same thing. It’s the language from the heaven; it’s for reinvestment of power.”
His tone indicated that he was not being defensive but simply surprised at such
an inquiry. His response mostly reiterated the common biblical phrases re-
garding speaking in tongues, and his view on the relationship between lan-
guage, faith, and the self seemed unshaken.
Christianity, Religion, and the Self: An Uneasy Alliance
If speaking in tongues indeed “edifies the faith and the self,” then what kinds
of faith and self would they be? Put otherwise, what constitutes Pentecostal
personhood in this ethnographic context? According to Shunsuke and Leon-
ardo, how one speaks shapes how one believes, which in turn changes who
one is. °e exchange also indicates that their understanding of language,
faith, and personhood is layered in distinctive ways. Effective prayer can en-
compass both ordinary speech (“honest words like you are talking to your
best friend”) and radical nonsense (“the language from the heaven”). Al-
though the former appears to correspond with the sincere belief discussed in
Chapter ¶, the latter seems to go beyond the realm of self-reflective thought. It
is therefore worthwhile to ask what kind of moral self emerges in nonsensical
utterances, the kind of language practice that their official ideal of sincere
speech does not necessarily encompass. °e triangulation of language, faith,
and the self thus seems to be a promising point of departure to interrogate the
elements of Pentecostal personhood. To Leonardo and Shunsuke, this person-
hood is quite different from the kind of self implied in Japanese Buddhist
practices—the moral subjectivity that manifests in “meaningless chants” in-
stead of “honest words.” As it turns out, Christian personhood and Japanese
selÍood have occupied quite different, even opposite, places in the anthropo-
logical study of culture and self.
°e notion of the individual—the hallmark of “Western” personhood in
much of anthropological literature—has loomed large in the study of the Chris-
tian subject.3 For example, Joel Robbins has described how charismatic
16 0 RETU RN S
converts among the Urapmin in Papua New Guinea struggle to become
individuals-in-Christ, the sole unit of salvation in Pentecostal eschatology.4
Such a Pentecostal vision of individuality, however, oﬅen generates social ten-
sion in contexts where traditional relational values persist. Urapmin converts
thus find it challenging to fully embrace Pentecostal emphasis on the indi-
vidual mind’s moral autonomy, which leads to the prevalent self-perception as
“sinners.” °e presumption that Christian individualism is a static accom-
plished state can thus be misleading and perhaps inaccurate. Indeed, many
scholars are quite attentive to the ambiguities, nuances, and limits of Christian
individuality. For example, Girish Daswani suggested that Christian identity
among Pentecostals in Ghana can be understood as “a living tension between
states of individuality and dividuality.”5
°e study of the Christian subject has thus revolved around the theme of
individuality, while the image of “relational selves” has dominated the liter-
ature on Japanese culture. Generations of scholars have variably character-
ized Japanese personhood as “dependent,” “interdependent,” “sociocentric,”
“interactional,” “situational,” “contextual,” “contingent,” and “flexible,”
among others.² Although these authors do not necessarily agree with each
other, they echo one another in one general observation: that individualist log-
ics of the self are seldom socially endorsed in Japan. “Individual” and “relational”
can therefore serve as two analytical themes that are “good to think with,” just
as the conceptual juxtaposition of “individual” and “dividual” has stimulated a
lively discussion among ethnographers of Africa and the Pacific.³ °is chapter
explores the ramifications of Christian individualism in transnational Japan
while asking if the individual and the relational are really as opposed as they
appear to be at first glance.
“Beyond Religiosity”: Sincere Self Among
Pentecostal Converts
Sara was a third-generation Nikkei in her mid-twenties who converted to Pen-
tecostalism in Japan in ¸00¶, several years aﬅer her arrival. Like most of the
migrant converts whom I met, she was from a Catholic background. Her
japonês (Japanese Brazilian) father was baptized as an infant at the Catholic
Church, but he was more invested in Buddhist rituals by the time Sara was a
teenager.8 Unlike her “non-practicing Catholic” (católico não praticante) father,
her brasileira (non-Nikkei Brazilian) mother was more active and took Sara
and her sister to a nearby Catholic church every Sunday when they were little.
As she recounted her conversion in Japan, she constantly contrasted her cur-
rent Pentecostal identity with her childhood religion. “God is your best friend
[o melhor amigo], you see,” she said, repeating the phrase Pentecostal church-
goers oﬅen used to stress the personal relationship converts aspire to cultivate
with God. “When I prayed with my own words for the first time, as if I were
talking to my best friend, it felt so good!” She then continued:
Ä»È». In Brazil, at the Catholic church, I didn’t understand anything,
you know. It was all ceremony [cerimônia]. People did what they did
because of religiosity [religiosidade].
ÄÂ¼». For example?
Ä»È». Well, the rosary. “Ave Maria, Cheia de Graça, O Senhor é
convosco . . .” I didn’t understand what it meant! And no one
understands—maybe fathers, yes, but no one cares about
the meaning because no one explains. You are just told to repeat the
same thing again and again. I didn’t feel anything because I didn’t
understand, but I still did it as a child because I thought I had to. . . .
ÄÂ¼». So, what is prayer for you?
Ä»È». Prayer is conversation with God [Oração é conversar com Deus].
You pray with sincere heart and simple words [coração sincera e
palavras simples]. Just like we are talking here. He is your friend.
Sincerity always [sempre sinceridade], you see, because we can say
one thing and feel another but God always knows our heart.
Sara contrasted the “sincere simplicity” of Pentecostal prayer with the “cere-
monious religiosity” of Catholic practices such as the rosary. According to
her, the former consists of “one’s own words” and is therefore more transpar-
ent, spontaneous, and sincere, but the latter is centered on repeating fixed
phrases, whose meaning is not readily available to lay practitioners.
We can see how Sara’s sense of sincere self is firmly connected to the ideal
of sincere and transparent speech—a prominent feature of Protestantism.
According to Webb Keane, Protestant semiotic ideology upholds the ideal of
sincerity by requiring speaking subjects to closely monitor the alignment be-
tween their inner intentions and their outward speech. °ey must mean what
they say to cultivate the moral self, since doing otherwise is to undermine
human agency entrusted to the individual’s interiority. Indeed, Calvinists
insisted, “words are merely the external expressions of inner thoughts.”´ Al-
though Calvinism and Pentecostalism are two distinct forms of Christianity,
16 2 RETU RN S
the Protestant semiotic ideology that Keane articulated oﬅen shapes Pente-

costal subjectivities as well.1µ His insights can therefore help illuminate the
background assumptions behind Sara’s remarks. Her characterization of
Catholicism—that is, dependence on formulaic expressions, “ceremonious”
ritual practices, and inattentiveness to words’ semantic meanings—points to
the semiotic ideology of sincerity at work. For her born-again sensibility,
Catholic practices appear less sincere because they do not reflect an “authentic
inner self.” Pentecostals, Sara thinks, pray in words that are semantically ac-
cessible as well as reflective of the speaker’s sincere inner intention.
Sara appealed to the word religiosidade (religiosity) to point out what she
identified as compromised sincerity. It is well known that Pentecostalism in
Latin America typically expanded as a movement posed against the institu-
tional hegemony of the Catholic Church. In this context, Pentecostals have of-
ten associated the term religion with Catholicism and other traditions that
have historically coexisted with the Church by accepting its dominance.11 In
other words, they tend to invoke “religion” as an institutionalized “traditional”
way of faith that they may have culturally inherited (through infant baptism,
First Holy Communion, and so on) but later deliberately chose to leave behind
by converting to Pentecostalism. My Pentecostal informants who grew up in
Catholic families, for instance, oﬅen described their preconversion past as
“trapped in religiosity” (preso na religiosidade) while stressing the authentic-
ity of their current faith with phrases such as “free in Jesus” (livre em Jesus). In
such rhetoric, “religion” is something that converts must ideally “free” them-
selves from through sincere conversion. For this reason, my informants gen-
erally resisted characterizing their born-again faith as a “religion” and instead
considered it as a newfound “truth” that helped them transcend the old ways
of “traditional religiosity.” As such, religion (religião)—along with other terms
such as religiosity (religiosidade) and tradition (tradição)—broadly signified to
them uncritical adherence to inherited “external forms” such as conventional
rules and customs. Consequently, most converts distanced themselves from the
ways of life meant to be represented in these terms because conversion ideally
allows them to “make a complete break with the past” to embrace sincere
selÍood.12
When migrant converts such as Sara contrast the “sincerity” of Pentecos-
tal personhood with the “religiosity” of their past affiliations, they seem to be
invoking what Webb Keane called the “moral narrative of modernity”: “the cul-
tivation of and high value given to individual agency and inwardness, the goal
of individual self-creation, and, paralleling these in the domain of the social,
the devaluation of tradition in the name of historical progress.” 13 °e moral
weight Sara attaches to “sincere heart” and prayers “in one’s own words” sug-
gests that she locates prayer’s efficacy in “individual inwardness.” As she re-
lated later in the same interview, she felt such a style of prayer was “better than
religious prayers” because it originates “in your own heart and not in tradi-
tion.” °e semiotic ideology of sincerity and the moral narrative of modernity
thus jointly shape Pentecostal discourse of “trans-religion.”
To the extent that, as Keane argued, the cultivation of the sincere self is a
modern project, converts like Sara are embodying modernity through conver-
sion. In such a project of self-transformation, converts ideally experience
something like a moment of awakening from “tradition” and “religion” in
which they come to realize that their old ways did not allow for deep interior-
ity, sincere intention, and independence from social relations. °e Pentecostal
emphasis on the inner self’s autonomy from “tradition” and “religion” points
to an aspect of individualism at play in the remaking of the moral self among
migrant converts.
“Nonreligion” and Disciplined Selves Among
the Japanese Majority
Emiko-san, a Japanese housewife in her forties, was an active volunteer who
frequented the nongovernmental organizations for foreign residents in Homi
Danchi. One day, I visited her home for an interview. When I explained to her
that I was a researcher studying the role of religion among Brazilian migrants
in the area, she responded, “Oh, you mean, like that building down the road
with the green roof?” Since she was referring to one of the Brazilian Pentecos-
tal churches in the neighborhood, I answered that I indeed studied such groups.
She told me that she guessed it was a church but was never sure. I asked if she
had heard of Pentecostal Christianity (pentekosute-ha). With a quick laugh,
she responded, “No, I have no clue. I don’t know much about religion.” °en
she added rather firmly, “Because I am nonreligious [watashi mushūkyō
desukara].”
When I asked her a few follow-up questions later in our conversation, how-
ever, it became clear that she engaged in a number of Shinto and Buddhist
practices on a regular basis. Before the construction of their house, for exam-
ple, she and her husband invited a Shinto priest to hold jichinsai, a ceremony
16 4 RETU RN S
to calm the spirit of the land and ask for permission to build on it. °e ohuda
(rectangle-shaped paper amulet) from this ceremony years earlier was still on
the wall of her living room. When I challenged her jokingly that some may find
jichinsai “religious,” she tilted her head with a doubtful look and paused for a
moment. °en she countered:
But I don’t think these things have absolute meaning. Well—how can I say

this—it’s all up to how you hold your heart [ki no mochi yō]. Just the fact that
you visited a shrine and did something about what worries you already makes
you feel a little lighter [ki ga hareru]. °is paper amulet [points at the ohuda
from the ceremony], I don’t really believe in it. I mean, it doesn’t have any real
supernatural power—everyone knows that, right? But it’s soothing [ki ga shi-
zumaru] to see it and feel that you are protected. It also feels more fulfilling to
pray [te wo awaseru] to ohuda than toward somewhere in the sky—supposing
there is some god up there—without any focus.
To Emiko-san, religion primarily consists in “believing” and “finding ab-
solute meaning in” ritual actions and objects. Since she does not, she thinks it
is only appropriate to characterize herself as “nonreligious.” Such a belief-
centered understanding of religion is widespread in contemporary Japan. For
example, in the survey conducted by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics,
only ¸¶ percent of the ±,·9± respondents had religious faith (shinkō) or devo-
tion (shinjin), while 7¸ percent answered that they “do not have faith or
devotion, do not believe, or are not interested in such matters.”14 While the
majority of Japanese do not “believe in” religion, a different picture emerges
when we shiﬅ our attention to religious practice. According to a public opin-
ion poll, the majority of the ±,¶º7 respondents answered that they engaged in
the following practices: “frequently pray [te wo awaseru] to Buddhist or Shinto
altar at home” (·6.7 percent), “pay visit to family’s grave on the Buddhist holi-
days for commemoration of ancestral spirits [bon and higan]” (7¶.º percent),
and “visit local shrine or temple for New Year’s Day” (7º.± percent). 15 Further-
more, 9¹ percent answered that they “have a feeling of deep respect for
ancestors,” which reflects the close historical tie between Buddhism and ven-
eration of ancestors in Japan.
As Ian Reader and George Tanabe succinctly put it, religion in Japan is “less
a matter of belief than it is of activity, ritual, and custom. °e vast majority
may not assert religious belief but . . . that same majority participates in reli-
gious activities and rituals.”1² °is focus on practice, coupled with the popular
understanding of “religion” as a product of self-conscious belief, sustains the
dominant “nonreligious” self-image among the Japanese majority. °e dis-
course of “nonreligion” also fuels a widespread perception that “religion” is
for the foreign Other who “believes.” Like Emiko-san, many Japanese associ-
ate the term with institutionalized monotheism, most commonly Christianity.
°e underlying cultural logic behind the claim of “nonreligion” among the
Japanese majority, then, clearly diverges from the semiotic ideology of sincer-
ity invoked by Brazilian Pentecostal migrants. For Emiko-san, what Pentecos-
tals typically perceive as insincere and thus immoral—that is, a “gap” between
inner intention and outward act—is not necessarily immoral or even insincere.
Take, for example, how she spoke about the act of prayer. Both Emiko-san and
the Public Opinion Poll used the phrase te wo awaseru, the literal translation
of which would be “to put one’s palms together.” Although there are other Japa-
nese words such as inoru that refer to a certain state of mind and thus better
approximate the connotation of “to pray,” te wo awaseru is in itself a purely
descriptive phrase that focuses on the outwardly visible form of prayer. Such a
focus on form is closely tied to the theory of ki, which can be loosely trans-
lated as “energy field.” Ki, a central concept in many East Asian medicines,
continues to shape the thoughts and experiences of many contemporary Japa-
nese. It is an “organizing force-field” that unites seemingly disparate domains
of life such as nature, the self, mind, body, and well-being.1³ To Emiko-san, the
efficacy of religious practice does not lie in meaning, belief, or intrinsic power
of objects but rather in “how one maintains one’s own energy field” (ki no
mochiyō). In this framework, material objects such as amulets help her “quiet
the energy field” (ki ga shizumaru), and formal actions such as visits to shrines
similarly “clear the energy field” (ki ga hareru). In other words, what matters
to Emiko-san is not whether “genuine” inner intentions preceded and gave rise
to “spontaneous” actions but instead how form-centered ritual behavior can
facilitate the alignment of the self through bodily practices and material
mediations.
Following Dorinne Kondo, here I refer to such a cultural vision as “disci-
plined selves.” Her insights highlighted the cultural emphasis placed on the
interdependence between form, social relationship, and self-cultivation in
Japan: “Yet the moral weight is placed not on some sense of the ‘self’ as invio-
lable essence, separate from ‘society,’ but on the construction of disciplined
selves through relationship with others and through forms we might find
coercive. . . . But it is by first keeping the rules which define the form, even if
16 6 RETU RN S
one’s understanding is incomplete or one disagrees with them, that a sincere
attitude is eventually born.”18 Sincerity in the cultural framework of discipline,
then, is not so much the individual’s transcendence from social and material
contexts inasmuch as it is a well-trained alignment between social roles, other
persons, and the self. Kondo added, “Sincerity, magokoro, becomes sensitivity
to social context and to the demands of social roles—not dogged adherence to
an ‘authentic,’ inner self to which one must be true, regardless of the situation
or the consequences for others.”1´
Although both Brazilian Pentecostal converts and the Japanese majority
frequently engage in the discourse of “nonreligion,” the underlying cultural log-
ics for such a claim vary between the two. Migrant converts invoke “religion”
(religião) as an unreflective adherence to inherited ritual forms. °ey detach
themselves from it because the cultivation of modern sincere selÍood hinges
on transcendence from material and social entanglements. Many Japanese, in
contrast, understand “religion” (shūkyō) as a self-conscious articulation of
consistent internal belief. °ey distance themselves from it, since the cultural
framework of discipline places greater emphasis on the interdependence be-
tween the self, material forms, and social others. °e diverging ways in which
the category of religion is invoked reflect how multiple logics govern the culti-
vation of moral self in transnational Japan.
Encounters: Insincere Japanese?
Given the divergences between the logics of sincerity and discipline, what does
it entail to be born-again Christian in a country where Buddhism, Shinto, and
the vision of relational selves predominate? It is important to first note that the
cultural logic of discipline oﬅen extends beyond explicitly “religious” contexts
and informs many activities in people’s day-to-day lives in Japan. Cleaning,
for example, is at once a part of Zen ascetic life as a training of mind-body uni-
fication as well as a regular activity at Japanese schools and companies aimed
at furthering general ethics.2µ °is means that the contexts in which migrant
converts encounter the logic of discipline are not limited to “religious” settings
but also include their daily interactions with Japanese society. Some, for in-
stance, complain about chōrei (morning ceremony), a customary practice at
many Japanese companies that consists of daily briefing, collective recitation
of fixed phrases such as company slogans, and sometimes brief warm-up ex-
ercises. At the factory where Takashi worked, employees collectively vocalized
a set of greeting phrases such as yoroshiku onegai shimasu (please) and arigatō
gozaimasu (thank you) during chōrei. Takashi expressed his distaste in a mix-
ture of Portuguese and Japanese: “It doesn’t make sense [Não faz sentido].
I don’t need to shout these phrases every day to remember them. When we
don’t say them loud enough, hanchō [team leader] is like, ‘Gen ki nai’ [You
don’t have energy]. And in my head [I’m thinking], ‘Gen ki aru. Shitakunai’
[I am well, I just don’t want to]. [Laughs.] I just don’t like it; you sound like a
robot, repeating the same thing mechanically every day.” He then shook his
head and added, “I really like Japanese people, but I just don’t like the mean-
ingless tradition—so rigid. No human warmth [nenhum calor humano].”
Takashi himself was a longtime Pentecostal who converted in Japan, but a
similar perception about the rigidity of Japanese society and people is widely
shared among Brazilian migrants at large. Like the interlocutors of Daniel Lin-
ger, who conducted fieldwork in Homi Danchi almost two decades before me,
my Brazilian informants also insinuated to me repeatedly that “Brazilians are
warm; Japanese are cold.” 21 Brazilians are expressive, playful, and open; Japa-
nese are rigid, serious, and closed. As stereotypical as they are, such contras-
tive images persist in part because they reflect a certain experiential truth from
the migrants’ perspective. In Brazil, “spontaneity in interaction is of the utmost
importance. . . . Interactional selves should be more than status constellations;
inner selves should show through.”22 Coming from a society in which inter-
personal improvisation is highly valued, most Brazilian migrants perceive the
Japanese emphasis on context and social role as lacking in intimacy. Collec-
tive ritualized vocalization thus gives out a strong impression of inauthentic-
ity to Brazilian migrants because it focuses on adherence to fixed form rather
than spontaneous “showing through” of “inner selves.”
For Pentecostal converts like Takashi, such practices also go against the se-
miotic ideology of sincerity cultivated through their church activities. In its
formulaic character, vocalization practice in the Japanese workplace resembles
styles of prayer that do not reflect the Pentecostal ideal of sincerity, such as the
Catholic rosary and Buddhist sutra. In fact, my informants used two separate
verbs to distinguish “sincere” kinds of prayer from “insincere” ones: orar (to
pray) for what they considered as spontaneous prayer with one’s own words
and rezar (to pray) for form-centered prayer based on fixed phrases. °is latter
form of prayer, rezar, is what Pentecostals oﬅen call “vain repetitions” (vãs
repetições), invoking the term from Matthew 6:7. Sara used rezar to refer to
fixed prayers in other traditions and orar to describe “spontaneous” prayers in
16 8 RETU RN S
born-again Christianity. °e majority of congregants at Missão Apoio Toyota
did the same. In Pentecostal framework of thought, then, rezar holds a
similar function to other terms such as religião and tradição. It linguistically
constructs and marks off the insincere premodern subject, which the sincere
modern person must transcend through a set of techniques such as speech
reflective of “inner self.”
Catholics would not agree with such views, since their rich techniques for
self-cultivation are grounded on a different set of logics centered on material-
ity, embodiment, and “saintliness.”23 Nor do the Japanese. °e rationale behind
the disciplinary pedagogy is still widely accepted in Japanese society, namely,
katachi kara hairu (enter through the form). “°e process of true learning be-
gins with a model, a form, repeated until perfectly executed. Without this
form, there can be no transformation of the kokoro [mind-heart].”24 Kata—
standardized postures, movements, and compositions—forms the foundation
of training in many Japanese arts and ascetic traditions, ranging from flower
arrangement to martial arts. Kata training aims “to fuse the individual to the
form so that the individual becomes the form and the form becomes the indi-
vidual.”25 Granted, very few would reach such an advanced level in aesthetic
or ascetic training. Yet the fundamental premise of the philosophy of kata is
still reflected in the emphasis placed on proper form in many social con-
texts in contemporary Japan.2² To Takashi and many other Pentecostal Bra-
zilians, however, the pedagogy of kata that underlies practices such as collec-
tive vocalization gave out an impression of insincere, superficial conformity.
Indeed, Japanese preoccupation with form oﬅen invited the opinion that
Japanese people seemed falso—“fake.”
Contrary to my Brazilian informants’ perception, however, many Japanese
do find the pedagogy of kata coercive. Although Takashi attributed his frus-
tration to the lack of “meaning” in the “tradition” of “Japanese people,” not all
Japanese workers supported such activities. When I worked at an auto parts
factory in Toyota, I heard virtually all the other Japanese contingent laborers
openly complain about these practices as mendōkusai (troublesome, tiresome).
In contrast, full-time employees who enjoyed more job security and therefore
saw themselves firmly belonging to the workplace seldom, if ever, expressed
similar feelings in public. °ere was, in fact, a sense of resentment among part-
time workers about the fact that they were being forced to “discipline” them-
selves for social others—including their superiors—who could dismiss them
on a day’s notice, anytime. As the Japanese labor system becomes increasingly
neoliberal, flexible, and unequal, more and more marginalized Japanese work-
ers today share the same frustration that Takashi expressed. Some foreign mi-
grant laborers, however, at times conflate the ongoing class issues with essen-
tial cultural differences, thereby reifying the perceived boundary between
“Japanese” and “Brazilian.”
I must therefore stress that the points I have made thus far are not about a
“clash” between two inherently different religious and cultural entities. Rather,
they are about diverging logics that govern the grammar for self-cultivation,
which people oﬅen use as a scaffold to make sense of—and sometimes reify—
their identities. °at being said, I would summarize that the logic of sincerity
places emphasis on ethical cultivation “from within,” and disciplinary peda-
gogy foregrounds embodiment “from without.”
Accompanied Self: Is Pentecostal Selfhood “Individual”?
Is the ideal self in Pentecostal culture an individual? °e logic of sincerity in-
deed places great emphasis on individualist visions such as agency reserved to
inner self, transcendence from material mediations, and abstraction of the self
from social embeddedness. It appears individualistic especially against the
backdrop of disciplined selves in Japan, which seek to train the alignment be-
tween the self, context, and social others. Given such apparent divergences, it
is indeed tempting to conclude with a contrastive picture between Christian
individuality and Japanese relationality, as some have in the past.2³
°e individual, however, remains a contentious concept among the Brazil-
ian Pentecostals whom I studied. °at is, the cultural emphasis on sincerity
and interiority does not necessarily equal the idealization of the bounded au-
tonomous subject who exerts free will. In fact, efforts to control one’s own self
by sheer conscious will are devalued among my informants as “depending on
oneself” (depender de si próprio), the antithesis of the ultimate virtue, which is
to rely on God (depender de Deus). Congregants certainly used the word indi-
vidual to stress the inviolability of person-in-Christ as the sole eschatological
unit (e.g., “Everyone should have an individual relationship with God; no
one, not even your parents, can tell you to convert”). At the same time, they
also invoked the concept of individual in a negative light, especially in re-
marks critical of what they perceived as liberal morality in a “relativistic
world.” On rare occasions when they brought up contentious issues such as
abortion, the word individualista was used as a virtual synonym for “lacking
17 0 RETU RN S
fear of God.” Pentecostal personhood, then, is multifaceted, and divergent
from the bounded subject with autonomous free will on two interrelated
points.
First, the Pentecostal person is not a bounded subject. As culturally signifi-
cant as the self’s interiority may be as the locus of sincerity, such inner self is
not closed but open to the divine Other—God and God’s associates such as
Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Lara, for instance, explained the ideal of utter trans-
parency and openness toward the Other with a metaphor of the self as a house.
Many people, she observed, “hide dirty things about oneself in the rooms on
the second floor” while welcoming Jesus to “the clean living room on the first
floor.” One day, a demon breaks into the house and starts destroying the sec-
ond floor, but Jesus remains on the first floor and does not do anything about
it. When the host blames Jesus that He could easily expel the demon with His
power, He answers that He could only enter the rooms the host lets him in. “If
you open up only half of yourself to Jesus, then Jesus can work in only half of
your life. If you let Him into all the rooms of your heart, then His power per-
meates all of your self,” Lara concluded.
What is significant about Pentecostal Christianity is that its sensory and
immersive practices seek to transform such a story from a mere metaphorical
allegory to experiential reality. As Pastor Cid once put it, “God is not an ab-
stract idea but someone [alguêm]” who is there for dedicated congregants.
Absorption in immersive prayer with rich sensory components can, for ex-
ample, make God feel real: “People train absorption by focusing on sensory
detail. °ey practice seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching in their mind’s
eye. °ey give these imagined experiences the sensory vividness associated
with the memories of real events. What they are able to imagine becomes
more real to them, and God must be imagined, because God is immaterial.”28
Training to interpret affective and mental movements in one’s mind as the
experience of an external presence teaches people “to blur the distinction be-
tween inner and outer, self and other” when it comes to God. 2´ Inner self is
ideally neither bounded nor private in such forms of Christianity. °e con-
ventional boundary between “inner” and “outer” becomes porous. Although
interiority continues to be identified as the locus of sincerity, it must also be
trained as an interactive realm open to the perceived presence of alterity.
Since the notion of sincerity does not fully capture the centrality of the
Other in the construction of Pentecostal personhood, here I will refer to it as
“accompanied self.” In much of Pentecostal Christianity, the ideal person is not
self-sufficient but instead susceptible to and reliant on the Other, whose pres-
ence people seek to make real by training to reinterpret the boundary of the
self. °e training of accompanied self consists in (±) the emphasis on inner sin-
cere self, (¸) the blurring of the line between “inner” and “outer” when it
comes to the culturally consecrated Other, and (º) the eventual enmeshment
of the sense of self in the perceived presence of alterity. As such, the accompa-
nied self does not replace the sincere self but instead builds and expands on it.
Common phrases such as “I am filled with the Holy Spirit” and “Jesus Christ
lives in me” reflect the moral weight placed on the vision of accompanied self.
Second, Pentecostal personhood is not autonomous, at least not with re-
spect to the relationship with God. °e blurring of the line between inner self
and outer Other leads to a shiﬅ in locus of agency from conscious mind to the
realm of perceived Other. Accompanied selÍood places moral emphasis on
enhancing the self’s susceptibility to the agency attributed to the divine Other,
thus delimiting the monopoly of will by individual consciousness. Lucas’s tes-
timony can serve as an example here. Lucas, a twenty-five-year-old Nikkei who
served as an interpreter at Missão Apoio Toyota, was first brought to Japan at
the age of three. Although he started his education initially at a local Japanese
public school, his parents were forced to transfer him to a Brazilian private
school aﬅer several months due to severe bullying. Since all classes were taught
in Portuguese, he could not speak good Japanese despite the fact that he virtu-
ally grew up in Japan. In fact, he detested the language. Some years aﬅer his
conversion in late adolescence, a Japanese man walked into the church one Sun-
day. Since Lucas happened to be the only one present who could speak some
Japanese, he had to translate the whole procession for the man, including a ser-
mon with biblical quotes. °e result, Lucas felt, was disastrous: “Cabou! [It’s
over!] °is man will never come to our church again!” To Lucas’s great sur-
prise, the man kept on coming back every week, and Lucas continued to inter-
pret for him despite his reluctance to do so.
So I started praying to God. “Lord, what should I do? I can’t speak Japanese
well—you know that!” °en, He answered my prayer: “You are the interpreter
of my Word. You will be used by me.” But I was still resistant to God, because
back then, my favorite subject was mathematics! I hated languages—Japanese,
especially. But then, God talked to my heart: “Lucas, who made your tongue?
I did. Do you think you’ll be speaking with your tongue? No. I made it, so
why do you think that you cannot do something with the tongue I made?” I said,
17 2 RETU RN S
“All right, God.” And I started studying like a crazy person that day. I would
come home from [Brazilian] school, then I would sit down and just write kanji,
kanji, kanji (Japanese alphabet) . . . God was working in me; God was using me.
Here, the agency of his own conscious thoughts and emotions is overridden
and deemed “incorrect” by that of alterity. °e sense of the Other inhibits the
monopoly of will on the part of individual consciousness.
Lucas’s testimony adds an important layer to how the self is understood
and cultivated in Pentecostal culture. Not only is the self open and susceptible
to the presence of the Other, but it is ideally also yielding to the Other’s
agency. °at is, alterity—that which is perceived to arise from the margins
of consciousness—can exert just as much, if not more, agency as one’s own
conscious mind. In fact, any markers of the autonomous self—self-will, self-
control, and self-reliance—must be surrendered to the agency of the Other to
cultivate the ideal accompanied self in this cultural context. Many of my infor-
mants referred to this ultimate virtue as “obedience to God.”
The Baptism in the Holy Spirit
Few Pentecostal practices are more reflective of the vision of accompanied
self than the baptism in the Holy Spirit, an occasion that hinges on the
agency of the Other. At Missão Apoio Toyota, members distinguished be-
tween two different kinds of baptism. °e first was water baptism (see Chap-
ter ¶), and the other was the baptism in the Holy Spirit (batismo no Espírito
Santo). Unlike the former, Spirit baptism was not a planned event on a set
date. According to my informants, it is a spontaneous phenomenon that takes
place whenever and wherever the Holy Spirit manifests to baptize a person.
As such, the church leaders could not organize Spirit baptism as they did
water baptism. °e total spontaneity that churchgoers accorded to Spirit
baptism was clear in their unwillingness to view it as a ritual. Although many
would concede that water baptism was a ritual (rito) or ceremony (cerimônia),
they would never use such terms to characterize the other baptism. °is is
because, as one congregant put it, “the baptism in the waters is done by men,
but the baptism in the Spirit is done by Jesus.” Since the latter cannot be
achieved by human will alone but instead is dependent on the divine agency,
it is beyond what converts saw as the realm of ritual—that is, the means to
facilitate human efforts to reach God.
Given that the Holy Spirit is immaterial, how can congregants know that
they have been baptized by it? Although there are several signs to confirm this,
many regarded speaking in tongues as the chief evidence of Spirit baptism.
Church members acknowledged that the two were not exactly the same, but
they oﬅen referred to glossolalia and Spirit baptism interchangeably; when you
speak in tongues, the Holy Spirit is baptizing you. Despite its apparent spiri-
tual importance, however, glossolalia received significantly less attention as a
subject of explicit teaching. For example, the weekly Bible study usually dedi-
cated one or two full weeks to give clear instructions on sincere prayer—with
themes such as “How to Pray” and “How to Speak to God.” Such lessons em-
phasized the importance of simple and transparent speech as the basis of ef-
fective prayer. Compared with the abundance of clear guidelines on sincere
prayer, the scarcity of the same kind of information about how to speak in
tongues stood out. Whenever I inquired, experienced members of the church
were eloquent about their own experiences of tongues but offered noticeably
less on how to speak in tongues.
Although both were considered as “baptism,” there were significant differ-
ences in how people viewed and experienced water baptism and Spirit baptism.
Samuel, for instance, had the following to say when I asked him why there were
two baptisms: “I think that many are baptized in the Holy Spirit aﬅer the
baptism in the waters. Why? Well, the first baptism is much easier. °e water
baptism, you just need to understand what you are about to do, what it all
means, and accept it. You don’t need to do much, in my opinion. But the bap-
tism in the Holy Spirit is way beyond what you can understand with your head
[cabeça].” Although a handful of long-term members at the church agreed with
Samuel that people tended to experience Spirit baptism aﬅer water baptism,
the attributed reasons were not always the same. Another person, Gaby, specu-
lated that it was probably because the water baptism is an occasion for converts
to dissociate from worldly sins (such as drinking), thus “readying the body”
(preparar o corpo) for the reception of the Holy Spirit. In her opinion, keeping
the body—the vessel of the Spirit—clean and holy is crucial for any chance of
Spirit baptism. °e perspectives of Samuel and Gaby converge on one point:
the Spirit baptism shiﬅs the locus of agency away from the intentional human
subject. Samuel thinks it cannot be understood or willed by one’s “head.” Gaby
believes one has to “prepare the body” to receive the Spirit. Such remarks sug-
gest that the experience of Spirit baptism hinges on certain embodied path-
ways that go beyond the control exerted by conscious mind.
17 4 RETU RN S
°is does not mean that church members saw speaking in tongues as an
automatic process that simply took over the speaker’s consciousness. Instead,
many who had experienced glossolalia reported a heightened sense of focus in
the moment. Joana, for instance, told me:
Praying to God as if you were talking to a friend is a natural form of prayer.
Praying in tongues is a spiritual form. . . . [Speaking in tongues feels as if]
warm water is gushing out of my heart, body, and soul . . . like a river of grati-
tude that never ends. What is leaving your mouth is not under your control,
but God never takes away your consciousness. People think crentes are crazy
because we look possessed, but we are actually very aware, super aware. God
is a gentleman, and He never possesses you against your will. You can stop
speaking if you wish. It is demons that take away your consciousness.
°e remark can be read as an effort to distance Pentecostalism from other re-
ligions that some converts view as “demonic,” especially Afro-Brazilian reli-
gions such as Umbanda. °e word possession reminds many Brazilians of such
traditions known for spirit mediumship.3µ
At the same time, Joana is also hinting at a significant theory about the rela-
tionship between language, body, and the self. Speaking in tongues is a “spiri-
tual” form of prayer that involves “heart, body, and soul.” Although utterances
are not formed through purposeful articulation (“not under your control”),
glossolalia also makes the speaker “very aware, super aware.” In fact, she claims
she can stop speaking if she wishes. Joana stresses this point by contrasting
Spirit baptism with demonic possession, which takes away one’s sense of agency
against one’s will. Taken together, her comment suggests a state of energized
focus in the present accompanied by a temporary suspension of reflective
self-consciousness—what some call “flow” or “zone.”31
Just like Shunsuke and Leonardo in the opening scene, many tongues
speakers regarded such a flow-like absorption in verbal utterances as a way to
“build” (edificar) one’s faith and self. Tomomi, who spoke in tongues regu-
larly, told me: “Speaking in tongues strengthens oneself [se edifica]. You don’t
understand what you are saying but God understands. He knows what you
need, even if you don’t know it yet yourself. . . . °e baptism in the Holy Spirit
is not something of the mind [da mente]. It is something by faith [pela fé].
You feel it in your heart [coração].” Like Samuel, who thought Spirit baptism
was beyond “what you can understand with your head,” Tomomi also
stressed that it is “not something of the mind.” Instead, it is in “your heart”
and “by faith.” °e faith that Spirit baptism cultivates, then, is not cotermi-
nous with the model of faith reinforced during the ceremony of water bap-
tism. Water baptism encourages articulable belief affirmed by the conscious
mind. Spirit baptism, however, shiﬅs the locus of faith to the embodied
mind.32 And it is in this embodied realm that the experience of accompanied
self becomes the most vivid. It is no longer you who is doing the speaking; it
is the Holy Spirit. It is no longer you who determines the meaning of words;
God decides and understands it on your behalf. But your self is not hijacked.
You can stop if you wish. Glossolalia is the accompanied self in action par
excellence.
Faith as Embodied Disposition
In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson wrote about “the
myth of objectivism” that is influential in Western views on language and
meaning. °e myth of objectivism dictates that the world is made up of ob-
jects of innate properties, and words express fixed meanings that fit preexist-
ing things, concepts, and categories. In such a view, “expressions . . . can be said
to have objective meaning only if that meaning is independent of anything
human beings do, either in speaking or in acting. °at is, meaning must be
disembodied.”33 Speaking in tongues reveals the limits of objectivism by col-
lapsing the distinction between words and things, signs and meanings, and the
signifier and the signified. As it consists in semantic nonmeaning, or “nonsen-
sical” utterances, glossolalic speech cannot stand for preexisting objects sepa-
rate in existence. Instead, its meaning comes from the act of speaking itself and
therefore is episodic. °e conventional separation between the signifier and the
signified is no longer tenable here because meaning cannot be separate from
the speaker, the place, and the time from which utterances are born—in other
words, the speaker’s embodied existence as part of the world.34 As °omas Cs-
ordas put it: “°e stripping away of the semantic dimension in glossolalia is
not an absence, but rather the drawing back of a discursive curtain to reveal
the grounding of language in natural life, as a bodily act. Glossolalia reveals
language as incarnate, and this existential fact is homologous with the religious
significance of the Word made Flesh, the unity of human and divine.”35 Speak-
ing in tongues is thus a pathway through which the speaker can experience
embodied meaning, meaning that is founded not on semantic representation
but on sensory intelligibility.
17 6 RETU RN S
°is does not mean, however, that each speaker of tongues can invent any
kind of meaning that he or she wishes to experience. °at would be to make a
subjectivist error. “°e myth of subjectivism” is an influential counterdiscourse
to the objectivist perspective that upholds the primal importance of feelings,
intuitions, and sensibilities.3² In the subjectivist view, meaning is purely
personal and private. Put otherwise, meaning is unstructured and free-forming,
and therefore resistant to be shared between different persons. However,
subjectivism ignores the existence of socially informed body, or habitus, which
provides a foundation for embodied meaning.3³ As I mentioned earlier, very
few—virtually no—congregants start speaking in tongues on the first day of
their born-again life. Although many eventually experience Spirit baptism, the
church does not offer articulate instructions on how to make this happen. °ese
facts indicate that glossolalia is a learned skill that is acquired on a tacit bodily
level.
Larissa, for instance, recounted the following story. In ¸007, she participated
in the Encounter with God, a three-day prayer camp that the church organizes
annually. Although she had never spoken in tongues, her desire to do so was very
strong. She had heard other church members say that glossolalia enables
Christians to “have the boldness to pray better, and better understand the Bi-
ble” (tem ousadia para orar melhor, entender melhor a Bíblia). She was curious
to find out what it meant. At the end of the camp, leaders held a special prayer
session in which all the participants were encouraged to pray together for the
manifestation of the Spirit. Fervent prayers filled the room. Soon, some
participants—who were considered spiritually mature—started speaking in
tongues. °ose who wished to experience Spirit baptism were told to just keep
on praying with earnest passion. Despite her enthusiasm, Larissa did not seem
to be able to speak in tongues. Sensing her frustration, several people came over
and prayed with her, but she still could not. Just as she was about to give up
and stop praying, someone Larissa looked up to as “a very spiritual person”—
her home group leader—walked over to her. She told Larissa that words were
“boiling in her belly,” trying to get out. “But I see a knot in your throat. °at’s
in the way, preventing the boiling words to come out. Now I will pray to make
that knot disappear, so you pray aloud with me with all your might while I do
it, OK?” °e home group leader started praying, and soon her words turned
into tongues.
Larissa also prayed, feeling the touch of the leader’s palm on her throat.
°en, at last, she started speaking in tongues. “It was, shall we say, like baby’s
tongues [akachan no igen],” Larissa told me. “Because I had just started speak-
ing. It sounded different from the leader’s tongues, you know, like a baby. But
it was still speaking in tongues. I was not thinking to speak. It felt amazing.”
Larissa’s recounting of her first experience of glossolalia demonstrates that
the learning process is more mimetic and tacit than instructional and explicit.
°e only verbal direction given during the prayer session is to pray aloud with
as much ardor as one can muster. Implicit cues, in contrast, are abundant. °e
participants in the camp were encouraged to pray with more experienced
practitioners of prayer, many of whom started speaking in tongues right in
front of their eyes. When newer members seemed to be having difficulty,
other congregants—typically those with leading roles in the church—would
come over to speak in tongues in closer proximity. When even this did not
work, Larissa’s home group leader placed her palm on her throat to “bring out
the boiling words” from her belly. With this tactile encouragement and dem-
onstration of glossolalia from someone she personally looked up to, Larissa
could finally speak in tongues, but in its rudimentary form. Larissa’s acknowl-
edgment that it was only “baby’s tongues” reveals her view on glossolalia as a
skill that one learns, develops, and masters over time. °us, speaking in
tongues involves a mimetic training of the body through intense social mo-
ments shared with others.
If speaking in tongues “edifies the faith,” then, this faith must be
grounded in embodiment—an inchoate process of the self that is socially in-
formed and experientially tangible. Faith in this sense is no longer a semantic
articulation but an embodied disposition. It is this dimension of faith that can
give converts a renewed sense of unity across ethnic, national, and linguistic
boundaries. During my fieldwork, guest pastors visited Missão Apoio Toyota
from around the world—Indonesia, Kenya, the United States, and South Korea,
to name a few. Naturally, the congregants relied on the interpreters to under-
stand their sermons and regular prayers. Whenever a guest pastor started
speaking in tongues, however, the translation into Portuguese immedi-
ately stopped. Glossolalia cannot be translated in the conventional sense, and
for this very reason, everyone understood it as a gestural and embodied act,
without semantic translation. °is does not necessarily mean that all the par-
ticipants shared one single transnational and transhuman language when
they spoke in tongues. Linguists have shown that even the most senseless and
cacophonic utterances of glossolalia seem to have a minimal pattern that is
determined by the range of sounds available in the languages familiar to the
17 8 RETU RN S
speaker.38 In other words, Portuguese glossolalia and Japanese glossolalia will
always sound a little different. Both are, however, equally “nonsense,” and
congregants equated this shared absence of semantic meaning with the uni-
versal presence of divine significance.3´ It is in this sense that speaking in
tongues could perhaps help charismatic Christians experience “Pre-Babel
lucidity,” if only ever so fleetingly.4µ
Ephemeral Returns
What constitutes Pentecostal personhood? A case study of Brazilian Pentecos-
tals in transnational Japan yields a twofold response to this question. First,
some individualist logics do inform Pentecostal visions of moral selÍood, as
seen in the ideals of sincere speech, agency of human interiority, and ab-
straction of the self from material and social interdependence. Such an ethi-
cal emphasis stands out especially in the Japanese context, where relational
selves and disciplinary pedagogy—which do not necessarily value the “inner
self”—predominate.
°e ethnographic picture, however, is more complex than the relational/
individual, Japanese/Christian dichotomy, which brings me to my second
point. °e ideal self in Pentecostal culture is “accompanied” by the Other, that
is, neither bounded nor autonomous. In fact, its primary focus is on the di-
rect relationship with the divine Other, to whom the self must be open and
transparent. Ideally, the dependence on the conscious “I” eventually yields
to the obedience to the transcendent “Him,” whose agency practitioners seek
to render tangible through a set of sensory and bodily practices including
glossolalia.41 °us, although Pentecostal personhood may be characterized as
individualistic, it is also founded on the relational interdependence with the
culturally legitimized Other such as God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. In fact,
in that they both place great emphasis on self/Other relationships, accompa-
nied self and disciplined selves are not completely opposed to each other. °e
accompanied self in Pentecostal vision of moral personhood, then, can be
considered as a kind of relational individuality—the “space between persons”
that makes ethical experience possible.42
But this relational individuality is not a static state because personhood is
constantly in the becoming. °e accompanied self is a cultural ideal, vision,
and process, and it is never a permanent attainment. Many of my informants,
who strived to make real the enmeshment of one’s sense of being and the agency
of the Other, knew this fact well: You stumble, fall, and sin in your journey

toward the envisioned moral personhood. °ey would admit that it was ex-
tremely difficult to completely depend on God. °ey would concede that it
was next to impossible for humans to be ego-free. And they were surprisingly
frank about their own “failures” because to err is human; perfection belongs
only to God. It is perhaps fitting that the vivid experience of accompanied self,
such as the one fostered through glossolalia, seemed rather sporadic and
ephemeral. °e second you feel that you are in that space where the self meshes
with the Other, the place where the thinking “I” dissolves and the encounter with
“Him” starts, the moment is quickly over. Many migrant converts then yearn
to return to this powerful zone, a kind of mind-space that you cannot locate
on a map but can only reach through trained absorption in the moment. °ey
still speak about their planned return to Brazil, but they have also learned an-
other way to return, albeit ephemeral and fleeting, which is an embodied re-
turn to the present with no nations.
10
J ESUS LOVE S JA PAN
Moses Walks in Toyota
I did not embark on the research that yielded this book intending to study Pen-
tecostalism or even religion in general. Instead, I initially envisioned it as a
project on transnational migration and mental health, and looked for phenom-
ena that spoke to the link between the two during my first visits to Toyota. It
did not take long before I found the Pentecostal churches that were thriving in
the migrant communities there. At first I was unsure about whether I wanted to
focus on them. Hesitant, I decided to formally visit one such church, which
turned out to be Missão Apoio Toyota. It was the summer of ¸0±¸, and I was
captivated at my very first visit.
Pastor Cid’s sermon that day happened to address the incident back in ±999
that continued to define the public image of Homi Danchi—the “clash” be-
tween a group of Japanese right-wing nationalists and some Brazilian youth
in the neighborhood (see Chapter ¹). I had already heard some residents in
Toyota, both Japanese and Brazilian, speak about the memories of the event.
Some framed it as a proof of Brazilian volatility and criminality; others brought
it up as yet another example of Japanese oppression against foreign minorities.
In such typical narratives, the Brazilian migrants in Homi were either trou-
bled delinquents or victims of marginalization. Pastor Cid told a new story
from the pulpit that day, which did not conform to either rhetorical pattern. It
did not even start with Homi, Toyota, Japan, or Brazil. It instead started with
Moses in the Egyptian desert, the Exodus of Jews from slavery:
JE S U S L OVE S JA PAN 1 81
Do you think God said, “Moses, don’t worry, nothing will harm you, everything
will be okay. Now, be assured and go into the desert”? No! Moses was a man of
faith, and he told the terrified Israelites, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you
will see the deliverance of the Lord,” and went into the desert without any doubt
in the power of God. And as he led his people, without looking back, the cloud of
the angel followed and protected them from behind. Do you understand, brothers
and sisters? You don’t do what you do because God guaranteed something; you
go forward with faith, praising His name, and you shall be blessed.1 . . .
I still remember. Back in ±999, there was this rising tension between Japa-
nese nationalists and young Brazilian delinquents in Homi Danchi. . . . °e
Japanese would come in their black vans, circle around Homi over and over
again, shouting that Brazilians and foreigners should leave. Some Brazilian
youth were becoming agitated, and they could have acted in a wrong way at
any moment. Back then, we were having a prayer walk [caminhada de oração]
for seven weeks in a row, and our seventh and last prayer walk around Homi
coincided with the day when Japanese nationalists were circling Homi Danchi
in their vans. . . .
Many were afraid, and I was concerned as well. But I prayed to God, and
started walking, without looking back. We walked around Homi Danchi, as
the loud black van passed by us many times. We prayed aloud. Brothers and
sisters, soon there were people behind us. Some were Brazilian youngsters who
were troubled delinquents; they wanted to know what we were doing there, the
work we were doing for God. . . . So we walked and walked, many times, around
Homi, praying with all our heart that God may bless Homi and the people there,
Brazilian and Japanese. . . . “Jesus ama o Japão!” (Jesus loves Japan!) We’d pray
aloud as these black vans passed by us—they were not harming us. “Jesus ama
o Japão!”
“°ere is something going on here,” I thought to myself as I stood there, being
washed by the waves of amens and hallelujahs from the congregants. °e eth-
nographer in myself was murmuring excitedly in my head. In the sermon,
Homi Danchi was the Egyptian desert, the Japanese nationalist vans were the
pharaoh’s army, the pastor was Moses, and those who followed him were God’s
chosen people. °ey were, of course, not literally these biblical things, persons,
and places, but I sensed that the comparisons were not just a bunch of clever
metaphors either. Pastor Cid and his listeners were making a new time and
space by blurring the conventional boundary between the ancient and the con-
temporary, between the faraway and the right here. It was what some scholars
18 2 RETU RN S
call mimesis that I was witnessing, by which people redefine what is real by
deep imitation, a performance in which pretending can lead to becoming.2 Ob-
viously, Moses did not walk in Toyota—but he did, in a sense, for those to
whom the Bible is not a dead text. °e ancient was still alive and animate, and
the present was not a mere postscript to the grand dramas of mythic times.
I also noted that this creative work converts put into their conception of time
and space in turn affected their relationship with Japan, where they were at once
distant kin and alien foreigners. “Jesus loves Japan!”
With this realization, I decided to forgo the initial research question that
I was planning to pursue: Does religion enhance mental health? °is is no doubt
a legitimate question for many projects, but it was no longer so for mine. °e
ethnographic cues I was starting to amass in the field pointed to another di-
rection, or rather, another analytic plane. To begin with, I was not necessarily
witnessing “religion” as an entity. Instead, what I was observing pertained to
the realms of narrative, ritual, myth, time, space, identity, self, citizenship, and
belonging, just to name a few. Sure, what migrant converts did in regard to such
constructs may well be therapeutic and therefore protective of “mental health”
through some cause-and-effect pathways. But I felt the need to ask a more—
for lack of a better word—fundamental question: How are they remaking their
worlds and realities with these vivid enactments of new time, space, and be-
longing? What is happening to their experience of transnational mobility and
multiple national origins, when Moses can walk in Toyota?
Morality of Mobility
°is book provided some answers, which I have elaborated in four steps. First,
I illuminated the predominant sense of “suspended life” that plagues Nikkei
Brazilians upon their migration to Japan. Like many other migrants, they ex-
perience their movements in temporal terms and see their initial decision to
move for work as a means to build a “better future.” °e twist is that their
right to mobility in this case hinges on their past ancestral ties to the nation.
As such, Nikkei migrants grapple with the images of the past, the present, and
the future in complex ways. In Japan, they realize that the new social environ-
ment of unskilled manual labor robs them of the “modern Asian minority”
status from Brazil and transforms them into a “backward Latino minority”
amid the Japanese majority. °eir movements between multiple regimes of race,
citizenship, and national identity render the rhetoric of “neither here nor there”
increasingly potent for the psyches of Nikkei migrants. Furthermore, the as-
pirational temporality of labor migration exacerbates the common sentiment
that they cannot enjoy the present; the discomfort and humiliation of the cur-
rent state as foreign laborers must be endured for the procurement of material
goods, economic wealth, and education for the offspring. In other words, the
present must be sacrificed for the future—the future that no one can guaran-
tee for them. Suffocated by their own aspiration and uncertainty, many Nikkei
migrants come to feel that they have “stopped living” in Japan.
°is cultural reality of suspended life prepares the stage for Pentecostal con-
version in Japan. One powerful characteristic of born-again subjectivity is an
emphasis on the “right now, right here”—the immediacy of spiritual renewal.
No charismatic Christian in her right mind is supposed to say “I will start work-
ing on my relationship with God next week.” As one pastor jokingly told me
once, faith is no diet. Rather, it is imperative that each convert regards it mor-
ally urgent to renew one’s self by accepting Jesus in that moment. °e charis-
matic temporality of “right now, right here” touches Nikkei migrants who have
“stopped living” like a fresh breeze of air. Unlike the aspirational temporality
of “a better future one day,” the new Pentecostal time firmly situates the locus
of living in the present. Life—and new life with Jesus at that—must start right
now, right here, in Japan. °us, instead of returning to the future in Brazil as
labor migrants with savings, Nikkeis find a way to return to the present in
Japan as “new creatures in God.” Once converted, migrant converts also start
speaking about their citizenship in “the Kingdom of God.” In such rhetoric of
transnational transcendence, they are now members of “the culture of love,”
which ostensibly overcomes narrow ethnonational affiliations. A number of
church initiatives, such as Married for Life and Ancient Paths, spring up to
teach converts how to love. °ese collective endeavors for “family restoration”
through the affective labor of love alleviate the common anxiety that family is
crumbling down under the pressure of labor migration. Nikkeis do not neces-
sarily regain their lost “culture of discipline” associated with Japanese ethnic-
ity in Brazil, but they reclaim a new modern identity by fostering “the culture
of love.”
°e Pentecostal insistence on the transcendence of their Christian fellow-
ship from ethnonational boundaries, however, does not go unchallenged. Part ¹
detailed how the converts’ ideal vision of universal culture and spiritual kin-
ship becomes contested both from without and from within. Powerful as the
blood of Jesus may be as the medium of charismatic kinship that unites
18 4 RETU RN S
“brothers and sisters in faith,” the fact remains that Nikkeis are granted the
right of sojourn in the nation by virtue of their “Japanese blood” and proxim-
ity to the national kinship. Although the symbolic kinship through Jesus’s
blood emphasizes the importance of continuous conversion in the charismatic
present, the material kinship of “the Japanese blood” locates the source of mi-
grants’ moral entitlement to national belonging in their Japanese ancestral past.
°e ethical friction between the two diverging logics of kin-making does not
easily disappear, especially in the context of Japan. °e nation craﬅed a kind
of religious nationalism founded on State Shinto in its modern history, which
fostered distinct understandings of religion, secularity, and citizenship. Nik-
kei migrant converts are thus of two bloods. Meanwhile, there are also those
who contest the dominant narrative of sincere belief and authentic conversion
from within the Pentecostal communities. Leticia, who converted while main-
taining an ancestral altar at home, is one of them. Her creative understanding
of conversion, as a means to achieve relational commitment to her family, dem-
onstrates that “Pentecostals” do not constitute a monolith. While the church
leaders uphold the ideal of sincere individual belief, experiential diversity con-
tinues to proliferate, thus reshaping the cultural reality of “faith” in practice.
As their life in Japan is suspended, renewed, and then contested again, the
lines between “Japanese,” “Brazilian,” and “Christian” continue to shiﬅ but
never entirely disappear. Oﬅentimes, Pentecostal conversion that is supposed to
transcend existing ethnonational boundaries ends up forming new fault lines
in the migrant converts’ ethical landscape. °e tension between the rhetoric of
“Christian individual” and “Japanese relational selves” is one of them. °e Nik-
kei converts who embrace the ideal of transparent speech and internal sincerity
oﬅen perceive the logic of discipline common in Japanese society as “fake.”
°e ethical mode of discipline locates sincerity in the well-trained alignment
between the self, other persons, and social context, not necessarily in the
strict adherence to inner essence within the individual. °is oﬅen appears, to
converts, as a superficial and inauthentic conformity to external forms. How-
ever, it is not the case that the Pentecostal ethics of the self are devoid of moral
emphasis on the relationality between the self and the Other—the culturally
legitimated Other such as God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. On the contrary,
converts invest a tremendous amount of energy in making the Other real
through immersive prayer. °e Pentecostal individual, then, is not an autono-
mous person bounded off from the influences of the Other. Rather, he or she
should ideally be open to the Other, hopefully to the extent that the self is con-
tinuously accompanied by the the Other’s presence. °is ethical vision of “the
accompanied self” is the most apparent in the charismatic practice of speak-
ing in tongues. Converts argue that, in an episode of glossolalia or “the bap-
tism in the Holy Spirit,” they no longer understand what is flowing out of their
mouths but God certainly does. In such moments, they may experience a fleet-
ing and yet powerful return to the “pre-Babel lucidity,” where discursive la-
bels such as “Japanese,” “Brazilian,” and “Christian” temporarily recede into
the cognitive background as speakers actively immerse themselves into non-
sensical utterances. In this last sense, glossolalia may mediate an ephemeral
return to the embodied present, an all-too-brief refuge from the structure of
normal language that reifies their multiple identities.
I have thus told a story of suspension, renewal, contestation, and ephem-
eral return by tracing the journey of Nikkei Brazilian Pentecostal migrants in
Japan. What their experiences make clear is that, far from being solely spatial,
diasporic mobility is at once temporal, affective, and ethical. When migratory
movement fails to fulfill the aspirations of migrants, religious movement of-
ten steps in, but in this process, their subjectivities undergo a decisive change.
°us, when the mentality of “Go forward and get ahead in life” does not easily
deliver the initial economic reward of migration, the Pentecostal rhetoric of
“conversion to modernity” may in turn appeal to their future-oriented drive
for life. When Nikkei migrants feel that they have “put aside living” in Japan,
in the temporal limbo of precarious migrant labor, the Pentecostal emphasis
on the “right now, right here” brings them back to life. When they feel that
they are “neither here nor there,” the Christian “culture of love” springs up to
propose the third transnational culture to migrant converts. When the nego-
tiation between their “Japanese,” “Brazilian,” and “Christian” identities is
constant and endless, speaking in tongues challenges the very linguistic foun-
dation of such identifying categories by immersing speakers into the embod-
ied nonsensical utterances. All of these ethnographic expositions show that
migratory and religious movements do not constitute two separate phenom-
ena to migrant converts. On the contrary, they form one unified process of
subject formation and ethical transformation. By morality of mobility, I mean
the inseparability of diasporic mobility and religious sensibility in the refor-
mation of ethical self.
18 6 RETU RN S
Jesus Loves Japan
Pastor Cid’s sermon reaffirms the ethnographic significance of moral mobil-
ity. His prayerful walk in the story mimics the threatening move of Japanese
nationalist vans; both go around Homi Danchi in a circular movement, but
with different purposes. °e black vans circle around the housing complex to
intimidate and expunge its foreign segments, at least in the narrative of Pastor
Cid and many other long-term residents there. °e migrant converts, in con-
trast, circle around their living space to “bless” the people in it, both Japanese
and Brazilian, by walking “without looking back.” To the former, the place rep-
resents a breach in the borders of pure Japanese nationhood. To the latter, it
provides a spiritual battleground where their faith is tested. Converts walk not
because anything about their future is guaranteed, or because they are chased
by the horror of the past. °ey walk because, in the right state of mind, the
walk in itself can make an ethical difference, just like it did to Moses in the
ancient desert. “You don’t do what you do because God guaranteed something;
you go forward with faith, praising His name, and you shall be blessed.” °e
walk enacts their ethical freedom.3 °e tensions arising from transnational mo-
bility and contested citizenship are thus mapped onto the spiritual struggles
for freedom in their moral landscape. And their determination to exercise their
ethics of mobility comes out in this cry: “Jesus loves Japan.”
°rough morality of mobility, then, they are rewriting and reliving their
origin stories. When Moses can walk in twenty-first-century Toyota, it is
clear that origin is not something of the essence stored in the inaccessible
past. °eir origins, instead, are in the present, the kind of present that can
change both the past and the future. “Jesus loves Japan” is an ethical call to
reclaim their citizenship with their Christian origin, which in turn interacts
with their Brazilian and Japanese identities in generative ways. °eir diaspora
with three origins goes on.
EPILOGUE
En Route to Impossible Homes
I leﬅ Toyota in the summer of ¸0±¹. At the last Sunday service I attended, Pas-
tor Cid announced that I was leaving and invited me to speak briefly in front
of the congregation. I stood by the pulpit, slightly nervous, and asked every-
one to open the Bible. “Friends [Amigos],” I started. It was my last day but
I still could not bring myself to say “brothers and sisters” (irmãos e irmãs). “First
I want to share the words that spoke to my heart this week.” And then I read
the passage from James ¹:±º that I had come across a few days earlier while read-
ing the Bible in my spare time: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow
we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make
money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your
life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead,
you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ ”
Closing my Bible, I then thanked everyone for hospitality, kindness, and
friendship. “Now, I really want to say I’ll come back next year,” I continued,
“But let me just say that, if it is the Lord’s will, we will meet again in the future.”
I could see many familiar faces smiling at me as I stood there listening to the
congregation clap—Luana, Takeshi, Marcelo, Leticia, Guilherme, Beatriz,
Kenji, Shunsuke, Shinji, and many more.
To some of their disappointment, there I was, leaving without being saved.
“It’s such a waste [mottainai yo],” Shinji had told me weeks earlier when I was
dropping him off aﬅer vigil late at night. “If you understand that much about
18 8 E P IL OG UE
forgiveness, it’s just one more step to salvation.” He was referring to the testi-
mony I offered during the Japanese service of that week. I spoke about how the
passages from John ¶ resonated with my personal struggle at the time. “You
are starting to see what God’s grace means,” Shinji said. “Why don’t you ac-
cept Jesus?”
I unwittingly confused some people on several occasions during the last
months of my fieldwork. At the “talent show” of one fundraising party at
church, I told the story of Jesus with sand art, by drawing with fine sand on a
glass table lit from below. I had actually planned to be an observer, not a par-
ticipant, but then the organizer of the event asked me to fill an empty slot. My
ten-minute visual story of Christ from his birth to crucifixion won me the first
prize. As I later found out, a pastor from Indonesia who happened to be visit-
ing that day found my performance moving and suggested to Pastor Cid that
maybe he could invite me to his church. “And I had to tell him,” Pastor Cid
later told me with a warm smile, “that you aren’t really here for that reason.
You are here for a different reason. So I said, maybe in the future, when the
Holy Spirit has spoken to her heart.” Although “the Holy Spirit had not spo-
ken to my heart,” my sand art was Christian enough, whatever it means, to
compel the Indonesian pastor to invite me all the way to his country. °e per-
formance spoke, visually as it may, in a language he recognized, in an idiom
he knew as Christian. So maybe this was the source of confusion: I was start-
ing to speak like a Christian. And to some, speaking like a Christian was a sign
of becoming a Christian, a manifestation of transformation, a dawn of born-
again life. If, as Susan Harding once wrote, “speaking is believing,” then perhaps
I was starting to believe. But I went only halfway, stood at the crossroads, and
leﬅ the field.
°ere are other crossroads as well. “So, you’ll become an American?” Bea-
triz asked me. We were having another late night conversation over a cup of
coffee in her apartment in Building ±¸7 in Homi Danchi. My partner, who ar-
rived in Japan as a boyfriend two weeks prior for a short visit, had just leﬅ as a
fiancé. I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at the ring on my leﬅ hand.
I could not quite look ahead to the future when I was not even used to seeing
it there.
I decided to answer with another question. “So, do you think your children
with José will be Japanese?” I was not the only one wearing a new ring. A
young man from the church had proposed to her several months earlier. She
E PI LOG U E 1 89
initially said no (“He is two years younger than me!”). But the second time

was the charm. Since both were the leaders of the youth ministry, everyone
knew about their courtship. Her fiancé had made it clear that he was ready to
start a family once they were wed the following year. Beatriz tilted her head
with a thoughtful expression and, eventually, shrugged her shoulders as well.
We both laughed.
“Mirai no koto wa wakannai ne” (We don’t know about the future), she said.
Since both Beatriz and José were already yonsei (fourth-generation Nikkei),
their offspring would not qualify for the Nikkei-jin visa. °ey would most likely
grow up in Japan as dependents of permanent residents and then as perma-
nent residents themselves, unless they decide to naturalize one day. “I can’t
say if my children will be Brazilian or Japanese. I mean, some people say that
even I’m not Brazilian enough. . . . I just know that they’ll be with God.” She
played with the rim of her coffee mug. “And really, what more can we hope for?”
I visited Toyota again two years later in the summer of ¸0±6. When I stepped
into the church, I saw Beatriz and José in the back of the room with a blue
stroller between them. As they rocked their bodies in prayer with one hand up
in the air, they placed the other hand—Beatriz her right hand and José his leﬅ
hand—on the stroller and gently rocked it as well. °eir six-month-old baby
girl was beautiful like a pearl. Following the custom, the new parents had given
her two names, one Brazilian and the other Japanese: Cristina Midori. As I later
learned, Midori was the name of Beatriz’s maternal grandmother, who was
born decades earlier in Maringá, Brazil. °e old Midori lived as a daughter of
Japanese immigrants in mid-twentieth-century Brazil, during which many
Nikkeis gave up the dream of returning to Japan and accepted their new home-
land. °e new Midori will grow up as a daughter of Nikkei Brazilian migrants
in early twenty-first-century Japan, where many Nikkeis still yearn to return
home to Brazil. Unlike her great-grandmother, little Cristina Midori did not
receive the citizenship of the country where she was born as a birthright. Nor
could she obtain the Nikkei-jin, or Japanese descendant, visa, since her fiﬅh-
generation “Japanese blood” was legally too thin and too distant from the “ori-
gin.” Yet there she was, breathing quietly but steadily, surrounded by her
fellow migrants who continued to travel the borderlands of nations, identities,
and belongings. She had just joined this diasporic journey of one century, two
nations, five generations, and countless identities, en route to impossible, but
ever so real, home.
19 0 E P IL OG UE
Ursula Le Guin once wrote that true journey is return. °is book, then, is
about a group of people who have been undertaking a true journey, with
gods, ancestors, spirits, and most recently, God. And if God is the name of
what will always be with you, what feels the sweetest in its simultaneous
presence and absence, perhaps their return is through God.
“And really, what more can we hope for?”
N OTE S
C H AP T E R 1
±. All the names of informants are pseudonyms except Pastor Cid Carneiro, the lead
pastor of Missão Apoio Toyota. How I interacted with each person during fieldwork
determines the way in which he or she is addressed in the book. As I was on a first-
name basis with my Brazilian informants, they will appear under their first names.
Since I addressed most of my Japanese subjects with -san following the linguistic
convention, the book refers to them in such a way as well. I decided to use the actual
name of the denomination—Missão Apoio—because I cite a number of existing publi-
cations that already made public its real name. See Shoji, “Making of ‘Brazilian Japa-
nese’ Pentecostalism.” A note on foreign words is also in order. °e fieldwork took
place in multicultural and multilinguistic settings. I collected roughly 70 percent of
my ethnographic data in Portuguese and º0 percent in Japanese. Some informants,
especially the bilingual youth, freely switched back and forth between the two lan-
guages even within a single utterance. All non-English words—either Portuguese or
Japanese—will be uniformly italicized in this book to follow the stylistic convention,
but I would like to remind the reader of this porous quality of linguistic and cultural
boundaries.
¸. °e Missão Apoio churches did not encourage the members to use one single ver-
sion of the Bible. Although many owned paper copies of King James Atualizada or
João F. Almeida, others simply used free Bible apps on their smartphones without much
regard to which translated version they were reading. Presbyter Bruno happened to be
using the João F. Almeida version of the Portuguese Bible in this scene: “andai em te-
mor durante o tempo da vossa peregrinação.”
º. Clifford, “Diasporas,” º¸¸, original italic. For a discussion of nostalgia and home-
land in diaspora studies, see Quayson and Daswani, “Introduction.”
¹. Although some anthropologists differentiate between morality and ethics, others
do not necessarily find such a strict distinction analytically productive. Both sides of-
fer some compelling arguments on the issue, but in this book I use morality and ethics
interchangeably and focus on ethnographic illustrations. See Laidlaw, Subject of Vir-
tue; Zigon, “Within a Range of Possibilities.”
·. Engelke, Problem of Presence, 9.
19 2 N O T ES T O C H A P T ER 2
6. Andrews, Blacks and Whites; Warren and Sue, “Comparative Racisms.”
7. Harding, Book of Jerry Falwell, ch. 9.
¶. My argument is not that return migration in Asia started in the past several de-
cades but instead that it is a converging trend of an increasing number of nations in
the region, gaining momentum since the ±990s.
9. Ong, Flexible Citizenship.
±0. Xiang, Yeoh, and Toyota, Return; Freeman, Making and Faking Kinship; Jo,
Homing.
±±. Adachi, Japanese and Nikkei; Hirabayashi, Hirabayashi, and Kikumura, New
Worlds; Lesser, Searching for Home Abroad.
±¸. Roth, Brokered Homeland; Tsuda, Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland.
±º. Freston, “Transnationalisation of Brazilian Pentecostalism.”
±¹. For case studies from India, see Roberts, To Be Cared For; Viswanath, “Emergence
of Authenticity Talk.”
±·. °e study of return migration has matured significantly compared with a de-
cade ago, when a mere mention of the literature’s scarcity sufficed to justify the schol-
arly value of the topic. °e growing body of work includes Christou, Narratives of
Place; Conway and Potter, Return Migration; Markowitz and Stefansson, Homecom-
ings; Olsson and King, “Introduction”; Potter, Conway, and Phillips, Experience of
Return; Tsuda, Diasporic Homecomings. Few of them, however, focus on the religious
dimension of return. For exceptions, see Capone, Searching for Africa; Seeman, One
People, One Blood; Napolitano, Migrant Hearts.
±6. For the discussion of the ethnic lens, see Glick-Schiller, Îaglar, and Gulbrandsen,
“Beyond the Ethnic Lens.” For an overview of the anthropology of Christianity, see
Cannell, Anthropology of Christianity; Jenkins, “Anthropology of Christianity”; Rob-
bins, “Anthropology of Christianity.”
CH APTER 2
±. Glick-Schiller and Salazar, “Regimes of Mobility,” ±¶6.
¸. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), “Anuário Estatístico.”
º. J. Amândio Sobral, “Os Japoneses em São Paulo,” Correio Paulistano, June ¸·, ±90¶,
cited in Lesser, Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity, ±·¹.
¹. Skidmore, Black into White, ±99.
·. Skidmore, “Racial Ideas,” 9.
6. Adachi, “Japonês.”
7. Sasaki, “Between Emigration and Immigration,” ··.
¶. Maeyama, “Ancestor, Emperor, and Immigrant,” ±6¸.
9. Burajiru Jihō cited in Maeyama, “Ancestor, Emperor, and Immigrant.”
±0. Rocha, “Zen Buddhism,” º±.
±±. For a historical overview, see Josephson, Invention of Religion.
±¸. Maeyama, “Ancestor, Emperor, and Immigrant,” ±70–7±.
±º. Maeyama, “Ethnicity, Secret Societies, and Associations.”
±¹. Lesser, Discontented Diaspora, ¶.
NOT E S T O CH AP T E R 2 1 93
±·. Lesser, “Japanese, Brazilians, Nikkei,” ·.
±6. Shoji, “Failed Prophecy.”
±7. For example, many Okinawan Nikkeis started to travel to Okinawa in the ±9·0s
to bring their mortuary tablets of ancestors and ritual tablets for Fire God (hinukan)
back to Brazil. Mori, “Burajiru Okinawakeijin”; Mori, “Identity Transformations.”
±¶. Maeyama, “Ancestor, Emperor, and Immigrant,” ±77.
±9. In the Brazilian census, the category of “yellow” (amarelo) is designated to Asian
immigrants and their descendants.
¸0. IBGE, “Censo Demográfico ¸0±0 Características Gerais,” ±¹9 (see Table ±.¹.6).
¸±. Pew Research Center, “Brazil’s Changing Religious Landscape.”
¸¸. Freston, “Latin America,” ·¶·. For additional context, see Freston, “Pentecos-
talism in Brazil.” For the “explosive” growth of Pentecostalism, see Martin, Tongues of
Fire.
¸º. Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil.
¸¹. Pew Research Center, “Christian Movements.” For more details on Pentecos-
talism in the Global South, see Engelke and Tomlinson, Limits of Meaning; Corten and
Marshall-Fratani, Between Babel and Pentecost. °ere is as yet no scholarly consensus
on just where to draw Pentecostalism’s borders. Since this book’s focus is not on the
theoretical determination of theological boundaries, I choose to approach Pentecos-
talism in inclusive terms and define it loosely as the following. Pentecostalism’s expe-
riential characteristics are, first, “an emphasis on the achievement of a personalized
and self-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ”; second, “ritual performance that
highlights the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit”; and, third, “religious enthusiasm
centered on the experience of charismata,” including prophecy, exorcism, healing, and
glossolalia. See Hefner, “Unexpected Modern,” ¸.
¸·. Rocha and Vásquez, Diaspora of Brazilian Religions.
¸6. For Mozambique, see van de Kamp, Violent Conversion; Premawardhana, Faith
in Flux. For Portugal, see Mafra et al., “Igreja Universal.” For the United States, see Mar-
golis, Good Bye, Brazil. For Japan, Quero and Shoji, Transnational Faiths.
¸7. Margolis, Invisible Minority.
¸¶. Higuchi, “Keizai Kiki,” ·±.
¸9. Kawamura, Para Onde Vão Os Brasileiros?
º0. Tsuda, “Acting Brazilian.”
º±. Tsuda, for instance, wrote: “°e nikkeijin, as descendants of those who initially
fled to Brazil because they could not survive in Japan, have now returned to Japan
because they could not survive economically in Brazil either.” Tsuda, Strangers in the
Ethnic Homeland, ±±±. For a relevant discussion of return migration, see Sasaki, “To
Return or Not to Return.”
º¸. Higuchi, “Keizai Kiki,” ·¸–·º.
ºº. Ministry of Justice, “°e Current Number of Foreigners.” Brazilians are more
numerous than all the other Latin Americans combined—roughly ¹¶,000 Peruvians,
·,600 Bolivians, ¸,700 Argentinians, and ¸,¹00 Mexicans, to name a few. See Ministry
of Justice, “Zairyū Gaikokujin.” °e majority of Peruvians and Bolivians in Japan are
also Nikkei, but Brazilians are ranked higher than the other Latin American Nikkeis
in the perceived ethnic hierarchy for a number of reasons. First, Brazil is considered to
have a higher status because of its higher GDP, larger population, and greater political
influence. Second, Nikkei Brazilians in general have more Japanese cultural and phe-
notypic features akin to the Japanese majority in Japan compared with Nikkei Peruvi-
ans (the ratio of mestiços is greater among Nikkei Peruvians). Lastly, migrants from
Peru included more non-Nikkei Peruvians, generally from poorer background, some
of whom entered Japan using fraudulent documents. °us, “unlike Japanese Brazilians
who asserted their Brazilianness, Japanese Peruvians, particularly of those of racially
unmixed and middle-class backgrounds, tried to distance themselves from ‘pure Pe-
ruvians,’ or non-Japanese Peruvians, emphasizing instead their status as nikkei Japa-
nese descendants.” Takenaka, “Ethnic Hierarchy,” ¸6¸–6º.
º¹. Ministry of Justice, “On the Acceptance of Fourth-Generation.”
º·. Ministry of Justice, “Zairyū Gaikokujin.” °is holds true on a more regional
scale. In ¸0±¹, º,¸76 (6º percent) of the ·,±¸0 registered Brazilians in Toyota City were
on permanent resident visas, but only ±,º¸¶ (¸6 percent) lived as long-term residents.
Toyota City, “Toyotashi Gaikokujin.”
º6. Indeed, foreign migrants constitute one of the main groups that are diversify-
ing and transforming Japanese society today. Kelly and White, “Students, Slackers,
Singles.”
º7. Japanese New Religions that have thrived in postwar Brazil have returned to Ja-
pan with the migrants—most notably, Seichō-no-Ie, Tenri-kyō, Perfect Liberty, and
Sekai-kyūsei-kyō. See Clarke, Japanese New Religions; Matsuoka, Japanese Prayer;
Shimazono, “Expansion of Japan’s New Religions.” Espiritismo is a mediumship reli-
gion that focuses on communication with spirits and reincarnations. Umbanda is an
Afro-Brazilian religion that blends African traditions, Roman Catholicism, Espirit-
ismo, and indigenous spirituality.
º¶. Shoji, “Making of ‘Brazilian Japanese’ Pentecostalism,” º7–º9.
º9. Despite the Pentecostal insistence on exclusive affiliation, I occasionally spot-
ted a handful of active members from the local Pentecostal churches at the Catholic
church in Toyota. Multiple and flexible religious identities seemed to be more common
than many Pentecostal converts were willing to admit in public.
¹0. A number of other researchers have found that Pentecostalism has flourished
among Brazilian migrant communities in Japan. Yamada, “Bestowing the Light”;
Hoshino, “Potentiality.”
¹±. In terms of the places of worship (and not the number of members, which is more
elusive), Missão Apoio is the second-largest Brazil-derived Protestant denomination
in Japan aﬅer Assembleias de Deus (Assemblies of God, ¸º percent) and on par with
Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (°e Universal Church of the Kingdom of God,
±0 percent). Shoji, “Making of ‘Brazilian Japanese’ Pentecostalism,” ¹0.
¹¸. Yamada, “Bestowing the Light.”
¹º. Jesuit missionaries first brought Roman Catholicism to Japan in ±·¹9. Since Ca-
tholicism arrived concomitantly with the colonial expansion of the Spanish and Por-
NOT E S T O CH AP T E R 2 1 95
tuguese in Asia, Japanese authorities soon came to regard it as a serious threat to the
country’s internal stability. In ±6±¹, the Tokugawa Shogunate ordered a nationwide or-
der to prohibit Christianity and expelled foreign missionaries. °ose who refused to
abandon their faith faced torture, exile, or execution. Even when the central govern-
ment finally liﬅed the ban more than two centuries later in ±¶7º, and Protestant mis-
sionaries started to arrive primarily from the United States, the prejudices against
Christians did not easily disappear. Today, the great majority—roughly 9¹ percent of
the population, according to some reports—participate in Buddhist and Shinto activi-
ties, but that same majority consider themselves “non-religious” (mushūkyō) when
polled. See Agency for Cultural Affairs, “Shūkyō Kanren Tōkei”; Watanabe, “Nihon
no Shūkyō Jinkō”; Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission”; Mullins, Christianity Made
in Japan.
¹¹. Tokyo Christian University, JMR Study Report.
¹·. Aichi Prefectural Government, “Current Number of Foreign Residents.”
¹6. Roth, Brokered Homeland; Tsuda, Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland.
¹7. For another ethnography conducted in Homi Danchi, see Linger, No One Home.
For a more recent study on Brazilian migrants that was also conducted in the Aichi
Prefecture in Japan, see von Baeyer, “National Worlds.”
¹¶. Toyota City, “Toyotashi Gaikokujin.” °e contexts in which I conducted par-
ticipant observation in Homi Danchi were diverse, ranging from the local Brazilian
supermarket to the annual summer festival in the neighborhood. For example, I taught
a weekly Japanese course as a volunteer at a nongovernmental organization called
Torcida for three months during my fieldwork. Torcida provided free Japanese lan-
guage classes to the children from migrant families in and around Homi Danchi. °e
majority of my students at Torcida were Brazilian.
¹9. Of Missão Apoio Toyota’s five hundred members, roughly fiﬅy were Nikkei Pe-
ruvians who attended their own Spanish service scheduled in Sunday morning. In
early aﬅernoon, the church subsequently held a Japanese service, which was attended
mostly by Brazilian youth who were fluent in Japanese. At the time of my fieldwork,
Missão Apoio Toyota had only one Japanese convert. Aﬅer the Japanese service, the
church would become much more crowded with Brazilian attendants of Portuguese
service. Since the church space could not accommodate all the Portuguese-speaking
congregants at once, there were two Portuguese services on Sunday, one at ¹ ½.¼. and
the other at 7 ½.¼.
·0. Glick-Schiller and Fouron make an insightful observation in this regard: “Even
the naming of immigrants’ children as a ‘second generation’ reflected and contributed
to the notion of the incorporation of immigrants as a steplike irreversible process and
one in which immigrants’ children were socialized solely by forces within the land of
their birth.” Glick-Schiller and Fouron, “Generation of Identity,” ±7·.
·±. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Barth, “Introduction.”
·¸. Eckstein, “On Deconstructing,” ¸±·. As most of my informants’ extended kin
were in other parts of Japan or in Brazil, I could not carry out a genealogical work to
determine their migrant generations. °e generational identities in this book are
therefore based on their voluntary self-identifications, which they reported primarily
in relation to their Nikkei-jin visas. A handful, for example, had two Nikkei parents,
one issei (first-generation) and the other nisei (second-generation). Such migrants typ-
ically acquired the visa through the issei parent since their offspring, in turn, would
then count as sansei (third-generation) and still legally qualify to be Nikkei-jin. Only
a minority of my informants grew up in tight-knit Nikkei communities in Brazil
(colônias) and were already used to identifying with Japanese immigrant generation
prior to Nikkei-jin visa application. To many like Sergio, migrant generational iden-
tity was more about one aspect of their genealogy and less about their ethnic subjec-
tivity. Since generation thus figured as a flexible construct in my fieldwork, I cannot
provide a concise and factual definition of the term here; the best I can do is to empha-
size that it is an evolving sociohistorical concept.
·º. Linger, “Do Japanese Brazilians Exist?,” ¸±¸. For a relevant discussion of Japa-
nese Brazilian identity in diaspora, see Nishida, Diaspora and Identity.
·¹. Harding, Book of Jerry Falwell, xi–xii.
CHAP TER 3
±. It was ±0.7 percent, or ¸0 out of ±¶6 valid responses.
¸. Lesser, Discontented Diaspora, xxvi.
º. See Adachi, “Japonês.”
¹. Seventeen out of ±60 respondents who answered this item on my survey said they
received some higher education. According to the ¸0±0 Brazil Census, ±±.º percent of
Brazilians had college degrees. See IBGE, “Censo Demográfico ¸0±0 Educação e Des-
locamento,” 6±–6¸.
·. Datafolha, “Centenário da Imigração Japonesa.” °e same source adds that this
high number makes Nikkeis the group with “the most educated profile in the city of
São Paulo, where ±· percent have obtained college-level education.”
6. Many Brazilian migrants paid staffing agencies for arranging their visa and trip
to Japan, the cost of which they were obligated to pay back.
7. Ezaki, “Quero Ajudar,” ¸0. “°e Japanese” (os japoneses) refers to both Japanese
nationals in Japan and Japanese descendants in Brazil in colloquial Portuguese; the two
are oﬅen considered interchangeable. See Lesser, Discontented Diaspora, ¹·.
¶. Brettel, Anthropology and Migration, 7±.
9. Borges, Chains of Gold, ±±º.
±0. Schneider, Futures Lost, ch. ¸.
±±. Beltrão and Sugahara, Ciclo e a Tangente.
±¸. Vertovec, “Migrant Transnationalism,” ±·º. For another discussion of bifocality,
see Besnier, On the Edge, ±¸.
±º. Vitrine, “Naturalização,” ±¹.
±¹. Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity; Befu, “Nationalism and Nihonjinron.”
±·. Ryang, Japan and National Anthropology; Ryang and Lie, Diaspora Without
Homeland; Weiner, Japan’s Minorities.
N OTES TO C HA PTER 4 1 97
±6. Dávila, Hotel Trópico. For an example of the “mythic” value attached to racial
mixture, see Freyre, Masters and the Slaves.
±7. Burgess, “Japan’s ‘No Immigration.’ ”
±¶. James and Mills, “Introduction,” ¸.
±9. Gell, Anthropology of Time.
¸0. For a study of neoliberal Japan, see Allison, Precarious Japan.
¸±. Pine, “Migration as Hope,” ±00. For a relevant discussion of temporality in mi-
gration studies, see Gabaccia, “Time and Temporality.”
C H AP T E R 4
±. Chūnichi Shimbun, “Conflict Between Foreigners and Nationalist,” ¸7.
¸. Yomiuri Shimbun, “Tension Between Brazilians and Right-Wing,” º±.
º. Matsumiya and Yogo, “Masu Media,” 6·.
¹. Levitt and Glick-Shiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity,” ±¶6.
·. Pensão por Morte, or Pension by Death, is a type of benefit in social welfare that
the legal dependents of the deceased can receive, given that they meet certain
conditions.
6. Beltrão and Sugahara, Ciclo e a Tangente, ¸9.
7. IBGE, “Censo Demográfico ¸0±0 Família e Domicílio,” 66.
¶. O Estado de S. Paulo, “Dekasseguis Abandonam.”
9. O Estado de S. Paulo, “Dekasseguis Abandonam.”
±0. Marra, “Leia Depoimentos”; Matsuki, “Abandonados por Dekasseguis.”
±±. °e struggle to maintain family ties in the face of physical and psychological dis-
tances is something that Nikkei Brazilians share in common with numerous migrant
groups around the globe. See Boehm, Intimate Migrations; Coe et al., Everyday Rup-
tures; Cole, Affective Circuits; Leinaweaver, “Outsourcing Care”; Yarris, Care Across
Generations.
±¸. Yamamoto, “Gender Roles.”
±º. Portes and Hao, “Price of Uniformity”; Portes and Rumbaut, Legacies.
±¹. For an exemplary study on the relationship between transnational migration and
idiom of distress, see Yarris, “Pensando Mucho.”
±·. Berg and Ramos-Zayas, “Racializing Affect,” 6·6. Following the authors,
I understand affect as “endemic to social practices that are decidedly historical, ratio-
nal, and, in some instances, intentional while also being sustained through embodied
practices that are phenomenological, reflective (and self-reflexive), and visceral” (Berg
and Ramos-Zayas, “Racializing Affect,” 6··). For a relevant discussion on the poli-
tics of emotion, see Abu-Lughod and Lutz, Language and the Politics of Emotion; Lutz,
“Emotion, °ought, and Estrangement.” Following these scholars, I do not draw a
strict theoretical line between “affect” and “emotion” and regard them as mutually
inclusive in many contexts. For other works that support this stance, see Lutz, “What
Matters”; Yang, “Politics of Affect”; Mazzarella, “Affect.” For an alternative approach
that theoretically distinguishes between the two, see Massumi, Parables for the
19 8 N O T ES T O C H A P T E R 5
Virtual; Stewart, Ordinary Affects. For an overview of this conceptual debate, see White,
“Affect: An Introduction.”
±6. Ischida, “Experiência Nikkei,” ±7·. For a relevant discussion on the Nikkei fam-
ilies in Brazil, see Cardoso and Ninomiya, Estrutura Familiar.
±7. To learn more about the “culture” of Japanese schooling, see Benjamin, Japanese
Lessons; Hendry, Becoming Japanese.
±¶. Allison, “Japanese Mothers,” ¸0º.
±9. White, Perfectly Japanese, ±º¹.
¸0. Omuraisu is a Japanese rendition of omelet, which comes with fried rice inside.
Pikachū is a popular character in Pokémon, a media franchise that ranges from video
games to TV shows.
¸±. Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy; Mayblin, Gender, Catholicism, and Morality; Sa-
mara, “Família no Brasil”; Souza and Botelho, “Modelos Nacionais.”
¸¸. Ashikari, “Urban Middle-Class”; Kelsky, Women on the Verge; Lebra, Japanese
Women.
¸º. For racism and nationalism in Japan, see Creighton, “Soto Others”; Kaneko,
“Constructing Japanese Nationalism”; Murphy-Shigematsu, “Multiethnic Japan”; Wil-
lis and Murphy-Shigematsu, Transcultural Japan. For specific discussions of the
mixed-race people, see Burkhardt, “Institutional Barriers”; Carter, “Mixed Race Oki-
nawans”; Fish, “ ‘Mixed-Blood’ Japanese”; Rivas, “Mistura for the Fans”; Watarai, “Can
a Mestiça Be a Haafu?”
¸¹. For the politics of affect, see Muehlebach, “On Affective Labor”; Stoler, “Affec-
tive States”; Richard and Rudnyckyj, “Economies of Affect.”
CHAP TER 5
±. Fajans, Brazilian Food; Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self.
¸. Mariz, Coping with Poverty.
º. For time and Christianity, see Bielo, “Creationist History-Making”; Daswani,
Looking Back; Robbins, “Continuity °inking.”
¹. For Ghanaians and Jamaicans in England, see Fumanti, “Virtuous Citizenship”;
Toulis, Believing Identity. For Latin Americans in the United States, see Williams,
Steigenga, and Vásquez, Place to Be. For Haitians in French West Indies, see Brodwin,
“Pentecostalism in Translation.”
·. For a discussion of tension between conversion and “culture,” see Seeman, “Cof-
fee and the Moral Order.”
6. van der Veer, Conversion to Modernities. For an overview, see Robbins, “Anthro-
pology of Christianity.”
7. Meyer, Translating the Devil, ¸±·.
¶. Modern sensibility can be characterized as “a sense that the passage of time should
expectably be marked by progress and improvement vis-à-vis the past,” which appears
“so ubiquitous today.” Knauﬅ, Critically Modern, 7. For modernity and temporality in
Global Christianity, see Klaver and van de Kamp, “Embodied Temporalities”; McGov-
N O T ES T O C H A P T E R 6 1 99
ern, “Turning the Clock”; Meyer, “Make a Complete Break”; Scherz, “Let Us Make
God.”
9. Coleman, “Right Now!”
±0. Coleman, “Right Now!,” ¹¹º.
±±. Munn, “Cultural Anthropology of Time,” 9¹.
±¸. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, ¸00.
±º. °ompson, “Time, Work-Discipline.”
±¹. Luhrmann, “Hyperreal God.”
±·. Munn, “Cultural Anthropology of Time,” ±±6.
±6. For the psychological views on absorption, see Csikszentmihalyi, Flow.
±7. van Dijk, “Time and Transcultural Technologies,” ¸¸¶.
±¶. Coleman, Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity, ¸¸¹.
CHAP TER 6
±. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, ch. ¹. For another ethnographic study of °e
Vineyard, see Bialecki, Diagram for Fire.
¸. Zigon, “On Love”; for more detailed discussion, see Zigon, “HIV Is God’s Blessing.”
º. Burdick, Color of Sound; Burdick, Blessed Anastacia.
¹. van Klinken, “Queer Love.”
·. For diverse case studies from around the world, see Hirsch and Wardlow, Mod-
ern Loves; Padilla et al., Love and Globalization. For an extended study from Nepal,
see Ahearn, Invitations to Love.
6. Associação MMI Brasil in Atibaia, São Paulo, distributed the Portuguese mate-
rials of Married for Life.
7. Adogame and Shankar, Religion on the Move; Levitt, “Religion on the Move”; van
de Kamp and van Dijk, “Pentecostals Moving South-South.”
¶. van de Kamp, “Love °erapy.”
9. Phillipps and Phillipps, Casados Para Sempre, º·. I translated the Portuguese text
into English myself.
±0. Hirsch and Wardlow, Modern Loves; Padilla et al., Love and Globalization.
±±. On “love” in Japan, see Ryang, Love in Modern Japan. For how foreign migrants
enact the idiom of love, see Faier, “Filipina Migrants in Rural Japan.”
±¸. Stromberg, Language and Self-Transformation.
±º. In Brazil, working women’s average income was 7¸.º percent of men’s in ¸0±±.
IBGE, “Mulher No Mercado,” ±6. In Japan, it was 7¸.¸ percent in ¸0±¹. Ministry of
Health, Labour and Welfare, “Heisei ¸6 nen,” ¹.
±¹. Phillipps and Phillipps, Casados Para Sempre, ·±–·7.
±·. Austin-Broos, Jamaica Genesis; Eriksen, “Pastor and the Prophetess”; Eriksen,
“Sarah’s Sinfulness”; van Klinken, “Male Headship.”
±6. Brusco, “Colombian Evangelicalism.”
±7. Brusco, “Colombian Evangelicalism.” For a discussion of machismo, see Gut-
mann and Vigoya, “Masculinities.”
±¶. Brusco, Reformation of Machismo, ±º7.
±9. For detailed discussions of Christian citizenship, see O’Neill, “But Our Citizen-
ship Is in Heaven”; O’Neill, City of God.
¸0. For sexual culture in Brazil, see Parker, Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions.
¸±. Coe, “How Children Feel,” 97.
CHAPTE R 7
±. Blood is also an important element in Brazilian nationalist discourses, particu-
larly for ideological concepts such as racial democracy, whitening, and mestiçagem (ra-
cial mixture). Since this chapter focuses on Japan, these issues will not be discussed
here, but please see Chapter ¸ for relevant discussions.
¸. Carsten, Cultures of Relatedness; McKinnon, Relative Values; Peletz, “Kinship
Studies”; Schneider, American Kinship.
º. For the significance of blood in Christianity, see Anidjar, Blood; Bynum, “Blood
of Christ”; Bynum, Wonderful Blood. For a comparative discussion of spiritual kinship,
see °omas, Malik, and Wellman, New Directions.
¹. For both Japanese and Christians, the idiom of blood provides a collective tem-
plate for storytelling, which in turn constitutes a crucial “cultural model.” Shore, Cul-
ture in Mind, ·¶.
·. Cannell, “Blood of Abraham”; Carsten, Aﬅer Kinship; McKinnon and Cannell,
Vital Relations; Stone, New Directions.
6. Weiner, “ ‘Self’ and ‘Other,’ ” ±.
7. Wilson, “Family or State?” For broader context, see Wilson, Nation and
Nationalism.
¶. Robertson, “Hemato-Nationalism,” 99.
9. Robertson, “Hemato-Nationalism,” 99. For a relevant discussion of the ideologi-
cal significance of blood in Japan, see Robertson, “Blood Talks.”
±0. Linger, No One Home, ¸77.
±±. Roth, Brokered Homeland; Tsuda, “From Ethnic Affinity”; Tsuda, Strangers in
the Ethnic Homeland; Tsuda, “When Identities Become Modern.”
±¸. With the introduction of the “specific activities” visa in July ¸0±¶, which grants
some fourth-generation Nikkei foreigners a right for sojourn up to five years, things
may change in the next few years.
±º. Keane, “Evidence of the Senses.” Keane builds on Peirce’s theory on signs, par-
ticularly the distinction between symbol, icon, and index. Although symbol is a type
of sign in which the form of signification is arbitrary (e.g., the English word dog and a
class of animals), the relationships between the signifier and the object are not arbi-
trary in icon and index; icon possesses formal resemblance to the thing signified (e.g.,
“phallic” ritual object), and index is part of or affected by the signified entity (e.g., dark
clouds index rain, and hourglass indexes passage of time). See Hardwick, Semiotics and
Significs.
±¹. Keane, “Semiotics,” ¹±7. Original italic.
±·. Weiner, “ ‘Self’ and ‘Other,’ ” ±.
N O T E S TO CH A P T E R 8 2 01
±6. Nelson, Dancing with the Dead.
±7. Mori, “Identity Transformations,” 60–6±. Some Okinawan communities in Bra-
zil make an active collective effort to preserve the language. Petrucci and Miyahira,
“Language Preservation.”
±¶. °e idiom spoken in Okinawa is locally called Uchināguchi. Whether the group
of vernacular idioms spoken in Okinawa constitutes a “language” or “dialect” is a ques-
tion that is as political as it is academic due to the history of the islands. Matsumori,
“Ryûkyuan.”
±9. For Koreans, see Ryang, North Koreans; for Okinawans, see Inoue, Okinawa and
the US; for Buraku-min, see Hankins, Working Skin; for the Ainu, see Siddle, Race, Re-
sistance, and the Ainu.
¸0. Ramos-Zayas, National Performances; Ramos-Zayas, Street °erapists.
¸±. Baran, “Girl, You Are Not Morena”; Telles, Race in Another America; French,
Legalizing Identity.
¸¸. For the tension between Pentecostal churches and kin networks, see van de
Kamp, “Converting the Spirit Spouse”; van de Kamp, Violent Conversion.
¸º. See Matthew ±¸:¹6–·0 and Mark º:º±–º· for relevant messages.
¸¹. Ebaugh and Curry, “Fictive Kin.” °e concept of “fictive” kinship, however, has
been criticized as reifying the assumption about what counts as “real” kinship. Carsten,
Cultures of Relatedness.
¸·. Shoji, “Making of ‘Brazilian Japanese’ Pentecostalism,” ¹¸–¹º. °e cellular sys-
tem is not unique to Missão Apoio. A number of Pentecostal denominations in Latin
America and beyond have employed it with great success. O’Neill, City of God, ¸6.
¸6. Keane, “Sincerity, ‘Modernity,’ and the Protestants.”
¸7. Harding, Book of Jerry Falwell, ch. 7.
¸¶. For the relationship between Catholicism, Protestantism, and other religions in
Brazil, see Selka, “Morality in the Religious Marketplace”; Stoll, Is Latin America Turn-
ing Protestant.
¸9. Keane, “Semiotics,” ¹±9.
º0. Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals; Keane, Christian Moderns; Taylor, Sources of the
Self.
º±. Josephson, Invention of Religion.
º¸. Hardacre, Shintō and the State, ±¸º.
ºº. Hardacre, Shintō and the State, ±¸º.
º¹. Miura, Life and °ought, ·¸.
º·. Rowe, Bonds of the Dead.
CH APTER 8
±. °e media—both Japanese and foreign—oﬅen characterize the Hōnen Festival
as a “rare” and “strange” tradition (kisai or chinsai) and cover it extensively. °e event
consequently attracts a large number of tourists from both inside and outside Japan.
¸. Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” 7¹.
º. Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” 7·.
¹. Needham, Belief, Language, and Experience, ±–¸.
·. Lopez Jr., “Belief,” ¸¸.
6. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, ±9¶.
7. °e Toyota calendar (“Toyota karendā” in Japanese) determines the workdays and
holidays of all the employees working in factories affiliated with or under contract with
the Toyota Motor Corporation. Obon is one of the only three occasions in a year when
workers can take multiple days off outside the weekend.
¶. Bialecki and del Pinal, “Introduction,” ·¶0.
9. In Portuguese, “Nós somos xintoísta porque okinawa-jin é xintoísta né . . .
okinawa-jin não é budista.” By “Shintoist,” Leticia meant to refer to the set of Okinawan
rites for local gods and ancestral spirits, not necessarily State Shinto or other main-
land branches of Shinto. She also grouped all of the mainland Japanese as “Buddhist,”
which helped her draw a clear line between the Okinawan and the Japanese.
±0. Taniguchi, Jinsei wo Shihaisuru.
±±. Taniguchi, Jinsei wo Shihaisuru, ±9·.
±¸. Four years later, in ¸0±¶, I heard from a friend in Toyota that Leticia had chosen
to burn the ancestral altar in a ritual she coconstructed in consultation with the church
leaders. From what I was told, the concerns she expressed were still the same: although
she knew that she was not supposed to keep the altar, she could not just throw it away
like regular trash. The church personnel acknowledged Leticia’s moral anxiety
surrounding the object by devising a small ceremony for her to formally bid farewell.
°is new piece of information reached me too late to enter the body of the book
manuscript. If anything, it testifies to the fact that the ethnographic picture is always
incomplete, in the sense that it is necessarily a snapshot of never-ending human
drama.
±º. Robbins, “Is the Trans- in Transnationalism.”
±¹. Hickman, “Ancestral Personhood,” º¸º.
±·. For the flexibility of the boundary between the material and the immaterial in
Christianity, see Engelke, Problem of Presence.
±6. Keane, “Sincerity, ‘Modernity,’ and the Protestants.”
±7. Kirsch, “Restaging the Will.”
±¶. Elisha, “Faith Beyond Belief,” ·7.
±9. Elisha, “Faith Beyond Belief,” ·7. For a more detailed ethnographic account of
the topic, see Elisha, Moral Ambition.
¸0. Howell, “Repugnant Cultural Other.”
¸±. Bielo, “Belief, Deconversion, and Authenticity,” ¸7¹.
¸¸. Bielo, “Belief, Deconversion, and Authenticity,” ¸·¶.
¸º. Austin, How to Do °ings with Words.
¸¹. Ferraro and Koch, “Religion and Health”; Lim and Putnam, “Religion, Social
Networks”; Smidt, Religion as Social Capital.
¸·. Durkheim, Elementary Forms.
¸6. Asad, Formations of the Secular.
¸7. Smilde, Reason to Believe, ±¹.
N O T ES T O C H A P T ER 9 2 03
CHAP TER 9
±. For a detailed discussion of resting in the Spirit, see Csordas, Sacred Self.
¸. Most of these phrases draw on the Bible, particularly ± Corinthians ±¹.
º. See Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View.”
¹. Robbins, Becoming Sinners.
·. Daswani, “(In-)Dividual Pentecostals,” ¸·7. For other studies about the nuances
of Christian individuality, see Coleman, “Materializing the Self”; Vilaça, “Culture and
Self”; Vilaça, “Dividualism and Individualism”; Werbner, “Charismatic Dividual.”
6. Doi, Anatomy of Dependence; Kelly, “Directions in the Anthropology,” º9¶–¹0º;
Kitayama et al., “Individual and Collective”; Markus and Kitayama, “Culture and the
Self”; Ozawa-de Silva, “Demystifying Japanese °erapy”; Plath, Long Engagements;
Rosenberger, “Dialectic Balance”; Rosenberger, Japanese Sense of Self.
7. Bialecki and Daswani, “Introduction.”
¶. Although there was a butsudan (Buddhist altar) in Sara’s natal home in Brazil,
her Nikkei father did not really encourage her to learn such rituals. He instead approved
his children’s attendance at the Catholic Church, probably to maintain a good relation-
ship with his non-Nikkei wife and her kin.
9. Keane, Christian Moderns, ±·.
±0. Robbins, “God Is Nothing but Talk.”
±±. Mariano, “Laicidade à Brasileira.”
±¸. Meyer, “Make a Complete Break.”
±º. Keane, Christian Moderns, ¸0±.
±¹. Institute of Statistical Mathematics, “Kokuminsei Chōsa.”
±·. Yomiuri Shimbun, “Nihonjin,” ¸·.
±6. Reader and Tanabe, Practically Religious, 7.
±7. Ozawa–de Silva, “Beyond the Body/Mind?,” ¸¶.
±¶. Kondo, Craﬅing Selves, ±07.
±9. Kondo, Craﬅing Selves, ±07–¶.
¸0. Reader, “Cleaning Floors.”
¸±. Linger, No One Home, ¸90.
¸¸. Linger, No One Home, ¸99.
¸º. For example, see Corwin, “Changing God”; Lester, Jesus in Our Wombs; Mafra,
“Saintliness and Sincerity.”
¸¹. Kondo, Craﬅing Selves, ±06.
¸·. Yano, Tears of Longing, ¸6.
¸6. Bardsley and Miller, “Manners and Mischief.”
¸7. Lebra, Japanese Self, ¸¸¹–·¹.
¸¶. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, ¸¸±–¸¸.
¸9. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, ¸¸¸.
º0. Seligman, “Unmaking and Making of Self”; Selka, Religion and the Politics.
º±. Flow is characterized by the following qualities: intense and focused concentra-
tion on what one is doing in the present moment, merging of action and awareness,
20 4 N O T ES T O C H A P T ER 1 0
loss of reflective self-consciousness, a sense that one can control one’s actions, distor-
tion of temporal experience (typically, a sense that time has passed faster than normal),
experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow;
Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, “Concept of Flow.”
º¸. Csordas, “Asymptote of the Ineffable.”
ºº. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, ±99.
º¹. See Desjarlais, Body and Emotion.
º·. Csordas, “Embodiment as a Paradigm, ¸·.
º6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
º7. Bourdieu, Logic of Practice; Bourdieu, Outline of a °eory of Practice.
º¶. Harkness, “Glossolalia and Cacophony,” ¹77. For a relevant study of glossolalia,
see Samarin, Tongues of Men.
º9. Tomlinson, “God Speaking to God.”
¹0. Csordas, Embodiment as a Paradigm, ¸·.
¹±. Luhrmann and Morgain, “Prayer as Inner Sense Cultivation.”
¹¸. Parish, “Between Persons.”
CHAP TER 10
±. °is sermon was in reference to Exodus ±¹:±0–¸0.
¸. Potolsky, Mimesis.
º. For the current debates on ethics and morality in anthropology, see Faubion, An-
thropology of Ethics; Heintz, Anthropology of Moralities; Keane, Ethical Life; Laidlaw,
Subject of Virtue; Zigon, Morality. Such debates have called into question the equation
of the moral with the social as the Durkheimian legacy. Morality in a Durkheimian
sense tends to consist in conforming to social conventions, effectively eliminating the
room for choice and freedom as elements in how people strive for good life. An impor-
tant task for the current anthropology of morality and ethics is to forge a theoretical
framework that can duly accommodate freedom—without replicating the autonomous
agent with free will that generations of anthropologists have worked hard to decon-
struct. °is theoretical attention to ethical freedom has generated a growing focus on
“moments of deliberate free choice rather than moments of social reproduction for
actual moral action.” Cassaniti and Hickman, “New Directions,” ¸·¶. For relevant dis-
cussions on the tension between social reproduction and reflective freedom, see Rob-
bins, “Between Reproduction and Freedom”; Zigon, “Moral Breakdown.”
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IND EX
absorption, prayer as, 87–88, 170, 174 and racial identity affecting, 141–48; in
afastamento, 63–65, 104–6. See also families: eye of the beholder, 133–35; faith beyond
separation and estrangement of belief, 135–37; family ties and
affective openness, 101 commitment in, 138, 141–51; interiority
alterity, 170–72 of, 136, 140–41, 150; language reflecting,
ambiguous cultural identity. See cultural 138, 141, 150–51, 158–59, 175–78;
ambiguity nonreligious views of, 164–65; overview
ancestral personhood, 148 of, 184; as relational commitment,
ancestral veneration: belief and faith in, 150–51, 153; self intersection with, 157–60,
138, 143–48, 157–58, 202n7, 202n12; blood 175–78; sincerity of, 140–41, 148, 150,
ties and, 129–31; historical context for, 157–59; as state of mind, 136–37
18, 20; nonreligious, 164; obon Bible study, 29, 83, 85–86, 191n2
commemoration, 58, 138, 146, 202n7 Bielo, James, 150
appearance, ethnic or racial, 4, 13–14, 15, bifocality, 45
21, 23, 30, 47, 72–73, 113, 120, 121 blood, 113–32; body metaphors, 124–25;
Argentina, migration to, 44 ethnic and racial identity and, 7, 8, 9, 30,
Asad, Talal, 136 47, 113–22, 130–32; forms of signification,
assimilability, 16, 39, 47, 121–22 118–19, 126–27, 200n13; generation and,
Association of Families Abandoned by 7, 30, 115, 117–18; gradation of
Migrant Workers, 60 Japaneseness, 121–22; kinship
metaphors, 116–17, 118–19, 122, 123–25,
“backward” minority status, 40–43 126–27, 130–32; names and, 121–22;
baptism, 123, 137–41, 147, 148–49, 150–51, national identity and, 7, 8, 9, 47, 115–20,
172–75, 176 128–30, 131–32, 184, 200n1; overview of,
Beatriz, 55–56, 57–58, 62–63, 67–68, 71–72, 183–84; religious conceptions of, 114–16,
149, 186, 188–89 122–32, 183–84; return migration and, 7,
belief and faith, 133–53; ancestral 8, 9, 115–16, 117–18, 119–20; visa
veneration, 138, 143–48, 157–58, 202n7, boundaries based on, 7, 115, 117–18;
202n12; baptism and, 137–41, 147, 148–49, water baptism and, 123
150–51; communion based on, 151–53; body metaphors, 124–25
conflicting, 145–47, 148; conversion and, Bolivia, migrants from, 4, 193–94n33
137–41, 147, 148–51, 184; cultural context Borges, Marcelo, 44
for, 136–37; defined, 135–36, 150; Borneo, religion in, 136
embodied, 134–35, 136, 175–78; ethnic branqueamento (whitening), 16–17
22 8 IN DE X
Brazil: blood and national identity in, spiritual, 108, 183–84, 186. See also
200n1; branqueamento (whitening) in, national origin and identity
16–17; conceptions of love in, 99–101; civil ethics, 18, 128–29
FIFA World Cup in, 12–14; Japanese Clifford, James, 6
migration to, 7–8, 15–21, 37, 38–40, 119; Coleman, Simon, 84
mestiçagem (racial mixture) in, 8, 16, 30, communion, 114, 116, 126–27, 151–53
47, 72; “modern” minority status in, conversion narratives, 78–92; baptism
38–40; Pentecostalism in, 10, 20–21, 96; and water baptism in, 123, 137–41, 147,
religion in, 10, 17–21, 96; return 148–49, 150–51, 172–75, 176; belief and
migration to, 4, 8, 15–21, 24, 37, 38–40, faith in, 137–41, 147, 148–51, 184; Bible
43–44, 49–50, 84–85, 119–20, 133–34, study in, 83, 85–86; flowing in the Holy
144–45; work in, 15, 16–17, 58 Spirit in, 87–88; living in suspension
Brazilian Association of Labor Migrants in, 78–80, 84–86, 92, 183; modernity
survey, 59 theme, 83–84, 91; origin myths, 8–9;
Brazilian migrants. See Japanese-Brazilian prayer in, 79, 80, 87–91; return
migrants migration and, 84–86, 91–92; return to
Brettel, Caroline, 43 the present, 84–86, 183; self-expression
Bruno, 3–5, 94, 98, 151–52, 191n2 via, 162–63; spiritual and factory work
Brusco, Elizabeth, 104 comparison, 81–83; spiritual
Buddhism: ancestral veneration, 129, 130–31, authenticity rhetoric, 82–83; spiritual
138, 144, 146, 157–58, 164; Christian calling narratives, 81; temporal or time
conflict with, 129–31, 157–59; Japanese conceptions in, 78–92; work in relation
majority as, 27; migration to Brazil, 17, 18, to, 78–83, 86, 87–88, 90
19, 20, 25; nonreligious practices, 163–64; crentes (believers), 12, 79, 100, 107, 142–43,
Portuguese services, 25, 26 149
Csordas, °omas, 175
Carneiro, Cid: on absorption, 170; on Culto para Mulheres (Worship for
baptism, 123, 137–40, 149; on blood of Women), 101–2
Jesus, 123, 125; conversion narratives, cultural ambiguity, 53–74; adapting to
83–84, 89; ethnographic research and, Japanese social conventions, 65–69;
28–29, 35, 180–81, 186, 188, 191n1; in extremist disputes, 53–54; family
Homi Danchi, 56 separation and estrangement, 57–65;
Casados para Sempre course (Married for gender and, 59–60, 63, 67–69;
Life), 93–95, 96, 97, 98–99, 103–4, 105 generalizations and, 54–55; housing
Catholicism: belief and faith, 140–41, 143, options and, 53–57, 58, 66; language
152; blood conceptions, 126; Brazilian and, 58, 62–63, 69–70; loss of identity
practice, 17–18, 19, 20; Japanese, 25, 26, and, 71; media images and, 53–54,
27, 194–95n43; Pentecostal divergence, 55–56, 60, 66; national origin and
158, 160–62, 168; Portuguese services, identity and, 53–54, 57; older migrants’
25, 26 experiences of, 57–69; overview of,
China, return to, 9 73–74, 182–83; racial ambivalence and,
Christian Pentecostalism. See 71–73; racialized affects and, 64–65,
Pentecostalism 197n15; religious affiliations and, 58,
circular migration, 44–45, 49 64–65; school attendance and, 63,
citizenship: birthright, 8, 24, 189; flexible, 66–68, 72; work and, 61–63, 69–70;
9; jus sanguinis (blood), 7, 115–17, 189; younger migrants’ experiences of,
naturalized, 46–47, 48, 118, 120; 69–74
IN DE X 2 29
cultural influences: ambiguous cultural Engelke, Matthew, 6
identity (see cultural ambiguity); Espiritismo, 194n37
assimilability, 16, 39, 47, 121–22; belief espiritual category, 153
in context of, 136–37; blood vs. (see ethics: civil, 18, 128–29; ethical mobility,
blood); customs, rituals, and 5–9; ethical personhood, 129. See also
traditions, 58, 65–69, 134–35, 137–41, morality
163–69, 172; discipline, 63–65, 107–9, ethnic and racial identity: ambiguous (see
129, 165–66, 168–69; ethnic and racial cultural ambiguity); appearance and,
(see ethnic and racial identity); 4, 13–14, 15, 21, 23, 30, 47, 72–73, 113, 120,
ethnographic study of, 11, 14–15, 27–31, 121; as “backward” minority, 40–43;
35–36, 133–35, 178–79, 180–86, 187–90; belief affected by, 141–48; blood and, 7,
forced conformity, 10, 121; historical 8, 9, 30, 47, 113–22, 130–32;
context, 14–27; language and (see branqueamento (whitening) goals for,
language); love as, 93–109, 183; national 16–17; discipline in, 63–65, 107–9,
(see national origin and identity); 165–66, 168–69; as dual minority,
origin myths as, 7–9; religious (see 37–38; ethnographic study of, 14–15,
religion); socioeconomic (see 29–31, 188–89; fluidity of, 122;
socioeconomic status) generalizations about, 54–55 (see also
stereotypes); hāfu (half), 71–73;
Daswani, Girish, 160 intermarriage among, 16, 17; Japanese-
deixar de viver (putting aside or stopping Brazilian, 4, 5–10, 13–17, 21–24, 25–27,
living), 49–51, 79. See also living in 29–31, 37–43, 46–49, 53–74, 97, 100–101,
suspension 107–9, 113–22, 130–32, 141–48, 163–69,
dekasseguis, 4, 43, 59–60, 78. See also 188–89, 194n33, 197n15; language and,
Japanese-Brazilian migrants 9, 13, 22, 37, 58, 62–63, 69–70, 107, 113,
diaspora, 6, 186. See also return 120, 121–22, 142–43, 166–68; living in
migration suspension and, 37–43, 46–49; loss of,
discipline, culture of, 63–65, 107–9, 129, 71; love and, 97, 100–101, 107–8; masks
165–66, 168–69 of inauthentic identity, 46–49;
mestiçagem myth and, 8, 16, 30, 47, 72;
education. See schools and education model minority stereotype, 17, 22, 23;
elasticity of time, 80 as “modern” minority, 38–40; names
Elisha, Omri, 150 and, 37, 121–22, 189; não sei (I-don’t-
embodiment: belief in ritualistic, 134–35, know generation), 14, 15, 30; national
136; charismatic bodily expression of origin and identity with, 5–9, 47, 49,
fervor, 158; faith as embodied 53–54, 57, 115–20, 131–32; racial
disposition, 175–78; religious body ambivalence, 71–73; racialized affects,
metaphors, 124–25; speaking in tongues, 64–65, 197n15; racism and
89–90, 158–59, 173–78 discrimination, 4, 7, 8, 9–10, 23, 25–26,
emperor: as head of family nation-state, 38, 113, 115, 121; religious transethnicity,
117; religious leadership role, 128–29; 27, 130–32; self-expression and, 163–69;
veneration of, 18–19 self-identification as, 29–31, 71;
Employment Gender Equality Law (Japan, self-image of, 69; socioeconomic status
1985), 103 and, 10, 15–17, 21–22, 23–24, 27, 38–43,
Empowered 21 All Japan, 99–100 55, 194n33
Encounter with God (prayer camp), 79, 80, ethnography, 11, 14–15, 27–31, 35–36, 133–35,
176–77 178–79, 180–86, 187–90
23 0 IN DE X
faith. See belief and faith; religion Guilherme, 57–58, 62–63, 64–65, 72, 81–83,

families: ancestral veneration, 18, 20, 58, 186
129–31, 138, 143–48, 157–58, 164, 202n7, gypsies, transpacific, 44–45
202n12; belief and faith in ties to, 138,
141–51; family nation-state rhetoric, hāfu (half), 71–73
116–18, 131; kinship metaphors, 116–17, Harding, Susan, 31, 188
118–19, 122, 123–25, 126–27, 130–32; love Harris, Marriman Colbert, 128
and, 97, 104–6, 108–9 (see also under Holy Spirit: baptism in, 172–75, 176;
marriage); separation and estrangement flowing in, 87–88; self openness to,
of, 57–65, 104–6; spiritual kinship 171–72, 178
through religion, 116, 123–25, 126–27, Homi Danchi (housing project), 28, 46,
130–32; Veredas Antigas retreat for, 106, 53–57, 58, 61, 66, 180–81, 195n48
142. See also blood; generation; kinship; homogeneity, ethnic, 72–73
marriage Hōnen Festival, 134–35, 136, 201n1
favelas, 42, 53–57 Howell, Brian, 150
fieldwork, ethnographic, 27–31
FIFA World Cup, 12–14 “iconography of consanguineous unity,”
flexible citizenship, 9 119
flow: absorption and, 88, 174; defined, idolatry, 83, 145, 148
203–4n31; flowing in the Holy Spirit, illusion of return, 43–44
87–88; speaking in tongues and, 158, 174 Immigration Control and Refugee
food: communion through, 151–53; Recognition Act (Japan), 21
customs and traditions, 58, 67–68; India, return to, 9
missionary canteen, 77–78; obentō individualism: Christian, 89, 91, 136,
(boxed lunch), 67–68, 105 148–50, 159–79, 184–85; family
connectedness vs., 149; interiority and,
garbage collection, 66 129, 136, 140–41, 150, 169–71; love
Geertz, Clifford, 135, 136 reflecting modern, 99; overview of,
gender: cultural ambiguity and, 59–60, 63, 184–85; relationality vs., 165–66, 169–73,
67–69; demographics by, 29, 59–60; 178–79, 184. See also self
family separation and estrangement Inoue, Tetsujirō, 130
response by, 63, 104–5; gender roles, Institute of Statistical Mathematics survey,
67–69, 102–6; love and, 97, 101–6; 164
migratory patterns by, 59–60; religious interethnic marriage, 16, 17
traditions and, 18, 102–6; workplace Italy, return migration to, 44
inequities, 102–3, 104–5
generalizations, 54–55. See also stereotypes James, Wendy, 50
generation: blood and, 7, 30, 115, 117–18; Japan: “backward” minority status in,
ethnographic study of, 195–96n52; 40–43; emigration to Brazil from, 7–8,
lost, cultural ambiguity and, 69–71; 15–21, 37, 38–40, 119; “Jesus loves Japan!,”
não sei (I-don’t-know generation), 14, 15, 181, 182, 186; love conceptions in, 99–101;
30; as social and political construct, post-World War II, 18–20; religion in
30–31; visa restrictions based on, 7, 21, (see Buddhism; New Religions,
200n12 Japanese; Pentecostalism; religion;
Ghana, religion in, 82, 83, 91, 160 Shinto); return migration to, 7–8, 9,
global financial crisis (2008), 23, 26, 78 21–27, 38, 40–43, 51–52, 115–16, 144–45
glossolalia. See speaking in tongues (see also Japanese-Brazilian migrants);
I N D EX 2 31
visas (see visas); work in, 4, 10, 13, 21–22, Kirsch, °omas, 150

23–24, 27, 36, 40–43, 51, 58, 69–70, 78–83 Kondo, Dorinne, 165–66
Japanese-Brazilian migrants: blood of Kosato-maru (ship), 15–16
(see blood); children of, 13, 24, 37, 46,
69–74, 106, 113–14, 117–18, 142, 144–45, labor. See work or labor
188–89 (see also families; generation); Lakoff, George, 175
cultural influences on (see cultural language: conversion narratives and use
influences); demographics of, 29, 59–60; of, 85, 87; cultural ambiguity and, 58,
diaspora of, 6, 186 (see also return 62–63, 69–70; ethnic identity and, 9, 13,
migration); ethnic and racial identity 22, 37, 58, 62–63, 69–70, 107, 113, 120,
(see ethnic and racial identity); 121–22, 142–43, 166–68; ethnographic
ethnographic study of, 11, 14–15, 27–31, study and, 28–29; living in suspension
35–36, 133–35, 178–79, 180–86, 187–90; and, 37, 51, 85; objectivist view of,
global trends affecting, 9–11; historical 175–76; religious use of, 85, 87, 138, 141,
context for, 14–27; language of (see 150–51, 158–59, 167–68, 171–72, 173–78,
language); living in suspension, 35–52, 195n49; in schools, 19, 37, 63, 142, 171–72;
78–80, 84–86, 92, 144–45, 182–83; love self and meaning of, 157–59, 161–62,
among, 93–109, 183; names of, 37, 121–22, 166–68, 171–72, 173–78; speaking in
189; national origin and identity of (see tongues, 89–90, 158–59, 173–78;
citizenship; national origin and identity); subjectivist view of, 176; work
naturalization of, 46–47, 48, 118, 120; opportunities and, 22, 113, 121–22
number of, 9, 17, 22, 24, 193–94n33; Le Guin, Ursula, 190
religion among (see Pentecostalism; Leticia, 141–49, 150–51, 153, 184, 186, 202n9,
religion); return to Brazil or Japan 202n12
(see return migration); schools and limbo, state of. See cultural ambiguity;
education for (see schools and living in suspension
education); socioeconomic status of Linger, Daniel, 167
(see socioeconomic status); transiency living in suspension, 35–52; as “backward”
of, 5; transnational mobility of (see minority, 40–43; circular migration
transnational mobility); visas for (see and, 44–45, 49; conversion narratives in
visas); work or labor of (see work or relation to, 78–80, 84–86, 92, 183; deixar
labor) de viver (putting aside or stopping
Jesus: blood of, 114–16, 122–32, 183–84; living), 49–51, 79; as dual minority,
conversion to belief in (see conversion 37–38; ethnic and racial identity in,
narratives); “Jesus loves Japan!,” 181, 182, 37–43, 46–49; ethnographic study of,
186; self openness to, 170, 171, 178 35–36; future in Brazil, 43–44, 49–50;
Johnson, Mark, 175 future in Japan, 51; masks of inauthentic
identity in, 46–49; as “modern”
kata (standardized postures, movements, minority, 38–40; overview of, 182–83;
and compositions), 168 plasticity of return, 51–52; return as
Keane, Webb, 118, 161–63 place of hope for, 43–44, 51; schools and
ki (energy field), 165 education while, 35, 46, 51, 144–45;
kinship: blood and metaphors of, 116–17, socioeconomic status and, 38–43;
118–19, 122, 123–25, 126–27, 130–32; transpacific gypsies, 44–45; work and,
material, 118–19, 122, 127; plasticity of, 36, 40–43, 51, 78–80, 86; work-life
119; spiritual, 116, 123–25, 126–27, 130–32. division, 36, 51, 78–80
See also families loss, moments of, 6, 69–71
23 2 IN DE X
love, 93–109; ancient and ancient-style, cultural ambiguity and affiliation with,
101–6; Brazilian conceptions of, 99–101; 58; demographics of, 39, 195n49;
companionate, 99; confessions of, ethnographic study at, 28–29, 35–36, 39,
94–95, 97; discipline vs., 107–9; ethnic 180–86, 191n1; growth of, 25–26, 194n41;
and racial identity and, 97, 100–101, love conceptions at, 93–95, 96, 97,
107–8; gender and, 97, 101–6; global 98–99, 101–6; missionary canteen,
views of, 96, 99; graduation ceremony 77–78; prayer experiences, 87, 89–90,
of, 93–95, 96, 97; history of, 95–97; 145, 158, 168; services at, 3, 58, 89–90,
Japanese conceptions of, 99–101; 114, 180–81, 186; Veredas Antigas retreat,
learning to, 97–99; marriage and, 93–95, 106, 142; water baptism, 123, 137–41, 147,
96–97, 98–99, 102–6; modern, 96–97, 148–49, 150–51
99, 101–3, 106; Pentecostal and religious mobility. See transnational mobility
conceptions of, 93–109, 183; political model minority stereotype, 17, 22, 23
constructs of, 97; therapy, 97; modernity: Christian theme of, 83–84, 91,
transnational mobility context for, 97; 106, 127, 162–63; love and, 96–97, 99,
work setting for, 94–95, 97–98 101–3, 106; “modern” minority status,
Luana, 38, 57–60, 63, 64–65, 72, 108, 186 38–40; moral narrative of, 162–63;
temporality and, 198n8
Maeyama, Takashi, 20 morality: Durkheimian sense of, 204n3;
Marcelo, 40, 77–80, 84, 86, 186 moral autonomy, 160, 169–70, 204n3;
marriage: Casados para Sempre course on, morality of mobility, 5–9, 10–11, 182–86;
93–95, 96, 97, 98–99, 103–4, 105; family moral narrative of modernity, 162–63;
estrangement effects on, 57–65, 104–6; moral personhood, 178–79. See also
interethnic, 16, 17; love and, 93–95, ethics
96–97, 98–99, 102–6 Mozambique, religion in, 21, 97
masks, Japanese, 46–49
materialism, 4, 5, 78 names, ethnic identity and, 37, 121–22, 189
material kinship, 118–19, 122, 127 não sei (I-don’t-know generation), 14, 15, 30
media coverage: Brazilian stereotypes, 42, national origin and identity: blood and, 7,
55–56, 60, 66; extremist disputes, 53–54; 8, 9, 47, 115–20, 128–30, 131–32, 184,
FIFA, 12–13; Hōnen Festival, 201n1; 200n1; cultural ambiguity and, 53–54,
Japanese stereotypes, 38–39; 57; ethnic and racial identity with, 5–9,
naturalization, 46, 48; religious issues, 47, 49, 53–54, 57, 115–20, 131–32;
18; trash problem, 66 extremist, 53–54, 180–81; family
mestiçagem (racial mixture), 8, 16, 30, 47, nation-state rhetoric, 116–18, 131;
72 kinship metaphors, 116–17, 118–19,
Meyer, Birgit, 83 131–32; origin myths, 7–8; religious ties
Mills, David, 50 to, 17, 18, 19, 128; return migration and,
mimesis, 182 7–8, 9, 17–19, 49, 115–20; transnational
miscegenation, 16, 17 mobility and, 5–9, 49. See also
Missão Apoio Pentecostal Church: belief citizenship
experiences, 137–41, 145–47, 148–53; naturalization, 46–47, 48, 118, 120
Bible study course, 85, 191n2; blood Needham, Rodney, 135–36
conceptions at, 113–14, 123–25, 130; “neither here nor there.” See cultural
Casados para Sempre course, 93–95, 96, ambiguity
97, 98–99, 103–4, 105; communion at, New Religions, Japanese, 19, 20, 25, 26,
151–53; Culto para Mulheres at, 101–2; 194n37
IN DE X 2 33
Nikkei. See Japanese-Brazilian migrants personhood: ancestral, 148; ethical, 129;

Nikkei-jin visas, 7–8, 9, 21–22, 23–24, 115, modern, 101, 127; moral, 178–79;
117–18 Pentecostal, 159–63, 169–72, 178–79.
nonreligious self-image, 163–66 See also self
Peru, migrants from, 4, 67, 193–94n33,
obentō (boxed lunch), 67–68, 105 195n49
obon commemoration, 58, 138, 146, 202n7 Philippines, religion in, 100, 150
Ong, Aihwa, 9 Phillipps, Mike and Marilyn, 96
origin myths, 7–9. See also national origin physical appearance, 4, 13–14, 15, 21, 23, 30,
and identity 47, 72–73, 113, 120, 121
pilgrimage, 3–5, 6
Papua New Guinea, religion in, 160 plasticity: of kinship, 119; of return, 51–52
Pentecostalism: baptism in, 123, 137–41, 147, political influences: generation as political
148–49, 150–51, 172–75, 176; belief and construct, 30–31; love inseparability
faith in (see belief and faith); Bible study, from, 97; religion and, 10, 17–18, 19, 117,
29, 83, 85–86, 191n2; blood in, 114–16, 128–30; return migration and, 10, 116.
122–32, 183–84; communion in, 114, 116, See also national origin and identity
126–27, 151–53; conversion narratives (see Portugal: religion in, 21; return migration
conversion narratives); crentes (believers), to, 44
12, 79, 100, 107, 142–43, 149; cultural prayer: absorption, 87–88, 170, 174; in
ambiguity and, 58, 64–65; defined, 8, conversion narratives, 79, 80, 87–91;
193n24; discipline and righteousness, Encounter with God (prayer camp), 79,
107–9; ethnographic study of, 11, 15, 80, 176–77; ethnographic study of, 29,
28–29, 35–36, 178–79, 180–86, 187–90; 35; familial, 145 (see also ancestral
gender roles in, 102–6; growth of: global, veneration); love and, 96, 100; self-
10–11, 21; growth of: in Brazil and the expression through, 158–59, 161, 167–68,
South, 10, 20–21; growth of: in Japan, 170, 174–78; vigílias (vigils), 12, 89–90
25–27; Holy Spirit in, 87–88, 171–75, 176,
178; individualism in, 89, 91, 136, 148–50, racial identity. See ethnic and racial
159–79, 184–85; love conceptions in, identity
93–109, 183; modernity theme, 83–84, 91, Reader, Ian, 165
106, 127, 162–63; morality of mobility, 5–9, religion: ancestral veneration, 18, 20, 58,
10–11, 182–86; origin myths, 8–9; 129–31, 138, 143–48, 157–58, 164, 202n7,
pilgrimage, 3–5, 6; prayer, 12, 29, 35, 79, 202n12; baptism in, 123, 137–41, 147,
80, 87–91, 96, 100, 145, 158–59, 161, 167–68, 148–49, 150–51, 172–75, 176; belief and
170, 174–78; return migration and, 10–11, faith in (see belief and faith); blood in,
20–21, 25–27, 84–86, 91–92, 133–34, 114–16, 122–32, 183–84; civil ethics and,
144–45; spiritual and factory work 128–29; communion in, 114, 116,
comparison, 81–83; spiritual authenticity 126–27, 151–53; conversion narratives
rhetoric, 82–83; spiritual calling (see conversion narratives); cultural
narratives, 81; spiritual kinship through, ambiguity and, 58, 64–65;
116, 123–25, 126–27, 130–32; temporal or demographics of, 20, 25–27; discipline
time conceptions in, 8, 78–92, 181–83, 187; and righteousness, 107–9; emperor
transethnic approach, 27, 130–32; vigílias veneration, 18–19; gender roles in, 18,
(vigils), 12, 89–90 102–6; historical context for, 17–21,
peregrinos, 3–5, 6. See also Japanese- 25–27; individualism in, 89, 91, 136,
Brazilian migrants 148–50, 159–79, 184–85; language use in,
23 4 IN DE X
religion (continued) Schneider, Arnd, 44
85, 87, 138, 141, 150–51, 158–59, 167–68, schools and education: adapting to
171–72, 173–78, 195n49; love conceptions Japanese social conventions in, 66–68;
in, 93–109, 183; modernity theme, 83–84, demographics of, 39; ethnic and racial
91, 106, 127, 162–63; morality of mobility, identity in, 72; language in, 19, 37, 63,
5–9, 10–11, 182–86; national origin and 142, 171–72; living in suspension and, 35,
identity ties to, 17, 18, 19, 128; persecution 46, 51, 144–45; obentō (boxed lunch) for,
and suppression of, 10, 27, 195n43; 67–68, 105; religious ties to, 18–19
pilgrimage, 3–5, 6; political influences Seichō-no-Ie, 123, 143–47, 148
and, 10, 17–18, 19, 117, 128–30; prayer, 12, self: accompanied, 170–75, 178–79, 184–85;
29, 35, 79, 80, 87–91, 96, 100, 145, 158–59, baptism in Holy Spirit, 172–75, 176;
161, 167–68, 170, 174–78; return migration belief and faith reflecting, 157–60,
and, 10–11, 17–21, 25–27, 84–86, 91–92, 175–78; conversion as expression of,
133–34, 144–45; social ontology of, 153; 162–63; disciplined, 129, 165–66, 168–69;
spiritual and factory work comparison, ethnic and racial identity: influence on,
81–83; spiritual authenticity rhetoric, 163–69; ethnic and racial identity:
82–83; spiritual calling narratives, 81; self-identification of, 29–31, 71; ethnic
spiritual kinship through, 116, 123–25, and racial identity: self-image of, 69;
126–27, 130–32; temporal or time ethnographic study of, 178–79; house
conceptions in, 8, 78–92, 181–83, 187; metaphor for, 170; individualism of (see
transethnic approach, 27, 130–32. See individualism); language meaning for,
also specific religions 157–59, 161–62, 166–68, 171–72, 173–75;
religiosity, 162 moral autonomy of, 160, 169–70, 204n3;
°e Resting in the Spirit, 158 nonreligious image of, 163–66; overview
return migration: blood and, 7, 8, 9, 115–16, of, 184–85; Pentecostal personhood,
117–18, 119–20; to Brazil, 4, 8, 15–21, 24, 37, 159–63, 169–72, 178–79; relational,
38–40, 43–44, 49–50, 84–85, 119–20, 165–66, 169–73, 178–79, 184; ritual and
133–34, 144–45; circular, 44–45, 49; global tradition importance to, 163–69, 172;
trends, 9–11; historical context for, 14–27; sensory and immersive practices for,
illusion of return, 43–44; to Japan, 7–8, 9, 170–71, 174; sincere, 157–59, 160–63, 166,
21–27, 38, 40–43, 51–52, 115–16, 144–45; 167–69, 170–71. See also personhood
materialism avoidance, 4; morality of Shimamura, Fumio, 42
mobility and, 8, 10–11 (see also Shindō Renmei (“League of the Subjects’
transnational mobility); as place of hope, Path”), 19
43–44, 51; plasticity of, 51–52; religion Shinto: belief and faith in, 135, 143–44;
and, 10–11, 17–21, 25–27, 84–86, 91–92, blood, kinship, and, 117, 128–29, 131;
133–34, 144–45; visas for (see visas). See idolatry, 83; Japanese majority, 27;
also Japanese-Brazilian migrants migration to Brazil and, 17, 18, 19;
Revised Entry Regulation Law (Japan, nonreligious practices, 163–64; State or
1990), 119 nationalized, 17, 18, 117, 128–29, 184
Robbins, Joel, 159–60 Shoji, Rafael, 25
rootlessness, 5 signification, forms of, 118–19, 126–27, 175,
Roth, Joshua, 10 200n13
Russia, religion in, 96 sincerity: of belief and faith, 140–41, 148,
150, 157–59; of self, 157–59, 160–63, 166,
Sakamoto, Frederico, 55, 56 167–69, 170–71
Sara, 85–86, 87–88, 91, 160–63 Smilde, David, 153
IN DE X 2 35
Sobral, J. Amândio, 15–16 rootlessness and, 5; of transpacific
socioeconomic status: as “backward” gypsies, 44–45; visas allowing (see visas)
minority, 40–43; in Brazil, 15–17, 19, 21, transpacific gypsies, 44–45
38–40; housing options and, 55; in trash problem, 66
Japan, 10, 21–22, 23–24, 27, 38, 40–43, Tsuda, Takeyuki, 10
194n33; as “modern” minority, 38–40
South Korea, return to, 9 Uchimura, Kanzō, 128–30
speaking in tongues, 89–90, 158–59, Umbanda, 26, 174, 194n37
173–78 United States, religion in, 21, 83, 95–96,
Spiritism, 26 100, 150
spirituality. See Pentecostalism; religion Universal Church of the Kingdom of God,
stereotypes: “backward” minority, 40–43; 21, 97
Brazilian, 40–43, 55–56, 60, 66, 180;
Japanese, 38–40, 167, 180; model van der Veer, Peter, 83
minority, 17, 22, 23; “modern” minority, van Dijk, Rijk, 91
38–40 Venezuela, religion in, 153
Straube, Djalma, 60 Veredas Antigas retreat, 106, 142
Stromberg, Peter, 100 Vertovec, Steven, 45
suspended living. See living in suspension vigílias (vigils), 12, 89–90
Sweden, religion in, 84 visas: long-term resident, 7–8, 9, 21–22,
23–24, 115, 117–18; permanent resident,
Takeshi, 37–38, 39, 41, 42, 49–51, 79, 186 24, 46, 189; religious activities, 35;
Tanabe, George, 165 specific activities, 200n12
temporality: absorption and, 87–88, 170,
174; break from temporal suffocation, water baptism, 123, 137–41, 147, 148–49,
89–91; charismatic, 88, 90, 92, 183; 150–51, 172, 173, 175
conversion and, 78–92; cultural whitening (branqueamento), 16–17
ambiguity, 53–74, 182–83, 197n15; living work or labor: in Brazil, 15, 16–17, 58;
in suspension as, 35–52, 78–80, 84–86, conversion narratives in relation to,
92, 144–45, 182–83; modernity and, 78–83, 86, 87–88, 90; cultural ambiguity
198n8; return to the present, 84–86, 183; and, 61–63, 69–70; ethnic stereotypes
temporal tandem, 91–92; transiency and, 40–42; family separation and
and, 5. See also time estrangement due to, 61–63, 104–5;
time: “clock time,” 88, 90; elasticity of, 80; gender inequities in, 102–3, 104–5; in
“no time to live,” 49–51, 80 (see also Japan, 4, 10, 13, 21–22, 23–24, 27, 36,
living in suspension); Pentecostal 40–43, 51, 58, 69–70, 78–83; job fluidity,
conceptions of, 8, 78–92, 181–83, 187; 41; language and, 22, 113, 121–22; living
“time shock,” 40. See also temporality in suspension and, 36, 40–43, 51, 78–80,
Toyota Motor Corporation, 27, 138, 202n7 86; love in setting of, 94–95, 97–98;
transiency, migrant, 5 rituals or traditions in, 166–67, 168–69;
transnational mobility: circular migration socioeconomic status and, 10, 15, 16–17,
and, 44–45, 49; “going back,” 5; “going 21–22, 23–24, 27, 40–43; spiritual and
forward,” 5; love in context of, 97; factory work comparison, 81–83;
materialism avoidance, 4, 5; morality of, unemployment, 23–24, 78; work-life
5–9, 10–11, 182–86; national origin and division, 36, 51, 78–80
identity with, 5–9, 49; pilgrimage and, 5,
6; return as (see return migration); Zambia, religion in, 96

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J E S U S L OV E S J A PA N

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S TA NFO RD UN I VER SI T Y P RE S S ❚ S TA NFO RD , C ALI FO RNI A

People I met and worked with at Emory University have helped me grow

the University of Alabama. °ey warmly welcomed me, an ethnographer

Issue 2, 2017, doi: 10.1080/18692729.2017.1351046). °e third article, “Accompa-

lit by colorful artiﬁcial lights and pumping out fuming smoke into the dark

0 3 6 mi Main research sites

PILGRIMS IN T HE STRANGE HOMELAND

tecostalism in Brazil—and Latin America in general—has grown the most

roughly º±7,000 in ¸007—more than a twentyfold increase from ±9¶9 that

pick out the perfect meat for their churrasco barbecue parties. In summer,

sand and two hundred thousand yen (roughly $º,000 and $¸,000), respec-

Tradi°onal Spiri°sm &

PUT TING ASIDE LI VING

return does not materialize, this mind-set proved psychologically protective

Brazilians cannot picture a future in Japan is because the country does not

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

BAC K TO T HE PRES ENT

He then described how he initially found the repeated invitation from his

error, and He would never let a huryō slip through, Presbyter Guilherme

You see how Bartimaeus overcame his complacency [comodismo] and con-

We Brazilians typically came to Japan to work and earn money. Very

As I have pointed out above, many Nikkei migrants approach their con-

My research among Pentecostal Brazilians in Japan builds on van Dijk’s in-

F IG UR E 4. Confession of love at the graduation ceremony of Casados para Sempre

°e Married for Life seminar promotes a marital relationship that is “open”

°e ideal conjugal relationship at Missão Apoio seems to echo the vision

I could only make out kamisama, but I was moved that Japanese people—

On the other hand, the remarks by Mayumi and her fellow congregants

Marcela still worked full-time at a nearby factory even aﬅer taking Married

When I was young I thought my mother didn’t love me. All of my friends at

to the aﬄicted world,” meaning Jesus can cure the malaise converts experi-

Indexes do not only presuppose some prior causes of which they bear the ef-

Vinicius’s family story challenges the normative assumptions underlying jus

°e blood of Jesus is a “symbolic” (simbólico) substance that mediates the

family to us.” °ere is a grain of truth in such a statement. Many Brazilians

My friend who converted in Japan has recently returned to Brazil and called

is a decentralized system that mobilizes lay practitioners’ social networks as

Aﬅer the address of the [principal] and reading of the [Imperial Rescript on

ANCES TORS O F GOD

the Protestant semiotic ideology that Keane articulated oﬅen shapes Pente-

But I don’t think these things have absolute meaning. Well—how can I say

of the Other, knew this fact well: You stumble, fall, and sin in your journey

J ESUS LOVE S JA PAN

initially said no (“He is two years younger than me!”). But the second time

———. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and

———. “Creationist History-Making: Producing a Heterodox Past.” In Lost City,

Engelke, Matthew. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church.

Higuchi, Naoto. “Keizai Kiki to Zainichi Burajirujin” [°e economic crisis and the

———. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea

faith. See belief and faith; religion Guilherme, 57–58, 62–63, 64–65, 72, 81–83,

visas (see visas); work in, 4, 10, 13, 21–22, Kirsch, °omas, 150

Nikkei. See Japanese-Brazilian migrants personhood: ancestral, 148; ethical, 129;

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