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the immigrants’ distance from Japan and their internal cultural differences. It stressed emperor worship and civic virtues as the most important elements of a Japanese national identity in order to strengthen the link between the Japanese state and immigrants (Endoh 2009: 9).³ Japanese immigrants in the Bastos colony adopted the Emperor Jimmu, whose accession has been recorded at 660 BC in their mythology as the spiritual leader of their community. Other colonies did so as well. This attitude provided much-needed cohesion for a disparate people trying to come together as a whole community. Social links were reinforced by ceremonial events such as the anniversary of the colony’s foundation, New Year festivities, sporting commemorations, and official school ceremonies. Shared loyalty was common in Japanese families. A family’s living room typically boasted a picture of the Japanese imperial couple next to one of Brazilian President Getulio Vargas. This proved to be true, at least until 1952 (Mita 1999: 96–101). For immigrants, it symbolized the affirmation of their ethnic identity, their strong connection to Japan, and their integration into one civil religion.

      Sociologists note that a civil religion has the function of preserving social values and providing social cohesion (Marshall 1998: 73). Robert Bellah was one of the first sociologists to apply this concept. Following the work of Emile Durkheim, Bellah states that every social group has a way of expressing its identity that is “religious.” Civil religion is the connection of a nation and of a people to ethical principles, helping guide them “to some form of self-understanding” (Bellah 2006: 221).

      Reverence for the emperor played a very important role, especially at the end of World War II when immigrants and their descendants divided into two groups: those who refused to believe that Japan had lost the war and those who did not question it. The first group, Kachigumi, created an association called Shindo Renmei (“Liga do Caminho dos Súditos,” or Association of the emperor’s Subjects), which attacked and killed some members of the second group, the Makegumi (Morais 2000; Mott n.d.; Nakasato 2011). The non-believers regarded the relationship between the emperor and the Japanese people to be akin to the relationship between father and son (Bastos Shuho 1952: 8). According to the novel Nihonjin, the old Japanese immigrant told his son, who had published an article on behalf of the Makegumi: “To betray the Nation is the same as to betray one’s own father” (Nakasato 2011: 142).

      

      Coffee to Cotton to Sericulture to Poultry (1928–2006)

      Brazil’s cotton industry took root when Japanese immigrants bought land that was sold by São Paulo coffee plantation owners following the collapse in coffee prices. The Kaigai Iju Kumiai Rengokai (KIKR), the Japanese Provinces Associations Foundation, had intended to cultivate coffee in its colonies, but the 1929 economic crisis and the resulting drop in coffee prices led the Brazilian federal government to prohibit new coffee farms in São Paulo State in 1932. Initially, plantation owners tried raising cattle; later they divided their large landholdings into small properties, which they then sold to Japanese immigrants to plant cotton. Cotton cultivation proved successful because it did not require a major investment, it was harvested yearly and it found a ready market in Japan-based textile industries. Japanese immigrants believed that they were helping their homeland’s development by planting cotton (Vieira 1973: 65–66).

      Following the 1932 ban on new coffee cultivation, the Yugen Sekinin Brasil Takushoku Kumiai (Bratac), or the Brazilian branch of the KIKR, also abandoned its entire coffee production in Bastos and replaced it with cotton. Within a few years, Bastos became known as “the land of cotton.” Bankers and factory owners in Japan supported the immigrants financially and advised them on cotton production (Vieira 1973: 66–67; Reich 1995: 40). However, cotton production soon diminished due to soil erosion. In 1938, the Japanese government began reducing cotton imports, first because of the war against China and later because of Second World War II. As a result, some Japanese families abandoned the colony. Bastos then decided to replace cotton production by growing silkworms and cultivating the mulberry trees on which they fed (Mita 1999: 67–75).

      Between 1925 and 1935, a period whose final five years covered the span when new coffee production was banned, Japanese immigration totaled 139,059 people, nearly four times greater than the 34,939 people who had come between 1908 and 1924 (Vieira 1973: 44). Japanese colonization companies had previously purchased large plots of land in western São Paulo that it now divided and sold to Japanese who wanted to emigrate. The new Japanese immigrants of the 1920s thereby bypassed the stage as contract laborers. These new immigrants utilized family labor and many enjoyed some upward mobility. A self-census conducted in 1933 showed that 53 percent of the Japanese in the São Paulo colonies who were farmers were independent.

      Some Japanese immigrants preferred to rent rather than buy plots of land, because they believed this would improve their chances at immediate success. This behavior resembles that of an earlier generation of Japanese emigration in 1875 when laborers traveled to Hawaii for a few years without their families (Saito 1961: 21), hoping to earn enough money to return to Japan. Although Brazil was further from Japan than Hawaii, migrants held onto the idea of return. It should have been a temporary migration, but World War II shattered their hopes.

      After World War II, Japanese immigrants and their descendants developed poultry farming that they directed at the Brazilian market. Poultry farming led to the concentration of wealth, increasing the economic differences within the immigrant group. This economic activity influenced the opening of poultry feeding factories, where most employees were non-Japanese. In 1966, the Japanese and their descendants established two big meat plants, where most employees were also non-Japanese. Similarly, the silk mill used non-Japanese labor. The use of non-Japanese labor increased the non-Japanese population in Bastos, most of whom were migrants from northeast Brazil and Minas Gerais State. Some of these Brazilians started to raise cattle, but many lived in slums on the periphery of Bastos.

      By 1978, among the Japanese families that had immigrated to Brazil after World War II, ninety-five families had settled in Bastos, forming twelve percent of all families of Japanese origin. As the number of the non-Japanese population increased, the proportion of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in the Bastos colony fell from eighty-eight percent in 1941 to only thirty percent in 1981 when Bastos’ population was 15,461. On the other hand, people of Japanese origin totaled 4,448 in 1978. Among the Japanese immigrants and their descendants, fifty-five percent lived in urban Bastos and forty-five percent in its rural area. Following the Brazilian pattern of migration after World War II, most of Bastos’ population lived in the urban zone. In 1981, seventy-one percent of Bastos residents were urban dwellers (Mita 1999: 190–93).

      Starting in the 1950s, Japanese immigrants and the Japanese Brazilians became interested in local and national Brazilian politics. At the same time, they began working to integrate Bastos’ economic life into the national society. Their children were also Brazilian citizens by birth. Several Japanese Brazilians were elected mayor of Bastos between 1956 and 1982 (Mita 1999: 190–91). At the time of our research, the deputy mayor was of Japanese origin too.

      Living in Bastos and Other Colonies: First and Second Generations

      Agricultural Production Cycles

      My students and I conducted fieldwork in Bastos in 2005 and 2006 by listening to the voices of immigrant descendants. They told us about their parents’ life experiences. Most of the interviewees, whose Japanese immigrant parents came for working as coffee plantation laborers, talked to us about their lives at ACENBA and at their homes.

      According to the geographer John P. Augelli:

      The climate of the region is subtropical (Cwa) but frosts, while infrequent, represent a potential danger to tropical crops. The precipitation factor can also be a hindrance to crop production. Total annual rainfall amounts to approximately 47 inches, of which 20 inches fall during the rainy season from October to January. A combination of high temperature and sandy soils reduces the effectiveness of precipitation with the result that partial crop failure due to inadequate water supply is an ever-present threat. Since much of the rain falls in the form of heavy thundershowers, crop destruction by hail is an added danger. The few patches of original vegetation which still remain indicate that the Peixe Valley (where Bastos is located) was once characterized by a predominantly forest cover locally called a “mato cerrado.” At

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