Japanese settlement in the Dominican Republic

Japanese expatriates and Japanese descendants in the Dominican Republic
Total population
766 Japanese nationals (2006);[1] unknown number naturalised as citizens of the Dominican Republic
Regions with significant populations
Constanza[2]
Languages

Japanese, Spanish[3]
Religion

Christianity, Mahayana Buddhism[4]
Related ethnic groups

Japanese diaspora

Japanese settlement in the Dominican Republic never grew to a very large scale; protests over the extreme hardships and broken government promises faced by the initial group of migrants set the stage for the end of state-supported labour emigration in Japan. The 2002 Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas bluntly describes the migration as a "disastrous failure".[5] The few descendants of the initial settlers who remained and took local citizenship may be referred to as Japanese-Dominicans.[6] As of 2006, there were also 766 Japanese nationals in the Dominican Republic.[7] These consist of both settlers who have retained their Japanese citizenship, as well as more recent expatriate residents.

Contents

Migration history

Migration from Japan to the Dominican Republic, unlike that to the rest of the Americas, did not begin until after World War II. With the end of the Allied occupation, Japan regained control over its migration policy. The Dominican Republic signed a treaty with Japan in 1956 to accept migrants for agricultural development, one of the earliest in a series of treaties signed by Japan's newly established emigration bureau.[8] From the Japanese government's perspective, the goal of the emigration policy was to improve Japan's international reputation by having Japanese people contribute to the development of foreign countries. Latin America was the only potential outlet for emigration; the United States' Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and Immigration Act of 1924 and Australia's White Australia policy eliminated the option of settlement in those two countries, while anti-Japanese sentiment in Asia due to Japan's wartime atrocities meant that none of those countries would accept Japanese migrants either.[9] Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic since 1930, for his part sought to use European and later Japanese migrants as a demographic buffer against a feared incursion of Haitian blacks into the country, by settling them along the country's western border with Haiti.[10]

Unlike European migrants, who had historically used the Dominican Republic as a stepping-stone towards other countries—and who would take advantage of Trujillo's policy to continue this pattern—Japanese migrants came to the Dominican Republic with the intention of permanent settlement.[11] They had been promised furnished houses, land ready for planting, and credit until the first harvest.[12] More than 200 families totalling 1,319 people braved the month-long ocean voyage and arrived from 1956 to 1959.[13][14] However, the May 1961 assassination of Trujillo, plunged the country into chaos and political violence, leaving many of the governmental promises of assistance broken.[15] The migrants entirely abandoned five of their eight settlements.[16] Beginning in 1961, 70 families moved to other Latin American countries which had agreed with the Japanese government to resettle them, including Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, while 111 other families returned to Japan.[17]

By 1962, just 276 Japanese remained in the country.[18] Of the forty-seven families which settled in Constanza and the nearby valley, just seven remained. However, they clung tenuously to their land, improving irrigation facilities and introducing the Japanese bokashi composting technique. By the 1990s, Constanza had become a major area of agricultural production, growing over 90% of the country's vegetables.[19]

Political implications

The failure of migration to the Dominican Republic marked an important turning point in Japanese emigration policy. Along with rising wages in Japan due to labour shortages, the wide-spread reporting of the tragedy faced by emigrants to the Dominican Republic dampened popular and official enthusiasm for emigration; the total number of emigrants from Japan fell by nearly two-thirds from 1961 to 1962, and in 1968, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally abolished its Central-South America Emigration Bureau.[20] Backlash would continue for decades; in 2000, more than 170 of the migrants sued the Japanese government, charging that it lied to them about conditions in the Dominican Republic in order to trick them into leaving Japan. The Japanese government settled the lawsuit in July 2006, paying US$17,000 to each plaintiff as well as US$10,000 to non-plaintiff migrants; then-Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi made a formal statement apologising for the "immense suffering due to the government's response at the time".[21]

According to Japanese diplomat Teruyuki Ishikawa, the presence of the remaining Japanese immigrants and their descendants is the major reason why the Dominican Republic is the biggest recipient of official development aid from Japan.[22]

Language and culture

Some of the initial Japanese migrants to the Dominican Republic still speak little Spanish.[23] Their spoken Japanese is also full of archaicisms, such as the Sino-Japanese-derived shashinki (写真機?) instead of the modern loanword kamera (カメラ?) for "camera".[24]

References

Notes

  1. ^ Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2008
  2. ^ Riley 1999
  3. ^ Associated Press 2006
  4. ^ Riley 1999
  5. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 46
  6. ^ Associated Press 2006
  7. ^ Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2008
  8. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 43-44
  9. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 44-45
  10. ^ Horst & Asagiri 2000, p. 336
  11. ^ Horst & Asagiri 2000, p. 336
  12. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 46
  13. ^ Associated Press 2006
  14. ^ Riley 1999
  15. ^ Associated Press 2006
  16. ^ Horst & Asagiri 2000, p. 335
  17. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 46
  18. ^ Horst & Asagiri 2000, p. 335
  19. ^ Riley 1999
  20. ^ Azuma 2002, p. 46
  21. ^ Associated Press 2006
  22. ^ Riley 1999
  23. ^ Riley 1999: "But some of Constanza's inhabitants don't speak Spanish. You're more likely to hear Japanese in a suburb called Colonia Japonesa."
  24. ^ Associated Press 2006

Sources

Further reading

  • Peguero, Valentina (2005), Colonización y política: los japoneses y otros inmigrantes en la República Dominicana, Santo Domingo: BanReservas, ISBN 978-99934-940-4-1 

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