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Saudade: A Story of Japanese Brazilian Diaspora
Author(s) -
Ikeuchi Suma
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/anhu.12317
Subject(s) - diaspora , homeland , hybridity , subjectivity , identity (music) , power (physics) , ethnography , history , gender studies , media studies , sociology , aesthetics , anthropology , art , political science , law , politics , philosophy , physics , epistemology , quantum mechanics
Summary Homeward but never at home—this is arguably the hallmark of diasporic subjectivity. Yet for people like the Japanese Brazilians in Japan, who have ostensibly returned to their ancestral homeland, their homeward journey now yields impossible identity puzzles. Through one woman named Wanda and her imaginative world, this story meditates on the various pieces of such puzzles: ethnocultural hybridity, generational conflict, the pain of labor, the power of religion, and the bittersweet yearning for home. While technically fictional, the events, places, and protagonists are based on the author’s yearlong ethnographic research in Toyota, Japan, between 2013 and 2014.