“East wind: a voyage through the Japanese immigration in Brazil” tells, in the manga format (as in Japanese comic books), a little about the arrival...

“East wind: a voyage through the Japanese immigration in Brazil” tells, in the manga format (as in Japanese comic books), a little about the history of Japanese immigrants in Brazil a hundred years ago, and of their adaptation to the new homeland. The book presents texts by André Uesato and Renata Corrêa, from IBGE’s Center for Information Documentation and Dissemination, and illustrations by Lícius Bossolan and Martha Werneck. Besides making a summary of the history of Japanese immigration, the publication also teacher readers how to make origami (art of paper folding).

The publication will be released today, June 19, at 1:30 PM, at Escola Estadual Presidente Roosevelt, located at 320, São Joaquim St., Liberdade - São Paulo/SP.

When Tatá takes that old silver Japanese fan which belongs to his Japanese grandmother in order to enhance the costume he was going to use in a meeting of animes and mangas, in the neighborhood of Liberdade, in São Paulo, he cannot imagine how much adventure he is about to experience! By opening and using the fan, the nikkei and his friend Bruno, a lover of Japanese culture, are mysteriously transported in time to different historical moments in these 100 years of Japanese immigration in Brazil.

First, they travel to 1945, and find an immigrant family in Marília (SP), and these people explain to them, using a puppet film, the reasons why they have left their country to come to Brazil. The boys get to know how Japan became the target to atomic bombs, after spending the period of World War II and an ally of Germany and Italy, and, as a consequence, Japanese emigrants were forbidden to do several things, including using their own native language.

After fighting against members of shindô-renmei², Tatá and Bruno land in Ribeirão Preto (SP), in 1919, only two years after ship Kasato Maru had arrived in Brazil bringing the first Japanese immigrants. The boys get acquainted with Manabu, a youngster who had come in this first trip and has a small rural property. With the help of Zezé, a freed black slave, Manabu tells Bruno and Tatá about the beginning of immigration, the substitution of slave work for the labor of immigrants and the difficulties to adapt to this new homeland. The conversation takes place during the traditional ceremony o tea and sushis, the algae of which had been given to Zezé by a would-be Japanese wizard who lives in the surroundings.

Curious and hopeful of having the mystery of their trip solved by the wizard, so that they can go back home, Tatá and Bruno decide to find him. They find out, however, that the man is not a wizard in fact, but a samurai lost in time and space. He does not know how he came to Brazil n the beginning of the 20th century, but he has a Japanese fan similar to Tatá’s. The youth exchange fans with the samurai and finally manage to go back to their era in history – or so it seems!

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¹ Name given to Japanese descendants who were born or live outside Japan.

² Group of fanatic nikkeis who did not believe Japan had lost World War II and who attacked the Japanese who accepted defeat and who were seen as traitors of the nation.