Updated on 2024/10/10

写真a

 
MATO, Shigeko
 
Affiliation
Faculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies
Job title
Professor
Degree
Ph.D ( University of New Mexico )

Education Background

  •  
    -
    2000

    University of New Mexico   Graduate School, Division of Letters   Latin American literature  

Professional Memberships

  •  
     
     

    CANELA (Confederación Académica Nipona, Española y Latinoamericana

  •  
     
     

    LASA Latin American Studies Association

Research Areas

  • Literature in general

Research Interests

  • Japanese Peruvian Memories and the Anthropocene

  • Japanese-Peruvian society and identity

 

Papers

  • Becoming Non-Japanese: Unlocatable Identity and Home in Gaijin (2003) by Maximiliano Matayoshi

    Shigeko Mato

    Hispanic Studies Review   7 ( 2 )  2023.11  [Refereed]

  • Hogar de pertenencia y desplazamiento: una respuesta de Jose Watanabe a la categoria de "poeta nikkei"

    Mato, Shigeko

    SinoELE   17   739 - 749  2018

  • Unsettling the japanese peruvian legacy of suffering: Madman in augusto higa oshiro’s “polvo enamorado”

    Shigeko Mato

    Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research   23 ( 3 ) 207 - 218  2017.09  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    Augusto Higa Oshiro’s 2013 short story “Polvo enamorado” depicts the experience and behavior of Kinshiro Nagatani, a Japanese immigrant who lives through during the time of the Peruvian government’s anti- Japanese operations in the 1930s and 1940s. However, Kinshiro’s experience with discrimination is not limited to that from the Peruvian society at large, but, more immediately, from the Japanese immigrant community itself, which labels him a madman as his behavior is deemed by them to be socially and morally unacceptable. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts of madness and limit-experiences, which delineate the processes of the construction and isolation of madmen in society, this article first examines how Kinshiro comes into existence as a madman and how his existence is confined to a space of exclusion. Then, it explores how and why the revelation of the processes of his becoming mad serves to offer an alternative view that disturbs the Japanese Peruvians’ prevailing collective memory of suffering and injustice.

    DOI

    Scopus

  • A Japanese Peruvian boy's urban wandering in search of a proper place: Reading "Extranjero" by Augusto Higa Oshiro as "the chorus of idle footsteps"

    Mato, Shigeko

    Cincinnati Romance Review   42   19 - 34  2017.03  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    Augusto Higa's story, "Extranjero," portrays a Japanese Peruvian Nisei boy, growing up in Lima during the post-WWII era, who "walks in the city" to find a "proper" place. Drawing on de Certeau's notion of pedestrians' footsteps as a form of everyday practice that provokes illegible and unruly spatiality within the structure of power, this study explores how and why, as the boy walks, a sense of labyrinthine disorientation arises, temporarily disturbing the Peruvian government's project to integrate him into society as an assimilable, obedient and quiet foreigner.

  • Contemplating Jose Watanabe's Eye through Roland Barthes's Photographic Eye

    Mato, Shigeko

    Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World   6 ( 1 ) 71 - 87  2016.04  [Refereed]

  • BETWEEN THE SEDUCTION AND AVERSION OF JAPANESE HERITAGE

    Shigeko Mato

    CHASQUI-REVISTA DE LITERATURA LATINOAMERICANA   44 ( 2 ) 229 - 240  2015.11  [Refereed]

     View Summary

    In “La sombra del guerrero,” Fernando Iwasaki, a Peruvian writer of Japanese ancestry, presents a drastic transformation of the protagonist Kawashita, from a person who at the beginning pays no attention to his Japanese heritage, into someone who comes to acknowledge it and unites himself with his Japanese grandfather at the end, without any cultural shock or conflictive psychological reactions. This study attempts to explore this seamless transformation, by reading “La sombra del guerrero” as a parodic creation of a cultural encounter between a Peruvian person who perceives Japanese culture as something mysterious and exotic and a Japanese visitor who is perceived by the Peruvian as such. Approaching the story as a parodic creation of a cultural encounter between Peruvian and Japanese, through Linda Hutcheon’s discussion on parody as “a form of repetition with [a] critical distance,” exposes an ironic distance between Iwasaki’s critical attitude toward the concept of one exclusive national identity and his projection of the protagonist’s exoticization and fascination with his Japanese heritage.

  • Okinawan Peruvian Poet's Gender Performativity: On “Diario de la mujer es ponja” by Doris Moromisato

    Shigeko Mato

    The Latin Americanist (Southeast Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals Inc.)   58 ( 2 ) 137 - 155  2014.06  [Refereed]

  • Imagining the Unnegotiable Home at the Margins in "La iluminación de Katzuo Nakamatsu" by Augusto Higa Oshiro

    Shigeko Mato

    Hispanófila (University of North Carolina)   169   175 - 192  2013.09  [Refereed]

  • “Moctezuma in the City: Revisited Past in Carmen Boullosa’s Llanto: Novelas imposibles.”

    Shigeko Mato

    Hispanic Journal (Indiana University of Pennsylvania)   Fall 2007   117 - 134  2007  [Refereed]

  • Beyon the memory of displacement:"Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps."

    Shigeko Mato

    Waseda Global Forum   No.8, 2011   129 - 149  2005.03

  • “The Illusion of the ‘Homely’ and Consciousness of the ‘Unhomely’: Rethinking ‘Home’ in Carmen Boullosa’s Mejor desaparece.”

    Shigeko Mato

    Confluencia (Northern Colorado University)   Spring 2003   125 - 137  2003  [Refereed]

  • “Carmen Boullosa’s La Milagrosa: A Light Detective Fiction or a Dense Aesthetic Work?” 2000 (No. 1-2). 125-136.

    Shigeko Mato

    Letras Femeninas (Arizona State University)   2000 (No. 1-2)   125 - 136  2000  [Refereed]

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Books and Other Publications

  • A Stream of Thought on Disorientation (Essay)

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Contributor, Author)

    Transcommunication Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies, Waseda  2022.09

  • The Poetic Artistry of José Watanabe: Separating the Craft from the Discourse

    Mato, Shigeko, Randy Muth, Alfredo Lopez, Pasarin Basabe( Part: Joint author, Author of one chapter)

    Palgrave MacMillan  2021.09 ISBN: 9783030816148

  • Las voces que entrecruzan el Peru y Japon (Spanish)

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Sole author, Author)

    Ediciones Murrup  2021.03 ISBN: 9789972936456

  • Quiet revenges: The infinite intensity of the silenced history of Japanese Peruvians in Carlos Yusimito del Valle’s "Ciudad de Cristal”

    Shigeko Mato as a contributor of a book, Cultural and Literary Dialogues between Asia and Latin America, edited by Axel, Gasquet, Gorica Majstorovic.( Part: Contributor, Chapter 10 pp.159-176)

    London, Palgrave, 2021.  2021.02 ISBN: 9783030525705

  • Book Review El samurai by Rafael Reyes-Ruiz

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Sole author)

    Waseda Global Forum  2019.03

  • Villain or victim?: Undermining the memory of Japanese Peruvians in Augusto Higa Oshiro's "Gaijin (Extranjero)" in "The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture." Ed. Frederick Luis Aldama.

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Contributor, Author (one chapter))

    Routledge  2018 ISBN: 9781138894952

  • La memoria recuperada y perturbada en "Okinawa existe" de Augusto Higa (Book chapter) in "Extremo occidente y extremo oriente: herencias asiaticas en la America hispana." Ed. Axel Gasquet and Georges Lomne.

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Contributor, Author (one chapter))

    Fondo Editorial de PUCP  2018 ISBN: 9786123173722

  • The “Coloniality of Power” in the Twenty-First-Century Peruvian Story “Rizoma” by Carlos Yushimito del Valle in "Critical Insights: Latin American Fiction." Ed. Ignacio Lopez-Calvo.

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Contributor, Author (one chapter))

    Salem Press  2017 ISBN: 9781682175613

  • Rethinking Hybrid Identity of a Peruvian Migrant Worker in Japan in "Gambate: 頑張って" (2011) by Luis Fernando Arriola Ayala (Book chapter) in "Trans-Pacific Encounters: Asia and Hispanic World" Ed. Koichi Hagimoto

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Contributor, Author (one chapter))

    Cambridge Scholars Publishing  2016

  • Cooptation, Complicity, and Representation: Desire and Limits for Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Mexican Fiction

    Mato, Shigeko( Part: Sole author)

    Peter Lang  2010.05 ISBN: 9781433109126

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Presentations

  • Peruvian Migrant Worker's Pursuit of "Good Life" in Japan: Reading "Chimbote ganbare" (2013) by Luis Arriola Ayala (Lima, 1972) as "Cruel Optimism"

    Shigeko Mato

    LASA Latin American Studies Association 

    Presentation date: 2023.05

  • Una mirada a las memorias de los inmigrantes japoneses en Latinoamérica en la época del Antropoceno (Spanish)

    Shigeko Mato  [Invited]

    XXXIV Congreso Canela (日本・スペイン・ラテンアメリカ学会) 

    Presentation date: 2022.05

  • Healing a Metalic Body with Water and the Moon: Doris Moromisato’s Ecofeminist Poetry on Japanese Peruvian Dekasegi Women in Japan

    AAS (Association of Asian Studies) 2022 Annual Conference 

    Presentation date: 2022.03

  • Rethinking Peruvian Nikkei Memory: Crónicas de mujeres nikkei by Doris Moromisato as a Memory Space Disconcerting the Legacy of Japanese Immigration in Peru.

     [Invited]

    LASA/Asia 2022 Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America 

    Presentation date: 2022.02

  • Una mirada a la migración peruana en Japón a través de un relato ‘Lolo’ de Luis Fernando Arriola Ayala.

    A Look at Peruvian Migration in Japan through a Short Story "Lolo" by Luis Fernando Arriola Ayala  [Invited]

    El Seminario Internacional, “Conociendo Japón" (International Seminar, "Getting to Know Japan") 

    Presentation date: 2021.10

  • Rifkind Center’s Faculty New Books Series: Prof. Araceli Tinajero: Conversation with Shigeko Mato

     [Invited]

    The Rifkind Center for the Humanities and the Arts, Faculty New Books Series 

    Presentation date: 2021.09

  • Dialogando memorias silenciadas en un relato peruano: una lectura de ‘El japonés Fukuhara’ (2017) de Selenco Vega Jácome como un espacio de “la hospitalidad narrativa"

    Shigeko Mato

    XXV Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispánicos, Lima, Peru, March 4–6, 2020. 

    Presentation date: 2021.03

    Event date:
    2021.03
     
     
  • En virtud de rescatar los textos hispanohablantes en el Japón salvaje. (in Spanish)

    Shigeko Mato  [Invited]

    Presentación del libro: Historia cultural de los hispanohablantes en Japón por Araceli Tinajero, Instituto Cervantes Tokio 

    Presentation date: 2020.01

  • Impulsos viscerales frente a la poesia de Jose Watanabe: una "lectura poscritica"

    Mato, Shigeko  [Invited]

    Conferencia "El guardian de la palabra: una mirada interdisciplinaria sobre la poesia de Jose Watanabe  (Lima, PUCP) 

    Presentation date: 2018.08

  • Haciendo visibles a los migrantes invisibles: un choque afectivo en "Lolo" (2013) de Luis Arriola Ayala"

    Mato, Shigeko

    XVI Congreso Internacional de ALADAA  (Lima PUCP)  ALADA

    Presentation date: 2018.08

  • Performing Memories of Okinawa in Peru: On "Okinawa existe" (2013) by Augusto Higa Oshiro

    Mato, Shigeko

    LASA  (Barcelona)  LASA

    Presentation date: 2018.05

  • Saboreando "la colonialidad del poder" en "Rizoma" (2013) de Carlos Yushimito del Valle"

    Mato, Shigeko

    XXI Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispanicos  (Quito)  CILEH

    Presentation date: 2018.03

  • (Un)Negotiating Nisei Identity in Peru: On "La iluminación de Kazuo Nakamatsu (2008) by Augusto Higa"

    LASA 2012 XXX International Congress (Latin American Studies Association) 

    Presentation date: 2012.05

  • "On Migration."

    "Remembering 40 Years Since Reservation: Okinawan Studies Until Now, Okinawan Studies From Now On." Symposium organized by the collaboration of Okinawa Bunka Kyokai and Okinawa Kenkyu Daigaku Rengo 

    Presentation date: 2012.03

  • "Una lectura de "Chambala era un camino" como un paisaje migrante" (in Spanish)

    XI Congreso Internacional de Literatura Hispánica 

    Presentation date: 2012.03

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Research Projects

  • Rethinking Japanese Peruvian Immigration Memories through the Notion of the Anthropocene

    Project Year :

    2023.04
    -
    2027.03
     

  • Migration, Memory, and Literature: Mapping Japanese Nationalism in Nikkei Communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina

    Project Year :

    2016.04
    -
    2021.03
     

     View Summary

    The main objective was to explore how Japanese national identity traveled to Argentina and Bolivia in the post WWII era and how it is depicted in Bolivian and Argentine literature. However, due to a scarcity of primary works on this topic, I was only able to start writing one article on Japanese Argentinian memory and identity presented in the novel Gaijin authored by Maximiliano Matayoshi. I am planning to send it to a peer-review article in the U.S. Meanwhile, I have come across several new literary works about Japanese Peruvian communities and shifted my focus to the migrant voices that cross the border between Peru and Japan, which will be published in Peru as a book in March 2021. For the book project, I conducted an interview with Luis Arriola Ayala in Lima, a Peruvian writer who illegally worked in Japan at the end of the 90s as a “fake” Japanese Peruvian "dekasegi." I also presented a paper on another recent work on the process of reconciliation between Peruvians and Japanese Peruvians, which will be included in the book. Further, I have a forthcoming book chapter on Carlos Yushimito’s short story about the memory of a Japanese Peruvian family who underwent confiscation and deportation during WWII, which will be published in Cultural and Literary Dialogues between Asia and Latin America (Palgrave, 2020). Finally, on January 22 2020, I was invited as a panelist to give an interpretation of a book Historia cultural de los hispanohablantes en Japon by Dr. Araceli Tinajero, organized by the Instituto Cervantes-Tokyo.This project has focused on Japanese Peruvian literature much more than Bolivian and Argentinian literature. Since this project started in 2016, there have been new publications in relation to Japanese Peruvian communities. The recent literary works on Japanese Peruvians invite scholars of literary studies to look into the fundamental question: What is Nikkei literature? Drawing attention to this broader issue which entails the location and function of Nikkei literature within Latin American literature has become my principal interest rather than a simple analysis of a particular literary work from Bolivia or Argentina. In order to grapple with this question, I have been approaching many new texts depicting Japanese Peruvians in Peru and Japan and looking for a way to synthesize different forms, styles, and themes into a coherent articulation of what Nikkei literature is. Consequently, my studies on Japanese Bolivian and Argentinian literature have not progressed as much as I had initially planned. Especially, regarding Japanese Bolivian poet, Pedro Shimose’s works, I have not been able to connect the themes of identity and memory to his poetry. Studying his poems requires me to approach them from different perspectives that go beyond his Japanese Bolivian identity and memory. I realize that it may take a while to fully understand his poetry by rethinking how to connect his poetry to the other Latin American literary works in relation to Nikkei identity and memory.In the academic year 2020, I will publish a book on the migrants’ voices that cross the border between Peru and Japan (projected in March 2021) and an article on Japanese Argentinian identity and memory. I also intend to write an article on Pedro Shimose’s poetry, drawing attention to his social and political activism beyond his identity and memory. I will need to reflect on what I have read and rethink how to approach his poetry. Reading it as a poetic space for an exploration of identity and memory may not be convincing. If I cannot connect his poetry to the entire project, I will publish an article independent from the project themes.In the process of this project, I may have faced the impasse on discussing how Nikkei identity and memory have been constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed and how they have been represented in literary works. Instead of focusing exclusively on the national identity and memory of Nikkei communities, as mentioned above, I am interested in going back to the fundamental questions. What is Nikkei literature? Why is it important to (re)define it now? Contemplating these questions, I will scrutinize the themes of identity and memory through different angles, paying attention to the limits and possibilities of asserting the ontology of the genre of Nikkei literature

  • Multi-disciplinary Intersections:Rhetorical Techniques and Thematic Landscape of Jose Watanabe's Poetry

    Project Year :

    2017.04
    -
    2020.03
     

  • Migration, Memory, and Literature: Mapping Japanese Nationalism in Nikkei Communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina

    Japan Society for the Promotion of Science  Kagaku kenkyu josei jigyo

    Project Year :

    2016
    -
    2020
     

  • Antology: Japanese Peruvian Writers

    Project Year :

    2013.04
    -
    2016.03
     

     View Summary

    In this research, I mainly analyzed how Japanese Peruvian (Nikkei) identity was born and has been transformed into indefinable, diverse, and heterogeneous identities, in literary works authored by Jose Watanabe, Augusto Higa Oshiro, Fernando Iwasaki, and Doris Moromisato. More specifically, I examined the birth and transformations of the identity of "Nikkei Peruvians," through the exploration of Japanese Peruvians' immigration experience at the end of the 19th century and, then, the 20th and 21st-century reverse immigration and migration movements. I presented the studies that explored this theme at several conferences and symposia and published articles examining the theme in academic journals

  • Border-crossings and Japanese Peruvians' Home and Identity

    Japan Society for the Promotion of Science  Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research

    Project Year :

    2010
    -
    2011
     

    MATO Shigeko

     View Summary

    I presented a paper related to the theme of Japanese Peruvian identity at an international conference in Cuzco, Peru and published an article in a peer-review journal. I am also presenting another paper at an international conference(acceptance 33%) in May 2012.I have also written two more articles to be revised and submitted to peer-review journals. Further, I have started another article on a Japanese Peruvian poet. During the two years of research, I was able to gather many materials in Peru and the U. S. and in Peru, I was able to meet Nikkei writers and conduct an interview

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Misc

  • “Locating Female Creation in a Hybrid Space: Carmen Boullosa’s Trans-liminal Narrative.”

    Shigeko Mato

    Dissertation (University of New Mexico), UMI   2000

 

Syllabus

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Overseas Activities

  • 日系ペルー人作家 文学文化作品選集と評論

    2015.04
    -
    2016.09

    米国   University of WI

    ペルー   Universidad Catolica/Asociacion Peruano Japonesa/ Centro de Estudios Cornejo Polar

Sub-affiliation

  • Faculty of Law   School of Law

  • Faculty of International Research and Education   Graduate School of International Culture and Communication Studies

Research Institute

  • 2024
     
     

    Waseda Institute of Latin American Studies   Director of Research Institute

  • 2019
    -
    2024

    Waseda Institute of Latin American Studies   Director of Research Institute

Internal Special Research Projects

  • Between Frontier Ambitions and Desolations: Analysis of Life-Writing of Japanese Immigrants in Peru through the Lens of the Plantationocene

    2023  

     View Summary

    The aim of this project was to explore four life-writing texts focusing on the first group of Japanese immigrants who arrived in Peru in 1899. These immigrants worked as contract laborers in hacienda farmlands. This exploration has been conducting through the lens of the Plantationocene, a variation derived from the Anthropocene, underscoring environmental damages caused by the large-scale capitalist monocropping plantations. What I accomplished during this year was 1) to conduct a close reading of the four texts, 2) to discover another interest related to this project during my library research, and 3) to start analyzing one of the four texts. First, I looked into the concept of the Plantationocene (and the Anthropocene in general) by obtaining materials from libraries in the United States. This library research enabled me to articulate the general notion of the Plantationocene and also led me to find a clearer connection between environmental crises and migration, not only in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but also in the present day. Contemplating the connection, I became interested in analyzing a short story about Peruvian workers who are obliged to leave their country due to socio-environmental crises at the end of the 20th century, subsequently working as dekasegi contract labor workers in Japan. Although I had to set aside what I initially intended to do, I was able to complete an analysis of the short story by applying L. Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism.” In this study, I examined the push factors for migration in the time of the Anthropocene (Capitalocene) and the enduring motivations that migrants have, despite their harsh living and working conditions, through the notion of “cruel optimism.” I presented this paper at the annual LASA (Latin American Studies Association) conference in Vancouver, Canada and received valuable feedback. Then, I revised it and submitted it to an international peer-reviewed journal. Returning to my initial plan, I started analyzing the first life-writing memory text through the notion of the Plantationocene, drawing attention to the ambitions and desolations of Nikumatsu Okada, a Japanese immigrant depicted in the text. In order to gather further information, I visited Okinawa Prefectural Archives, the Central Library of Okinawa, and other relevant sites, where I collected documents pertaining to the records of the first 799 Japanese immigrants, including Okada’s birth name and the fact that he was on the vessel that took them to the Callao port from Yokohama.

  • Decolonizing Japanese Peruvian Immigration Memory through Storytellers’ Performative Act and Art

    2022  

     View Summary

    Four memorial texts were published between 2017 and 2020, under a series of Japanese Peruvian immigration memory project, by the editorial house of the major cultural association, the Japanese-Peruvian Association (APJ), around the time of the 120th anniversary of the Japanese immigration to Peru. The purpose of this study was to explore how and why the texts bring a dissonance to the aim of the APJ, which attempts to celebrate the Japanese and their descendants’ experiences and contributions to the Peruvian nation as well as their successful integration in society as a prominent minority group. As a point of departure, I endeavored to read them as the sites of storytelling which reveal the performative function of both reinforcing and disturbing the APJ’s normalized presentation of Japanese immigration memories as an archive of the consecrated legacy of suffering and overcoming. First, I collected materials closely associated the notion of storytelling as a performance in Japan and in the US. Second, I analyzed one of the memory books, Crónicas de mujeres nikkei (Chronicles of Nikkei Women) (2019), for a round table discussion organized by CANELA (Japanese Spanish Latin American Academic Confederation) at Waseda University on May 29 2022.  

  • Collisions and Convergences of Nikkei Memories in Peru and Okinawa

    2021  

     View Summary

    Due to the pandemic of COVID-19, my research did not advance as much as I had expected. I initially planned to visit the Okinawa Prefectural Archives and the library at the University of Ryukyu in order to collect archival materials of Okinawan immigration to Peru. However, I could not conduct archival research. Despite this obstacle, I accomplished the following activities. 1)  I revised my literary criticism on a novel, Gaijin: La aventura de emigrar a la Argentina (2002) by an Argentine writer of Japanese ancestry, Maximiliano Matayoshi, and submitted it to a peer-review journal in the United States. I am waiting for an answer from the journal. 2) Through an online meeting initiated by Nobuaki Hamaguchi, specialist of economics in the context of Latin America, at Kobe University, and JICA’s researchers, Facundo Garacino and Yukako Nagamura, specialists on Nikkei community in Argentina and Nikkei community in Brazil respectively, we prepared a plenary session titled “Nikkei Communities Intersecting Latin America and Japan,” which was presented at the LASA/Asia 2022 conference. 3) Finally, I started analyzing a testimonial memory book through the ecocritical lens based on the notion of the Anthropocene, articulated by Timothy Clark. 

  • Roles of Japanese Peruvian literary and cultural production in times of neoliberal precarity: on representation of essential “inconvenient” workers

    2021  

     View Summary

    The purpose of this study was to explore the socio-political roles of Japanese Peruvian literary and cultural works which depict the precarious and exploitative conditions that Peruvian migrants face in Japan. I started to analyze two short stories about undocumented Peruvian migrant workers authored by Luis Fernando Arriola Ayala, as well as two reggaeton songs by Los Kalibres, group composed of dekasegi workers’ children. However, I could not produce a paper on a comparative analysis. What I accomplished during this year was the following. I reexamined my previous study on another short story by Arriola Ayala and presented it at a seminar series organized by the National University of Asuncion (Paraguay) and the Embassy of Paraguay in Japan. I also analyzed a poem about a Japanese Peruvian dekasegi woman who works like a machine at a factory in Japan, hoping that she will find a better life, through Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism,” and presented it at a conference. Also, three different media sources (public in general) interviewed me about my recent book publication.

  • Tracing Nikkei Voices in Paraguayan Literature: Research on Migration, Identity and Heritage of Japanese in Paraguay

    2019  

     View Summary

    The initial purpose was to explore the Japanese Paraguayan community in Paraguay in order to expand my knowledge of Japanese communities in Latin America beyond Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. However, I was only able to gather materials about the historical overview of Japanese immigration to Paraguay in the 1950s in Washington D.C. and Chicago. I was planning to go to Paraguay to give a talk on a comparative study of Japanese Peruvian poetry and Japanese Paraguayan poetry in October 2019, however, this project did not go through due to a budgetary issue. Instead of starting a new project without being able to explore further Japanese Paraguayan poetry, I decided to use the half of the funding to explore new Japanese Peruvian writers at Elena Kohatsu Library at the Japanese Cultural Center in Lima, Peru, where I found several new materials, including non-Japanese Peruvian writers who write about the Japanese community. I also spent some time in Mexico City in order to explore how haiku was imported to Mexican poetry by Jose Juan Tablada at the beginning of the 20th century and examine how his haiku poetry has influenced Japanese Peruvian poetry. 

  • Shaking the Legacy of Suffering and Triumph: An Exploration of Nikkei Collective Memory through Peruvian Literature

    2018  

     View Summary

    This project was part of a more extended book project exploring Japanese migration to Latin America and Nikkei Latin Americans’ migration to Japan through literary and cultural works. The main objective of this particular project supported by this grant was to explore 1) how the collective memory of Japanese Peruvians has been constructed and conserved since the postwar of WWII and 2) how the short story “Okinawa existe” (“Okinawa exists”) and the novella Gaijin(extranjero)(“Gaijin [stranger]”) authored by a Peruvian writer Augusto Higa Oshiro destabilize and disturb the homogenized identity of the Japanese Peruvian community as a group of people who underwent institutionalized injustice, but overcame the hardships and transformed themselves into a politically and economically prominent minority group. Drawing on theories of memory studies and cultural studies by scholars, such as Diana Taylor, Maurice Halbwachs, and Jeffrey K. Olick, this project attempted to show how the author creates so-called “unfitting” Japanese characters who shake the legacy of suffering and triumph repeated in Japanese Peruvian commemorations as well as in their Oral History Project. The funding allowed me to present my study on this topic at the XXXVI LASA (Latin American Studies Association) International Conference at Barcelona on May 24, 2018. 

  • Crossroads between Tilsa Tsuchiya's Paintings and José Watanabe's Poetry: Part 2 Archival Research

    2017  

     View Summary

    This project explored aesthetic and thematic connections between the paintings produced by a Peruvian painter Tilsa Tsuchiya and the poetry of a Peruvian poet José Watanabe. In particular, it attempted to examine how the mythical world created in Tilsa’s works are reflected on Watanabe’s poetry. This grant allowed me to visit the Milwaukee Art Museum, where Tilsa’s paintings were going to be exhibited in March 3–May 28, 1995. I contacted the museum senior registrar and librarian/archivist in Milwaukee and found out that her exhibition was cancelled due to some procedure problems of exporting her artwork from Peru, but was able to obtain the catalog Latin American Women Artists 1915–1995, in which included her biographical data and bibliographical sources on her works. This information helped me understand further how her mythical world was created and allowed me to see thematic connections between her world and Watanabe’s creation of mythical images in his poetry. This grant also partially supported me to make contact with one of Watanabe’s daughters, who was named after the painter. Through my personal contact with her, I was able to perceive a close relationship between the painter and Watanabe that went beyond a professional relationship.

  • Exploration of the crossroads between Tilsa Tsuchida's visual artictic creations and José Watanabe's poetic imaginaries

    2016  

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    The aim was to explore the connections between a Peruvianpainter, Tilsa Tsuchiya’s paintings and Peruvian poet, Jose Watanabe’s works.  Prior to this project, I came across a bookby Maribel De Paz, in which the friendship between Tsuchiya and Watanabe was brieflybut vividly described.  In this project, Iattempted to examine how Tsuchiya and Watanabe’s close friendship and artisticexchanges influenced the poet’s works and how such influence can be observed inhis poetry.  Especially, I intended to,first, find out how Tsuchiya’s paintings, which evoke indigenous and mythicambience, spark a sense of motion and mobility, and then attempted todemonstrate how such a sense of motion and mobility are reflected on Watanabe’spoems.  In the summer of 2016, Iconducted research at Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago,where I found two important materials. I learned that Tsuchiya’s exhibitionswere held in Osaka (1980) and Milwaukee (1995). I also discovered a book Tilsa(2000), which I could not find anywhere else. I have chosen Watanabe’s poems to be analyzed, but did not have theopportunity to study Tilsa’s paintings or visit the archives of the museums inOsaka and Milwaukee this year.    

  • Exploration of Asian Diaspora in the Americas through literature, visual arts, and performance art

    2015  

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    I conducted research onAsian diaspora at libraries in Madison, WI, USA.  I became interested in exploring intersections betweenliterature and visual cultural productions through the theme of Asian diaspora,when I co-organized an international symposium on Asian diaspora and visualarts / literature with New York University’s Asian/Pacific/AmericanInstitute on July 1st, 2015 at Waseda University (main campus).  The symposium stimulated conversationson Japanese diasporic and transnational creative techniques, and we looked intoconnections and intersections between literary productions and visual culturalproductions.  After the symposium,I traveled to the U.S. to examine interdisciplinary theories to explore thefollowing questions that arose during the symposium.  How and where can we observe new connections andintersections between literary creations and visual cultural productions?  Thinking about these connections andintersections, how can we find new definitions and connotations of Asiandiasporic cultural productions in the context of transcultural, transnational,and global mobilities?  How can weunderstand the concept and phenomenon of transcultural, transnational, andglobal mobilities through Asian diasporic cultural productions?  I obtained relevant books and articlesto look into these questions.  Thisresearch has mainly led me to discover some connections between a Japanese Peruvianpainter, Tilsa Tsuchiya, and a Japanese Peruvian poet, Jose Watanabe, which will be my next project.  

  • Connecting Asia and Latin America beyond Peruvian Nikkei Literature: the Philippines, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Brazil, and more.

    2014  

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    The purpose of this project was to explore Asianpresence in Latin America through interdisciplinary approaches.  As the first step, I co-organized the 6thInternational Conference on Orientalism and the Asian Presence in the Hispanicand Lusophone World with Dr. Ignacio López-Calvo (University of California, Merced) and Dr. Koichi Hagimoto(Wellesley College).  The two-day conference was held in Waseda University (maincampus) on April 25-26, 2014.    More thanthirty scholars from seven countries (Argentina, US, Morocco, France, UK, thePhilippines, and Japan) gathered to present their studies on “East-WestIntercultural Dialogues” and exchanged ideas.  The selected papers will be published in a book Trans-pacific Encounters: Asia and theHispanic World, edited by Dr. Hagimoto (forthcoming 2016).  My paper “Rethinking Hybrid Identity ofa Peruvian Migrant Worker in Japan in Gambate(2011) by Luis Fernando Arriola Ayala has been selected for the publication.  Thanks to the opportunity to exchangeideas with the scholars who are interested in examining Trans-pacific culturalcrossings through interdisciplinary approaches, my research interest has beenextended from the concentration of Japanese Peruvian writers—one country, onegroup, and one discipline—to broader themes and disciplines, such as Asiandiasporas in Latin America through literature, visual arts, film, and other socio-culturalproducts.

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