Jul 21 (Japan Times) - When 8-year-old Eiki Shimabukuro left Japan in 1959 with his parents and five siblings for the two-month sea voyage to Brazil, passengers were given ribbons linking them to those who stayed behind.
As the ship pulled away, the ribbons unraveled, stretched, and finally broke.
“It was the last link, a very moving vision,†says Shimabukuro, now 67 years old.
The family followed tens of thousands of Japanese people who had migrated to Brazil since the beginning of the 20th century.
And this week Princess Mako, granddaughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, set off for Brazil to visit more than a dozen cities bearing symbols of Japanese heritage and celebrate the 110th anniversary of the first pioneers’ journey.
That first big group of 781 Japanese, mostly farmers, arrived at the port of Santos in Sao Paulo state in June 1908, aboard the cargo and passenger ship Kasato Maru.
Plagued by debt in the wake of Japan’s industrialization, the migrants hoped for a new life working on South American coffee plantations that were facing a labor shortage.
Today, Brazil hosts the largest community of Nikkei — as Japanese immigrants and their descendants are known — in the world, with 1.9 million people.
