The Myth of Ethnic Purity of the Japanese Brazilian Communities in the Works of Karen Tei Yamashita

In Brazil-Maru and Circle K Cycles, published in 1992 and 2001 respectively, sansei Japanese-American writer Karen Tei Yamashita tells the stories of Japanese Brazilian diasporic communities in Brazil and Japan. In both works, Yamashita’s protagonists show how the Japanese migrants between Japan and Brazil survive the violence of economic exploitation and cultural marginalization by inventing themselves as hybridized beings for reproducing cultural alternatives. Nevertheless, this study tries to go beyond Yamashita’s literary representations of “alternatives” themselves that relate to questions like: who is involved in their “creole” situation; how it is presented; and how successful it was? Rather, it focuses on the global forces working against these hybrid identities which seem to steer the direction back toward the notion of essentialized ethnic purity.