Interviews

1. The Nikkei Integration into society (Spanish)

2. Is non-integration due to the distrust because of what happened in the Second World War? (Spanish)

3. Looking Inside (Spanish)

4. I’m a Japanese, Peruvian… who am I? (Spanish)

5. Being a Nikkei today (Spanish)

6. Nikkei identity (Spanish)

7. Does a Nikkei culture exist? (Spanish)

8. Necessary apologies (Spanish)

9. Japanese immigration with an Okinawan face (Spanish)

10. The Okinawan idiosyncrasies (Spanish)

11. Ambassador of Good Will (Spanish)

12. Ambassador’s job (Spanish)

13. Histories of immigrants (Spanish)

14. The myth of the sacrifice of immigrants (Spanish)

15. Paisaje terrestre [Terrestrial landscape] (Spanish)

16. Feminist, ecologist, Buddhist… activist (Spanish)

17. The poet is going to hibernate (Spanish)

Moromisato,Doris

(b. 1962) Peruvian Poet, Okinawan descendant

Nikkei identity (Spanish)

(Spanish) Sure, but there are two ways of being a Nikkei. Nikkei is…The concept may come from the outside and may come from the inside. The word Nikkei can be used to identify you because you descend from them, because this is the image you reflect, but may be not be what you identify with. There are people that are descendants but do not circulate in the Nikkei community anymore. They don’t have, as you say, the habits, beliefs. It happens that for these people, in a specific moment, from all the ones that I know, end accepting themselves as Nikkei, because when they say they’re not they say it in an offensive way. And the problem appears, as I told you, to be that the fear of being called Nikkei places you immediately as a suspect, that you’re not Peruvian. This is a Lie. We are very Peruvian and are Peruvian while also being a Nikkei. There is no problem. I think that is where the issue comes. People that say they are not Nikkei say it with a suspicious emphasis, as if they don’t like to be catalogued. And I think it has been a perception of the fear they have, more than of consciousness of not being it. It is more a fear of attitude, of losing the other identity or being questioned if they are Peruvian.

Hawaii Japanese Americans Nikkei Peru United States

Date: February 26, 2008

Location: Lima, Peru

Interviewer: Harumi Nako

Contributed by: Asociación Peruano Japonesa (APJ)

Interviewee Bio

Doris Moromisato Miasato (1962) was born in Chambala, an agricultural zone of Lima, Peru. She graduated with a degree in Law and Political Science at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.

She has published the collection of poems Morada donde la luna perdió su palidez [Home were the moon lost its paleness] (1988), Chambala era un camino [Chambala was the path] (1999), Diario de la mujer es ponja [Diary of a Jap woman] (2004), Paisaje Terrestre [Terrestrial Path] (2007), as well as the story book Okinawa, un siglo en el Perú [Okinawa. A century in Peru] (2006). Her poems, stories, essays, and features have also been included in several anthologies and have been translated into several languages.

She is an ecologist, feminist and Buddhist. In 2006, the Okinawa Municipality nominated her as an Ambassador of Good Will. Nowadays, she is columnist for the Discover Nikkei Website, and since 2005 she has managed the organization of book fairs as Cultural Director of Cámara Peruana del Libro. (February 26, 2008)