After greeting Kisey Higa, I tell him that my last name is like him, that my family was from Callao and that I am the nephew of Mitsuya, the bullfighter. “You are Renzo San's grandson, right?” he says. I expected him to say something like “oh yeah, I know your …
There are people for whom the parts do not add up, but rather get in the way, collide, and life is like a rigid framework in which for something to enter, something else must leave. The new does not add, but rather takes away, colliding with what exists. Other people, …
Clotilde Yamasaki never knew her father's real name. He only remembered that his countrymen, Japanese immigrants like him, called him “Torak.” In Peru he was baptized as José. One of the few things she knew about her father, a silent and reserved man, was that he had arrived in Peru …
They were raised and educated in Japan. Their parents took them to Peru after finishing their primary or secondary studies. They are bilingual. They study and work. They like Peru. They are friends, they joke, they laugh, but above all they share the experience of being children of dekasegi. Only …
In 2013, the Tsuru Japanese Language Center opened its doors, the entrepreneurial dream of a Japanese woman who seeks to offer a quality alternative to the teaching of nihongo in Lima. Toyomi Tsuruta has lived in Peru since 2010 with her husband, a Peruvian engineer whom she met in Japan, …
Rubén Sugano loves talking to older people. Issei or nisei. Listen to their stories. Nurture yourself with them. It's a “vice,” he says. An addiction to stories that usually go back to war, to hard childhoods, to blows that shape strong personalities that overcome adversity. The vice was born during …
The silence shocked him. I had never experienced anything like this before. Accustomed to the hustle and bustle of Lima, Okinawa seemed like a parallel reality from which the volume had been removed. Miyuki Arakaki felt like something was missing. I missed the hustle and bustle. If in one sense …
The ocean has always had great significance in the life of Mitsuya Higa. Ever since he was a child, he has been going to Callao’s La Punta district to swim or simply gaze at the sea. Now 83 years old, he no longer swims, but he still visits La Punta …
Juan Carlos Tanaka was 22 years old when he emigrated to Japan in the 1990s. Like thousands of young Peruvian Sansei, he was looking for a better future in the country of his grandparents. Japan gave it a second life. There he met a Japanese woman, married her and they …
Toshiro Konishi avoids labels. At his recently opened restaurant Oishii, he only prepares food that he is born to make, no matter what others call it. In any case, if a name had to be given, it would be his. “It's not Japanese food, it's Toshiro Konishi food. The whole …
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