Comunidade Yuba: An eighty year-old Japanese farming community thrives in Brazil.

Yuba residents harvest manioc before the storm. Photo: Jordan Kraft

In 1928, a Japanese farmer named Isamu Yuba emigrated to Brazil with his family as part of a large influx of agricultural workers. In need of hands on coffee plantations, Brazil had only recently opened its doors to Japanese immigration in 1908.

Yuba and his family settled near what is now the city of Aliança, where they proceeded to found a small community, in which Japanese traditions, artistic pursuit and agricultural work would form the foundations of a small but remarkably vibrant community. Eighty-one years later, the vision that is Yuba thrives as a Japanese pocket universe, nestled amongst the green folds of São Paulo State’s vast agricultural jigsaw puzzle.

Within its boundaries, one finds a unique mixture of modern Brazilian society and that of a recently past Japan. Kanji adorns signs and Japanese is spoken almost to exclusion. Food served in the communal hall consists of traditional Japanese staples, such as miso soup, tonkatsu, pickled vegetables, curry and plenty of rice. Homes are modelled on the farmhouses of rural Japan and shoes are always removed upon entry.

In the words of Tomohiro Takefumi, a recent visitor to Yuba: “It felt as though I had traveled back in time and arrived in Japan 50 years ago.”

Yuba is remarkable for its cultural tenacity. Over the 111 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil, Brazilians of Japanese descent have largely assimilated into modern Brazilian culture. According to Minoru Matsuura, the president of the Nikkei Association of Rio de Janeiro, “Japanese-Brazilians from the 3^rd generation on don’t typically feel a strong Japanese identity.”

Yuba’s tenacity is all the more remarkable for the forces arrayed against migrant Japanese culture during WWII. After aligning itself with the Allies, Brazil arrested, relocated and deported thousands of families of Japanese descent, closed hundreds of Japanese schools and forbade both written and spoken Japanese. Only in 2013, did Brazil’s government officially apologize to its 1.5 million Japanese-Brazilians.

While Japanese-Brazilians were persecuted in Brazil, they were forgotten in Japan. Kai Kimura, a Japanese playwright who has long been interested in Japanese-Brazilian migration, found that all pre-1945 Brazilian immigration documents once held by the Japanese government had been incinerated during the war.

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Far from being hidden and forgotten, Yuba currently enjoys a measure of notoriety, thanks to a surprising source. In 1961, the Japanese sculptor-ballerina couple of Hisao and Akiko Ohara moved to Yuba and build a theater and found a ballet troupe. The troupe has since performed throughout Brazil and has travelled to Japan dozens of times.

The ballet troupe has proven instrumental in introducing many Japanese to Yuba. Beginning with their first international performance, Japanese backpackers began to trickle through Yuba while exploring Brazil. Isamu Yazaki, a native of Yuba, recalls backpackers staying at Yuba for months at a time, volunteering with farm tasks and living with the Yubenses. Volunteers continue to visit, staying for anywhere from a few weeks to an entire year. The ballet troupe’s tours and these volunteers’ visits, he says, have facilitated a number of unions between Yubenses and Japanese. Isamu himself is one product of these transcontinental unions.

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Today’s 60 or so Yubenses live and work together in a community modeled on the Japanese farming communities of the late nineteenth century. They grow okra, manioc, squash and mangos, among other crops. Yuba’s elders manage the income earned by farming. Much of it goes to the education of community members, repairs and provisioning of the farm and travel, the latter most often involving the ballet troupe.

Daily life consists of a combination of farm work and artistic pursuit. Days begin at sunrise, with a hearty breakfast featuring home-roasted coffee in a communal hall that is used for eating, meetings and a variety of other social activities.

Daily tasks fall into indoor and outdoor categories. Outdoors, people plant and harvest crops, clear weeds and feed the community’s chickens and pigs. Inside, coffee is roasted, fruit is cooked into preserves, crops are packaged for market and repairs to the community’s buildings are carried out in a cluttered shop full of sawdust and old machines. After dinner, people engage in their various artistic endeavors. At night, Yuba fills with the sounds of musical instruments, choir voices and ballet shoes tapping on a wooden floor. A kiln, in which hand-made pottery hardens, heats the jasmine-scented night air.

At once Brazilian, Japanese and something truly unique, Yuba shines within Brazil’s rich cultural tapestry.

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