[KineJapan] CfP - Young Researchers Colloquium "From Japan to Brazil and Vice-Versa" - Deadline March 10, 2025

[Lucie Rydzek]

Dear All,

Best wishes for 2025!

Please find below (and attached) the Call for Papers for the young 
researchers colloquium "From Japan to Brazil and Vice-versa: Historical 
and Aesthetic Perspectives of a Diasporic Cinema", to be held online and 
at ENS Lyon (France) on June 24th and 25th, 2025.

Feel free to write us any questions about this colloquium,

Best regards,

Lucie, Romane and Emmanuel

*--
*

CfP - Young Researchers Colloquium*
*

*_From Japan to Brazil and Vice-versa: Historical and Aesthetic 
Perspectives of a Diasporic Cinema_
ENS Lyon (France) & online, June 24th and 25th, 2025*

In 2024, the 77th Festival of Cannes' short film competition selected 
Amarela (2024), a film by Japanese-Brazilian director André Hayato 
Saito, which focuses on the experiences of Japanese-Brazilians. This 
event reflects a growing interest in a diverse, transnational, and 
multilingual filmography on the subject of the Japanese diaspora, 
particularly the Japanese-Brazilians, who are the largest group affected 
by return migration (or “detour migration” (Perroud, 2007)) to Japan. 
This Young Researchers Colloquium aims at visualizing and iscussing that 
film corpus and its aesthetic, socio-historical and methodological issues.

The first massive immigration of Japanese populations to Brazil occurred 
in 1908, to replace European laborers at the coffee plantations of São 
Paulo (Nishida, 2017). Aboard the Kasato Maru, 781 migrants left Kobe’s 
harbor in direction of Santos, located in the state of São Paulo, 
following previous migrations to Hawaii (1868), the United States 
(1880), and Peru (1899) (Han, 2017). Despite restrictions by the 
Brazilian government in the 1930s, these “nikkeis” (in Brazilian) or 
“nikkeijin” (in Japanese), meaning Japanese descendants born and living 
abroad, formed a significant community of around 2 million people by the 
2020s. Today, this is the largest community of Japanese descent in the 
world.

In the 1980s, a reverse form of migration of Japanese-Brazilians to 
Japan began as Brazil faced an economic crisis. The Japanese authorities 
encouraged the return of nikkeis/nikkeijin by preferentially giving them 
“long-term resident” visas (teijūsha) (Cherrier, 2024), to meet the 
country's demand for low-cost labor (De Carvalho, 2003). Initially, 
migrants planned to stay only for a short time in Japan, which is why 
the Japanese term dekasegi—meaning short-term migrant workers—was used 
to describe them. However, their difficult reintegration upon returning 
to Brazil and economic issues led many of them to extend their stays in 
Japan, in a “vicious migration cycle” (Yamanaka, 2000). Most of them 
eventually settled permanently in Japan (Tsuda, 1999). If 
Japanese-Brazilians were the third-largest foreign community in Japan by 
the 2000s, they now form the fifth-largest foreign community in Japan at 
204,879 people, after Chinese people (716,606), Vietnamese (432,934), 
Koreans (409,855) and Filipinos (276,615) (Cherrier, 2024). 
Japanese-Brazilians are also one of the country's main ethnic 
minorities, alongside Japanese-Koreans, Burakumin, Ainu, and Okinawans 
(Tsuda, 1999).

The Japanese diasporas, including those from Brazil, and associated 
issues (immigration, the making of diasporas, the affirmation of a 
cultural identity, and social integration) have been widely studied in 
social sciences since the 1990s, mainly in English, Japanese, Portuguese 
and French (see for example works from Jeffrey Lesser, Takeyuki Tsuda, 
Daniela de Carvalho and Pauline Cherrier).

The history of Japanese immigration is deeply intertwined with cinema. 
Indeed, the arrival of the first Japanese migrants coincided with the 
emergence of filmmaking in Brazil. In 1908, just a few months after the 
Kasato Maru docked, the State of São Paulo commissioned the production 
of a silent short film titled Japoneses apanhando café nas fazendas 
paulistas. Unfortunately, no copies of this film have been found. From 
the 1920s onward, non-fiction short films documenting the experiences of 
nikkeis/nikkeijin in Brazil became increasingly common. Hikoma Udihara, 
an amateur filmmaker, stands out as one of the most notable figures of 
this movement, having created nearly 85 short films between 1927 and 
1959. As the practice of filmmaking became more established, the 
diffusion of films —mainly Japanese productions—increased within the 
Japanese-Brazilian community. In this context, traveling cinemas played 
a significant role, particularly in rural areas, by allowing Japanese 
immigrants to watch films. Alexandre Kishimoto (2013) highlighted the 
key role played by four movie theaters in the Liberdade district of São 
Paulo during the 1950s and 1960s. These theaters not only facilitated 
the dissemination of Japanese cinema within the Japanese-Brazilian 
community but also attracted Brazilian audiences with no Japanese heritage.

Afterwards, two major university-trained Japanese-Brazilian filmmakers 
constituted the historical foundation of Japanese-Brazilian diasporic 
cinema: Olga Futemma, former director of the Cinemateca Brazileira, 
short film director, and producer of several films, and Tizuka Yamasaki, 
director and screenwriter. Among other films, Yamasaki directed Gaijin – 
Caminhos da Liberdade in 1980, a commercial and critical success 
(winning awards at Cannes and Gramado), which is considered the first 
fiction film focused on the Japanese-Brazilian community and which 
helped popularize the history of Japanese migration in Brazil. 
Concerning animated films, the Japanese-Brazilian community also played 
a pioneer role in Brazil: Piconzé (1972), one of the first Brazilian 
animated feature films in color, was directed by Ypê Nakashima, a 
Japanese artist who immigrated to São Paulo in 1956 and surrounded 
himself with around 30 animators from the Japanese community to make the 
film.

Today, several contemporary filmmakers from Japan, Brazil, and the 
Japanese-Brazilian community have explored diasporic issues. Their films 
have been appraised at festivals: from the fiction Saudade (2011) by 
Tomita Katsuya to the documentary Okinawa Santos (2020) by Yōju 
Matsubayashi, along with films by Paulo Pastorelo (Tokiori - Dobras do 
Tempo, 2011), Marcos Yoshi (Bem-vindos de Novo, 2021), Vicente Amorim 
(Corações Sujos, 2011), Nanako Kurihara (A Grandpa from Brazil, 2008), 
Tsumura Kimihiro and Mayu Nakamura (Lonely Swallows, 2012). Moreover, in 
2008, for the centenary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants, 
a major retrospective of Japanese-Brazilian films was held in Brazil, 
followed by an international symposium at the Universities of São Paulo 
and Osaka. This event led to the identification and establishment of a 
nikkei Brazilian film archive, although the collection remains 
incomplete due to difficulties in getting hold of part of the films and 
their poor preservation.

Over the past 15 years, several studies on films addressing 
Japanese-Brazilian diaspora issues have been published in Portuguese 
(since the centenary) and Japanese (since the 2010s). However, these 
films remain under-explored by English- and French-speaking scholars. 
Two recent publications in English are worth noting: Ignacio 
López-Calvo's book on Japanese-Brazilian literature and films 
(López-Calvo, 2019) and Emy Takada's thesis on Tizuka Yamasaki (Takada, 
2021).

As these films are gradually gaining attention from curators and 
researchers, it seemed important to us to invite international scholars 
to share their expertise and to engage in bilingual (English-French) 
discussions during this colloquium.

*Proposals are expected to be diverse in terms of methodologies and 
objects of study. They are expected to discuss, through cinema and its 
ethical and sociopolitical stakes, these diasporic phenomena and their 
place in societies and national histories. Topics of interest may 
include (but are not limited to):*

*● The aesthetics of films addressing Japanese-Brazilian diasporic 
issues, particularly in relation to discourses on identity, memory, and 
intimacy (one might also question the aesthetic difference between 
fictions and documentaries);
● The circulation of film aesthetics between Japan and Brazil through 
the diasporic network;
● The contexts and challenges of production and distribution of these 
films, as well as the role of Japanese-Brazilian filmmakers and 
technicians within cinematic production and distribution networks;
● Japanese-Brazilian diaspora issues in audiovisual media and museum 
installations.*

*Scientific committee:*
Pauline CHERRIER (University of Aix-Marseille, IrAsia/CEJ-INALCO)
Kevin J. MCKIERNAN (University of Minnesota Twin Cities)
Alberto DA SILVA (Sorbonne Université, CRIMIC)
Élise DOMENACH (Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière, IAO)
Regiane ISHII (Universidade de São Paulo, ECA)
Lúcia RAMOS MONTEIRO (Universidade Federal Fluminense, PPG-Cine)

*Organizing committee:*
Romane CARRIÈRE (ENS Lyon, CERCC)
Lucie RYDZEK (University of Lorraine, CREAT/IAO)
Emmanuel DAYRE (ENS Lyon, IAO)

*Submission details:*
Individual paper proposals, in English or in French, are to be _sent to 
lucie.rydzek at univ-lorraine.fr, romane.carriere at ens-lyon.fr and 
emmanuel.dayre at ens.fr_. They must comprise:
● Name, firstname, affiliation, email address, presentation on-site or 
online
● Title
● Abstract (up to 3000 characters including spaces)
● Bio-bibliography (up to 500 characters including spaces)

Presenters will have 20 minutes to present their paper in English or in 
French, followed by 10 minutes of questions. All visuals need to be in 
English. The colloquium will be hosted at the Ecole Normale Supérieure 
Lyon, France. Online presentations will be possible for those who can 
not join in-site, although we encourage on-site presentations. The 
colloquium may lead to the publication of a shared book.

*Calendar:*
● Submission deadline: _March 10th, 2025 (23:59, UTC+1)_
● Committee decision: by April 2025
● Colloquium dates: June 24th and 25th, 2025

The colloquium is supported by the Lyon Institute of East Asian Studies 
(IAO, Lyon), the Comparative Studies and Research Center on Creative 
Arts (CERCC, Lyon) and the Research Center on Expertise, Arts and 
Transitions (CREAT, Metz).

-- 
Lucie RYDZEK
PhD Student
Lorraine University*
*
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