Diasporic Entrepreneurship: Japanese Immigrants in Peru and Global Cotton Trade (1899-1945)

This paper analyzes the nexus of empire-building, commercial expansion, and migration, focusing on Japanese immigrants in Peru who acted as brokers between Japan and Peru in trading and retailing cotton and textile products (1899-1945). I narrate three interlacing histories: (1) how Japanese migrants were sent to Peru as part of Japan’s empire-building project; (2) how the migrants played a role in cultivating trade and commercial routes between the two countries, and (3) how their role as intermediaries shaped their economic mobility and being treated as racial others in Peru. This history illustrates how Japanese Peruvians have established a solid and prosperous ethnic community today by continuing to maintain ties with Japan, and how the sending state plays a role in immigrant integration more generally.

The speaker, Ayumi Takenaka (Ph.D. in Columbia University, USA) is a professor of sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in the studies of migration, ethnicity, and gastronomy. Having long engaged in ethnographic research in Peru, the US, Spain, and Japan, she now works on three projects: (1) gastronomy and the historical process of creating a Japanese and Peruvian fusion cuisine, called Nikkei food; (2) diaspora engagement and the role of sending countries in immigrant integration; (3) trade diasporas and the role of Japanese emigrants in global cotton trade (1920s-1950s).