Culture and identity in Oscar Nakasato’s novel Nihonjin

Abstract

This paper analyzes the making of Japanese-Brazilian writer Oscar Nakasato’s novel Nihonjin (winner of 2011 Benvirá Literature Prize and Jabuti Prize 2012, both Brazilian literary prizes) starting from the notions of identity and culture. The novel tells the story of a Japanese immigrant, Hideo Inabata, and his family, from his arrival in Brazil to his grandson’s departure to Japan, decades later. The novel’s title itself, which means “Japanese person” in Japanese language, reveals the duality in the text – one reassuring his Japanese nationality in a strange place, other finding himself a typical Brazilian in a Japanese family, and the impossibility of being defined either as Japanese or Brazilian, being both (or none). As for theoretical basis, this work follows Stuart Hall’s study on cultural identity in his book The question of cultural identity (1996). First, the elements that attribute cultural identity aspects to the characters will be observed. Next, we will examine some passages where the subject’s displacement can be perceived, causing conflicts motivated by cultural shock. Finally, we will examine the synthesis of the conflicts, the result of this dialectical relation: the groups’ intersection, where the characters finally find themselves not as Japanese or Brazilian, but as cultural hybrids.