In 2002 the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimated that nearly two million Brazilians were living abroad including some 250,000 Brazilians of Japanese descent who were living and working in the land of their ancestors. The door for this new migration stream was set ajar in 1990, when the Japanese government passed immigration reforms that granted the descendants of Japanese emigrants—up to the third generation—the right to reside and work in Japan for three years. This legislation was in accordance with the jus sanguinis (blood lineage) principle of Japan’s Nationality Law and was meant to resolve the following dilemma: How to attract cheap, docile labor to fill the necessary but undesirable jobs the Japanese themselves are unwilling to take, while at the same time not importing an “alien” population. In essence, the legislation was an attempt to maintain Japan’s racial, linguistic, and social homogeneity in the face of labor scarcity.

Tsuda has presented us with one of the first ethnographies of this recent emigrant tide and he rightly focuses on the issue of ethnicity that lies at the heart of Japanese immigration reform. As a Japanese-American who himself speaks Japanese, he provides the reader with something of an insider’s view of how Japanese in everyday discourse and behavior confront ethnicity, language, and “race” vis-àà-vis this new immigrant cohort in their midst.

Ethnicity and transnational identity are the dual foci of the volume, which is divided into three sections. They describe and analyze (1) the ethnic experience of Japanese-Brazilians in Brazil and the problems they face in terms of their ethnicity after migrating to Japan; (2) the evolution of a minority counteridentity in Japan in response to their difficulties there; and (3), in lieu of the development of a transnational identity, the appearance of a “deterritorialized nationalism.”

Using this framework, Tsuda provides an extensive analysis of the various permutations of Japanese-Brazilian identity within a transnational space. He not only provides a well wrought depiction of the Japanese-Brazilian experience, but uses it as a springboard to engage the reader in a discussion of the larger issues of minority status, ethnic prejudice, transnationalism, and globalization. His goal is to integrate ethnography and theory and, for the most part, he does this very successfully.

The reasons why and the ways in which Japanese-Brazilians retain a distinctive “Japaneseness” in Brazil is important in contextualizing their subsequent experience in Japan. In Brazil they generally take pride in their ethnicity, enjoying some of the positive stereotypes associated with it. But in Japan the tables are turned. In response to the discrimination they face there, they come to define themselves, in fiercely nationalistic terms, as Brazilians.

The analysis of Japanese notions of purity and foreign pollution is particularly helpful in understanding Japanese reactions to the Japanese-Brazilians who, for all intents and purposes, are culturally Brazilian. As such, they are perceived as foreigners “with Japanese faces.” In fact, this ethnography provides the reader with a rather comprehensive knowledge of Japanese perceptions of the Other.

Tsuda’s discussion of his role as ethnographer in terms of his own social position, ethnicity, and ethnic identification vis-àà-vis his Japanese-Brazilian and Japanese informants is not the standard naval gazing discussion of reflexivity and it is mercifully free of postmodernist jargon. The author’s description of the differential reception he received from Japanese-Brazilians and Japanese sheds light on the ethnic and social issues that played out among these groups along with the internal social divisions among his Japanese informants.

This is a well written, engaging book that successfully interweaves theory concerning majority–minority relations, ethnicity, and nationalism with the author’s own research findings on this particular migratory stream. For this reason, it will be welcomed by specialists in transnational migration, globalization, and ethnic studies and will be useful in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses that deal with these topics.