Multiculturalism in Japan: The Contradiction of Samba Matsuri

Full title: Japanese Studies and Antiracist Pedagogy | Multiculturalism in Japan: The Contradiction of Samba Matsuri

Recorded on May 27, 2021.

Zelideth Rivas, Associate Professor of Japanese, Marshall University

Zelideth Rivas, Associate Professor of Japanese, Marshall University
Description: Today’s globalism and cosmopolitanism highlight nations’ economic ties by commodifying the diversity of peoples, cultures, and languages present in their own borders, becoming a local multiculturalism. In Japan, this extends to highlighting the heterogeneous population of a country that others consider homogeneous. In this presentation, I examine the consumption of a Brazilian national imaginary in Japan, not as a country of “poverty and crime” but as “Brasil Fantástico!”: land of samba, açaí, eternal summer, and carnaval. I argue that the use of samba in matsuri stereotypes, contrasts, and further essentializes Japan’s multiculturalism in its presentation of a sexualized, racialized Brazilian musical form. In particular, I’ll discuss the historicity of the Asakusa Samba Matsuri and the fantastical presentation of samba as a redemptionary medium in Shiozaki Shōhei’s Akaneiro no yakusoku: samba do kingyo (Goldfish Go Home, 2012).

Zelideth Rivas is an Associate Professor of Japanese at Marshall University. Her research interests include mixed race studies, cultural production, and Asian and Latin American literature.