Dirty Hearts: The History of Shindo Renmei

by Fernando Morais, Seth Jacobowitz (Translator)

Overview

Fernando Morais’ Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindō Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan’s victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil’s fraught racial democracy. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030705626
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	11/26/2021
Series:	Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	25 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Fernando Morais (b. 1946) is a Brazilian journalist, writer, and politician. He is the author of nine books, which include his biographies of Communist operative Olga Benário Prestes, media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, Brazilian Air Force Marshal Casimiro Montenegro Filho, and best-selling author Paulo Coelho. His own works have sold over two million copies in nineteen countries, and four of his books have been made into films. He received the Prêmio Esso three times and Prêmio Abril four times for his journalistic work. Corações Sujos (Dirty Hearts, 2000) was awarded the Jabuti Award, the Brazilian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, in the category of Best Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2001. 

Seth Jacobowitz is Assistant Professor of Japanese in the Department of World Languages&Literatures at Texas State University, USA. He is the author of Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture (Harvard Asia Center, 2015), which won the 2017 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize in the Humanities. He is also the translator of the Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press, 2008).       

Table of Contents

1. Seven Japanese Want to Decapitate a Corporal from the Public Forces: World War II is About to Begin Again.- 2. Subjects of the Axis Powers Cannot Have Radios, Cars, or Money. They Are Not Even Allowed to Speak.- 3. A Little Old Man Terrorizes The Japanese Colony: It Is None Other Than The Wise Colonel Kikawa.- 4. Mizobe Appears to be Swimming in the Air: The First Makegumi Falls Dead.- 5. The Police Discover the Fumie, The Torture That Only Harms a Prisoner’s Soul.- 6. Japanese Are Hunted and Dragged Through the Streets of the City: The “Day of Reckoning” Has Arrived.- 7. Eiiti Sakane, The Solitary Rōnin, Prepares a Blood Bath in Tupã.- 8. Prestes, Capanema, and Gilberto Freyre Take the Stand: The “Yellow Mafia” Splits the Constituent Assembly in Two.- 9. A Tokkōtai Will Be Tortured and Killed: The End of Shindō Renmei.- 10. The Final Balance: 31,000 Imprisoned, 381 Formally Charged, and 80 Expelled from Brazil, but President Kubitschek Pardons Them All.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Fernando Morais’ Dirty Hearts reveals how the secret society Shindō Renmei (League of Subjects of the Imperial Way) sought to control the Japanese immigrants in Brazil from 1942-47 by hewing to a fanatical insistence that Japan won the war. As Seth Jacobowitz explores in his introduction, we may find echoes elsewhere amongst those who lost a homeland or were interned, as well as in the methods of comparable authoritarian groups that live by ‘alternative facts.’” (K. David Jackson, Yale University)

“Fernando Morais addresses the conditions that empowered Shindō Renmei with radical consequences for the Japanese Brazilian community. Seth Jacobowitz’s critical introduction builds with great sensitivity on Dirty Hearts’ historical and political contexts, and activates new reflections about the relations between Brazil and Japan in the contemporary world.” (Christine Greiner, Center for Oriental Studies, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo)

“Morais’ Dirty Hearts is of unquestionable value to the study of identity, immigration, and the formation of political values. Jacobowitz’s able translation and critical introduction are exemplary contributions to the transnational history of the twentieth century. Scholars of modern Japan and Brazil can no longer to afford to ignore each other, and Jacobowitz helps us understand the place of ultranationalism in the age of empire and globalisation.” (Aaron W. Moore, Handa Chair of Japanese-Chinese Relations, University of Edinburgh)