Back to the Present: The ‘Temporal Tandem’ of Migration and Conversion among Pentecostal Nikkei Brazilians in Japan

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the emerging area of research in the anthropology of Christianity that focuses on mobility and temporality. It does so by elaborating on the concept of ‘temporal tandem', which is defined as a process of joint temporalization by which seemingly disparate projects of migration and conversion become interlocked. Pentecostal converts among Brazilians of Japanese descent (Nikkeis) in Japan will serve as a case study to delineate this concept. Temporality figures as a central theme in their stories of migration to the supposed ancestral homeland as well as in their narratives of conversion in Japan. I will illustrate the ways in which conversion addresses common concerns regarding time among the migrant converts, such as ‘putting aside living for the future'. The article concludes with an observation that Nikkeis often experience Pentecostal conversion as a ‘return to the present', where life is no longer perceived to be suspended.

KEYWORDS:

• Christianity
• transnational migration
• temporality
• Japan
• Brazil

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation [Grant Number 8746]. I would like to thank Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Bradd Shore, Jeffrey Lesser, Bruce Knauft, and Mark Smith for their careful comments on the previous versions. Conversations with Daniel Linger also helped me sharpen the analysis. Parts of the manuscript were presented at the Biennial Conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, which took place in San Diego in April 2015. I am grateful to the thoughtful inputs from the audience and my co-panelists – Stephen Selka, Valentina Napolitano, Donna Young, Devaka Premawardhana, Sarah Bakker Kellogg, and Jens Kreinath. The suggestions by the three anonymous reviewers were also extremely constructive and helpful, and I am grateful for their time and suggestions. The responsibility for any potential shortcomings in the article is solely mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All the names that appear in the article are pseudonyms, with the exception of Missão Apoio. The denomination has been studied by several scholars, who have published using its real name (e.g. Quero & Shoji 2014).

Since Brazilian migrants in Japan live in multi-lingual settings, the data were collected in Portuguese, Japanese, and in a creole-like mixture of both. All the interview excerpts that appear in this article were recorded in Portuguese, which includes some Japanese words that have entered the daily lexicon of Brazilian migrants.

2. Most Brazilian migrants paid staffing agencies (empreiteira) for arranging their trip and visa to Japan, the cost of which they were obligated to pay back.

3. In Brazil, evangélico (evangelical) and crente (believer) are two popular terms to refer to born-again Christians. The discursive boundary of ‘evangelical’ does not necessarily overlap with that in the USA.

4. 68.3% (127 out of 186 valid responses). I focus on those who converted in Japan in this article.

5. Mobility is an increasingly common term to refer to various forms of migration because the former theoretically subsumes the latter (Glick Schiller & Salazar 2013). While I am aware of this trend, I continue to use the term migration as well, in order to reflect the normal language used by my interlocutors.

6. 17 out of 160 respondents who answered this item.

7. Os japoneses refer to both Japanese nationals in Japan and Japanese descendants in Brazil in colloquial Portuguese; the two are often considered interchangeable (Lesser 2007: 45).

8. 10.7% (20 out of 186 valid responses).

9. Missão Apoio's endeavour to actively proselytize the Japanese started only recently. At the time of my fieldwork, Missão Apoio Toyota had only one converted Japanese member among roughly 450 Brazilian adherents.