Jeffrey Lesser adds significantly to our appreciation of the complexity of ethnic and racial relations in Brazil with this study of Japanese Brazilians during the period of military dictatorship. With the largest population of people of Japanese heritage in Latin America, Brazilians have increasingly looked upon its Nikkei as a ‘model minority’ that is hard working, law-abiding and generally well educated. What this means, according to Lesser, is that Japanese Brazilians are not grouped with other minorities in Brazil because they are not impoverished or marginalised like Afro-Brazilians and other less successful ethnic groups. The Nikkei have become separate from the troubled fate of Afro-Brazilians who have drawn the vast majority of attention from social scientists. Still, the Nikkei are constantly subjected to ethnic stereotyping and misunderstanding in Brazil. They are viewed as Japanese or simply Oriental not as Brazilians, as many Nikkei would prefer. Lesser sets out to address these issues while attempting to elaborate a much more multi-faceted explanation of ethnicity regarding the Nikkei in São Paulo, where the vast majority of the nation's Japanese Brazilians reside.

Building upon his previous work on Japanese-Brazilians, Jews and Arabs in Latin America, Lesser has written a much more focused book with A Discontented Diaspora. The time-frame is short and roughly covers the extended period of military authoritarianism in Brazil during the middle of the Cold War. His focus is film and what he refers to as ‘ethnic space’. He also examines Japanese-Brazilian radicalism in response to the military's repression. Two films are the centrepiece of Lesser's efforts to analyse ‘artistic militancy’ of Brazil's Japanese. Noite Vazia (1964) and Gajin (1980) are given the most attention but other Japanese Brazilian films are also discussed. Some of these films are produced by Nikkei, others employ Japanese-Brazilians as actors. Lesser reviewed scripts, photo images and newspaper advertisements for these films. Noite Vazia depicted the Nikkei in blunt stereotypical fashion. For this and other films it meant that Nikkei women actors had to conform to the geisha girl image with no real depth of character. But as time evolved, Japanese-Brazilian images in film, particularly in the erotic cinema, became more out-of- character. Known as porochanchadas, these Brazilian films became very popular in the late 1970s and featured a good number of Nikkei actors. Lesser interprets their involvement in the erotic film industry as a manifestation of their ‘Brazilianess’. The superstar of these films was Misaki Tanaka, who played in seventeen films throughout the 1970s. Lesser views Tanaka as a prime example of the ‘discontented diaspora’ because – she argued – her acting in erotic films was a declaration of both her Brazilianess and her unhappiness as being stereotyped as simply a submissive Japanese woman.

Tanaka also had a lead role in the important film Gajin, which attempted to depict the fate of the Brazilian Nikkei from the perspective of their changing ethnic identity. Significantly, the film was received coldly in Japan and was never commercially released. Critics in Japan were apparently not interested in seeing a film that depicted the diminishing of Japanese cultural traits in Brazil. In reality, that is what Japanese actors and movie-makers were seeking to do. They wanted to reject the Japanese immigrant label and embrace Brazilian culture as individuals free of ethnic labelling. This, of course, put them at odds with the older and more conservative Nikkei in Brazil, who wanted to cling to Japanese culture for purposes of social stability. A small but significant number of Nikkei made an even more radical departure from the conservative and law abiding mores of the Brazilian Japanese community by engaging in revolutionary violence against the military government.

Radical political behaviour among Japanese-Brazilians dates to the years of World War II. Extreme Japanese Brazilian nationalists formed the secret society Shindo Renmei to perpetuate the false belief among the poorly informed Brazilian Nikkei that Japan had won the war. Using terrorist tactics, including the assassination of Nikkei community leaders, Shindo Renmei continued underground operations until the early 1950s. But Lesser notes the significant difference between Shindo Renmei and the radical activists who fought the military dictatorship during the height of the Cold War. He researched São Paulo police records to analyse the scope of Nikkei radical activism. As one would imagine, the number of Nikkei revolutionaries was rather small, perhaps less than one hundred. Yet these Nikkei were highly visible in the press and certainly evoked the attention of police officials who were aware of the experience of Shindo Renmei. No other Nikkei generated as much attention as Shizuo Osawa, or ‘Mario the Jap’ as he came to be known.

Lesser conducted an extensive interview with Osawa many years after his revolutionary activities, subsequent arrest and torture by the Brazilian authorities. Osawa's revolutionary credentials were certainly legitimate. He trained in Algeria in the late 1960s. When he was captured after an auto accident in São Paulo, his fellow militants valued him enough to gain his release by kidnapping a Japanese diplomatic official and exchanging him for Osawa. From his interview with Osawa, Lesser learned that the former militant felt he was a true Brazilian because of his actions against the military dictatorship. Osawa suffered imprisonment and torture that nearly killed him for a cause he felt was just. Yet ‘Mario the Jap’ was still regarded by the police and the media as a Japanese ‘fanatic’ in the same vein as Shindo Renmei.

This is an important book that examines issues of the Brazilian Nikkei ethnic identity in unique ways. Lesser has done his research well. More focused research of this type is needed for Japanese communities throughout Latin America. Now, particularly after more than 300,000 Latin American Nikkei have migrated to Japan where they have been received coldly, careful assessments of the troubled Nkkkei communities left behind is essential. Much of the diaspora remains discontented, but it is no longer in Brazil. It is in Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and other Japanese cities.