Mieko Nishida's Diaspora and Identity provides narratives of Brazilians of Japanese descent who are collectively known today as ‘Nikkei’ and are dispersed between Brazil and Japan through repeated migrations. Based on 96 interviews conducted between 1997 and 2013, mostly in São Paulo but also in various parts of Japan, the book offers an overview history of the experiences of Japanese Brazilians who emigrated from Japan to Brazil (largely as contract labourers, beginning in 1908) and who have later migrated to Japan (since 1989) to take up manual contract work in factories, for example. Overall, the book shows that Japanese Brazilians’ stories are diverse and multiple; their identities are in flux, constantly in the process of forming and being formed. Although no overarching questions or goals are clearly stated in the book, a main argument seems to be that ‘it is impossible to reduce the lived experience of “diaspora” to any essential set of characteristics shared by all who fall into that category; in many cases the only thing they may share is common ancestral origin, and nothing more’ (p. 15).

The book consists of seven chapters, besides the introduction and conclusion, that are more or less organised chronologically by generation – from pre-war first-generation immigrants (issei) to the second (nisei), third (sansei) and later generations (yonsei, gosei, for example). This rationale is presumably based on the assumption, frequently pointed out in past studies, that generational distinction is salient within Japanese immigrant communities. The stories presented in the book also confirm ‘some distinctive generational and historical patterns in collective behaviors’ (p. 6). I wonder what this salience of generational difference, manifested by distinct labels applied to each generation, tells us about the nature of this collectivity.

Most of the substantive chapters consist of bits and pieces of individual narratives. While they certainly provide rich (and indeed variegated) stories of lived experiences, reading through a continuous string of stories in all these chapters, in which many paragraphs begin with a new individual name and there is no subheading or section break, was, to me, a little tedious at times. Interesting and key ideas emerge here and there across these chapters, but they are often buried under descriptions of individual lives without much scrutiny or analysis. For instance, I was interested in the notion of ‘whiteness’ and the comment ‘money whiteness’ frequently made by the interviewees and wished to know more about how their sometimes ‘white’ status played out with their ‘Japanese face’ and ‘slanted eyes’ in a broader Brazilian context. Similarly, I wondered about the role and inner workings of community associations: who participates in community activities, who doesn't, why, and how are all these factors related to identities and perceptions in Brazilian society? More discussion (or incorporation) of context, I feel, would strengthen the book and help engage readers in more analysis.

The book's major strength nonetheless is that the author was able to pull together a variety of individual stories based on extensive interviews encompassing a wide range of participants in terms of age, generation, gender, class and residence. In particular, gender perspectives, or gendered experiences, are interesting, and so is the role of class. There are different patterns of marriage, dating, socialising and identifying by class and gender, as the author correctly points out. Yet again, I found it unfortunate that these differences are not systematically or rigorously analysed.

In the end, the interviews do reveal ‘great diversity in individual experiences and self-perceptions’ (p. 6). Because of this, the author claims that it is not possible to ‘confirm the dominant historical narrative of Japanese immigrants and descendants in Brazil’ (p. 6). From the conclusion and all the individual narratives, however, one deduces that many seem to embrace or relate to Nikkei identity in one way or another; they struggle, in addition, to ‘position themselves in their own terms’ (p. 232) and make sense of ‘what it means to be “Japanese” in Brazil’ (p. 232). Despite diverse individual stories, moreover, solid Japanese Brazilian community organisations seem to continue to exist, as do various ‘Japanese’ communal activities.

This book is about individual narratives. It is ‘imperative to “hear” various narratives’ (p. 6), as the author states, and, for this reason, she denounces the notion of diaspora as a category: ‘Categories don't think or have agency or have feelings’ (p. 15). While it is certainly important to ‘hear the voice of the “voiceless”’ (p. 6) buried beneath an all-encompassing category, categories themselves, I argue, are critical; it is difficult to separate Japanese Brazilian (or Nikkei) identities, as portrayed in the book, from categories, and it is imperative to pay attention to categories (or labels) and the history and politics of category-making (how labels come about, who created them, and why). It is particularly so since ‘in the end, it's all about one's positionality’ vis-à-vis others, as stated on p. 218; Japanese Brazilians are ‘positioned for their “slanted eyes”’ (p. 232) and ‘continue to struggle to position themselves within the broader construction of racial hegemony’ (p. 230).

The book concludes with a related, and the most intriguing, comment: one thing that came out ‘crystal clear’ from all the individual stories is that ‘the image of Japanese immigrants became a commodity that other people own’ (p. 231). Other people do indeed play a critical role in identities. So, while I certainly enjoyed reading about individual stories, once again I wished to know more about what ‘others’ (the Japanese government, the Brazilian government, other Brazilians and the Japanese in Japan, for example) do, and have done, to shape Japanese Brazilian narratives, and how they came to own and use ‘their image’ in a broader, historical context.