East to the Americas

When they sailed across the world in 1897, Asahiro Yamamoto and Saburo Kiyono were in their early 20s. In May of that year, they and their fellow sailors landed in a place of searing sun and jungle fever. They walked for more than a week into the interior, settling in Acacoyagua, Chiapas. Their dream of growing coffee there failed. Only one member of the group returned to Japan. The rest, including Yamamoto and Kiyono, stayed. As many as 20,000 more Japanese followed Ashahiro and Saburo to Mexico in the ensuing decades. They overcame cultural and language divides, unforgiving living conditions and, in some cases, roaming bands of armed guerrillas. They set down roots and prospered. Along the way, they became increasingly Mexicanized, marrying into Mexican families and giving their children Spanish names.

Image:Luz Montero

Francisca Ono , 80, is the child of Japanese emigrants to Mexico. She lives near Tapachula, Chiapas, close to where the first Japanese colony settled.

Asahiro Yamamoto had been dead for years by the time the youngest of his eight children, Francisco Rokuro Yamamoto Cruz, married Kiyono’s granddaughter, Martha Kiyono Sanchez, in 1956. The newlyweds spoke little Japanese and settled in Mexico City to raise four children. Today, their 16-year-old granddaughter, Harumi Quezada Yamamoto, proudly calls herself both Mexican and Nikkei -- descended from Japanese. She studies the Japanese language. She loves mole and sushi.

These family histories encapsulate the little-known story of the Japanese migration to Mexico that began 110 years ago. Over the past century, the Japanese migrants and their offspring have seen their culture ebb and flow in their adopted patria. For decades they were largely forgotten as they dispersed and assimilated into Mexican society. During World War II many hid their Japanese heritage or, at the behest of the United States government, were transplanted by Mexican authorities from rural homes to metropolitan centers. Now, many of the descendants are looking back and celebrating their Japanese ancestry.

“My upbringing at home inculcated Japanese values, like discipline, honor and loyalty,” says Harumi. “But you must adapt to the country where you live and take the best from each culture. Mexican people are hard-working, warm, spontaneous. One can share these different approaches to life.”