A Vision of Hispanic America in Postwar Japan: the Case of Tokyo Vice-governor Okayasu Hikosaburō after his Visit of 1952

Abstract

In the spring of 1952, at the same time that Japan was regaining its sovereignty and industrial capacity after the war, a mixed delegation of bureaucrats and businessmen led by the Vice-governor of Tokyo visited four Hispanic American countries as part of a larger tour around the Americas in order to explore possible trade relations and to inquire about the current situation of prewar Japanese immigrants. Vice-governor Okayasu Hikosaburō (1899-1982), also interested in Japan’s image abroad, later recorded his impressions in a travel book and several articles in economic journals. In this study we analyze those sources in order to identify, evaluate and make known the vision that a high official of the capital wanted to transmit to his fellow countrymen both about Latin America in general and about Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Peru in particular. To this end, we establish a thematic division by contrasting and unifying data from various sources and apply the theoretical framework presented in Chiappe Ippolito (2020) on three types of historical images of Latin America identified in modern Japanese literature: “primitive”, “primeval”, and “peripheral”. We conclude that Okayasu’s vision is not clearly framed in any of them and that he tried to show Latin American societies as they were: modern, civilized, complex, in an evolving process, with similarities and differences with respect to Japan, but forming part of the same world at the end of the day.