In her book, The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature, Rebecca Riger Tsurumi captures the remarkable story behind the changing human landscape in Peru at the end of the nineteenth century when Japanese immigrants established what would become the second largest Japanese community in South America. She analyzes how non-Japanese Peruvian narrators unlock the unspoken attitudes and beliefs about the Japanese held by mainstream Peruvian society, as reflected in works written between l966 and 2006. Tsurumi explores how these Peruvian literary giants, including Mario Vargas Llosa, Miguel Gutierrez, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Carmen Olle, Pilar Dughi, and Mario Bellatin, invented Japanese characters whose cultural differences fascinated and confounded their creators. She compares the outsider views of these Peruvian narrators with the insider perceptions of two Japanese Peruvian poets, Jose Watanabe and Doris Moromisato, who tap personal experiences and memories to create images that define their identities. The book begins with a brief sociohistorical overview of Japan and Peru, describing the conditions in both nations that resulted in Japanese immigration to Peru and concluding in contemporary times. Tsurumi traces the evolution of the terms "Orient" and "Japanese/Oriental" and the depiction of Asians in Modernista poetry and in later works by Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges. She analyzes the images of the Japanese portrayed in individual works of modern Peruvian narrative, comparing them with those created in Japanese Peruvian poetry. The book concludes with an appendix containing excerpts from Tsurumi's interviews and correspondence in Spanish with writers and poets in Lima and Mexico City.
Rebecca Riger Tsurumi has worked as a journalist/editor in Latin America and the United States. A Latin americanist who focuses on relations between Asia and Latin America, she received a PhD in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages from the CUNY Graduate Center and has taught Spanish language and literature courses at various colleges within the City University of New York, SUNY Purchase College, and Adelphi University. She resides with her family in New York.
"The Closed Hand is a very important study that helps us understand not only the portrayal of the Japanese in Peruvian literature, but the life, challenges, and struggles of aFar Eastern group in the Southern Hemisphere."--Araceli Tinajero, author of Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 2(1) Riger Tsurumi, Rebecca. The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 2012. Print. Pages 313. DEBBIE LEE-DISTEFANO SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature is a commendable work that strives to present the images of the Japanese by juxtaposing two bodies of literature: texts written by Peruvians of Japanese descent with texts by Peruvian authors of other ethnic backgrounds. Riger Tusrumi's project is quite aggressive but in the end manages to achieve a comprehensive study, weaving the reader down a path that begins with history, continues on to discuss the images of the Japanese in Peruvian literature, and finishes with analyses of Nisei poetry. In the end the book, like many comparative projects, brings forward more questions than it strives to answer. The collection starts with the history of Japanese immigration and subsequent presence in Peru, focusing primarily on the early history. The chapter discusses the economic climates in both Peru and Japan that prompted migration, passes through the discriminatory World War II period, and lightly touches on the post-WWII period that followed. This section is very useful for the uninitiated scholar. Her timeline is succinct and gives the most pertinent information. This chapter is focused on presenting the reader with possible reasons as to why the contract labor system was needed, why bring laborers from Japan and the ramifications of them both. She also briefly discusses Fujimori and his fall from grace to be convicted of human rights abuses. Her discussions of the Peruvian political climate and the inclusion or exclusion of the Japanese-Peruvians are rather simplistic and could use more substance. Her discussion of the APRA, for example, and Victor Raul Haya de la Torre's negativity
