When the Kasato Maru arrived in Brazil with the first Japanese immigrants at Santos port near Sao Paulo on June 18, 1908, a shipload of Okinawans and other Japanese disembarked and headed out to find work on the coffee plantations, seeking a better life.

For the past 100 years, the lives of the Japanese immigrants and their descendants have been filled with high hopes, disappointments, perseverance, strife and prosperity, according to a prominent researcher.

"Starting from zero was unimaginably tough," said Hisatoshi Tajima, a 55-year-old associate professor at Josai International University in Chiba Prefecture and an expert on Japanese emigration to Brazil.