Masayuki Fukasawa, a veteran journalist at a Japanese-language newspaper in Sao Paulo, has taken inspiration from his own migrant story to compile a history of Japanese settlement in Brazil over the past century.
"I wanted to incorporate into modern history the story of how these immigrants lived strong despite being at the mercy of government policy," the 49-year-old editor-in-chief for Jornal Nikkey Shimbun said during an interview in Tokyo.
His nonfiction work "Hitotsubu no Kome Moshi Shinazuba" ("If One Grain of Rice Survives"), released last November, is a compilation of 127 reports on groups of Japanese immigrants who settled in Registro, a city about 200 km southwest of Sao Paulo.