Asociación Peruano Japonesa
@APJThe Japanese Peruvian Association (Asociación Peruano Japonesa, APJ) is a nonprofit organization that brings together and represents Japanese citizens who live in Peru and their descendants, as well as their institutions.
Updated May 2009
Stories from This Author
Tsukayama, seasoning runs in the family
July 31, 2023 • Milagros Tsukayama Shinzato , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Choko Tsukayama is 78 years old and has extensive experience in Nikkei cuisine, the kind that was born in inns and family businesses and that he learned by watching. YouTubers have made their stuffed potato viral and several restaurants in Lima serve their soba and ramen noodles. And if we talk about Okinawan food and okwaashi, as the cakes are called in the Uchinaguchi language, the Tsukayama surname is undoubtedly the main reference since 1965. KWAASHIYAA TSUKAYAMA Choko was 16 …
Marisa Matsuda: a Nikkei icon for softball
Aug. 4, 2020 • Javier García Wong-Kit , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Marisa Matsuda Matayoshi might be famous for her humility, but in the baseball and softball training camp, two sister sports, at the AELU club in Lima, there is no one who doesn't know her. Everyone greets her as if she were living in a permanent celebration for her last two personal achievements: at the beginning of 2019 she received the Women and Sports badge, awarded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for her work as a softball leader, and at …
The world of Marcela Castillo Tokumori
July 2, 2020 • Enrique Higa Sakuda , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
2019 is the second best year of Marcela Castillo Tokumori's sports career. At the Pan American Games in Lima he won the silver medal in the poomsae modality in taekwondo. If the Games became a great national holiday, it was thanks to people like her. His best year was 2016. That's when his career took off. She was world runner-up and achieved elite athlete status. By a happy coincidence, her two greatest achievements took place in Lima, so her family …
Lima Nikkei
June 24, 2020 • Yuri Sakata Gonzáles , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
My first surname (unpronounceable for some call center workers) has always raised a series of questions (some very strange and funny) that I have been able to answer and respond to with greater solvency as I grew and got to know myself. Are you from China? Why do you have that last name if you are Peruvian? Where are your parents from? Are you Japanese or Peruvian? Do you know anything about animes? Speak Japanese? How do you say “hello, …
Five young Nikkei artists share experiences
April 17, 2020 • Enrique Higa Sakuda , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
“ Komorebi ” means “sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees.” It was the word chosen by five Nikkei artists—Sachiko Kobayashi, Meche Tomotaki, Tamie Tokuda, Daniela Tokashiki and Nori Kobayashi—to title a group exhibition at the Peruvian Japanese Cultural Center in which they addressed their ethnic identity and their relationship with Japan, a country with which they are connected through the stories of their ancestors, filters of a distant past that only survives in memories and history books, of a …
Nikkei cookbook shines in Spain
Jan. 20, 2020 • Javier García Wong-Kit , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
María José García Miró had been fascinated by Nikkei cuisine since she lived in Lima and she loved visiting these restaurants frequently. When he went to Europe, his interest continued, especially when he discovered that many Peruvian restaurants offered Nikkei preparations. For the young graphic designer and chef, that was the starting point to begin an investigation that took shape after studying a master's degree at the Basque Culinary Center and joining the elBullifoundation team, led by innovative chef Ferran …
Warike Nikkei: a popular secret
Dec. 23, 2019 • Javier García Wong-Kit , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Cooking has something of a mystery when it surprises with peculiar recipes that seek to be inimitable. Although their objective is to reach a large audience, in Peru huariques have become famous, those simple restaurants that have achieved mastery in a dish for which people visit them even if they are in remote areas or small establishments. On a street in Breña, Lima, in a single-room establishment but with a lively staff of waitresses and cooks, Warike Nikkei has become …
Harumi Suenaga's journey to the roots
Dec. 11, 2019 • Enrique Higa Sakuda , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Andean Japanese cultural syncretism. Broad horizons opened up for Harumi Suenaga García when two years ago she decided to choose a path in which the exploration of her ethnic origins and art converged. It was 2017, he was studying at the Diego Quispe Tito University, in Cusco, in the last year of his art degree, and was looking for a topic for his thesis. Granddaughter of the president of the Peruvian-Japanese Association of Cusco, student and teacher of the Japanese …
Diana Okuma: “Doing Nikkei has helped me find my way”
June 12, 2019 • Marjorie Reymundo Conde , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Last year, the illustrator Diana Okuma Oshiro won the third call for editorial projects organized by the APJ Editorial Fund for her series “Memories of Japanese Immigration,” and she did so with a graphic proposal: a book composed of illustrations and very brief. Nikkei portrays various situations, from those he heard from his grandparents about the first Japanese immigrants, to those that are part of his daily life and that he addresses with humor and wonder from his sansei perspective. …
Japan from a distance: dekasegi phenomenon, 30 years later
May 29, 2019 • Enrique Higa Sakuda , Asociación Peruano Japonesa
Today, terms like “crisis”, “terrorism” or “inflation” seem like foreign words that refer to a reality that has nothing to do with that of Peru. 30 years ago, however, those three words defined the country we were. From that country, at the end of the 1980s, thousands of Nikkei began to leave for Japan with the idea of working for a few years, saving the maximum amount of money possible and returning to Peru to open a business, study or …
