Enrique Higa Sakuda
@kikerenzoEnrique Higa is a Sansei (third-generation or grandchild of Japanese immigrants) from Peru. He is a journalist and Lima correspondent for International Press, a Spanish-language weekly paper published in Japan. He is also a co-editor and writer for Kaikan magazine, published by the Japanese-Peruvian Association.
Updated July 2024
Stories from This Author
Pachinko : Korean and Nikkei, some similarities
Oct. 17, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
I came to the Pachinko series, on Apple TV+, because of the article in a Spanish media that raved about it. Then I found its irresistible trailer and decided to watch it. Pachinko is the story of Sunja, a Korean girl who lives in a fishing village when the Korean peninsula was a colony of Japan. Later, the series jumps several decades and shows us an elderly Sunja, residing in Osaka. How does the girl who helped her mother, the …
Memories with history
Sept. 5, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
The book Los desterrados , which recently appeared in Lima, includes a list of the Japanese and Nikkei expelled from Peru and imprisoned in the Crystal City internment camp, in the United States. The document, prepared by one of the prisoners in 1945, contains the names of almost a thousand people, including those of a great-uncle (my paternal grandfather's brother), his wife and some of his children. Upon reading his name, Great Uncle Rensuke's memories cascaded. Or, to be more …
Ramen and its pioneer in Peru, 11 years later
Aug. 22, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
When Tokio Ramen restaurant opened in 2011, Japanese noodle soup was unknown in Peru. Today, eleven years later, former dekasegi Juan Carlos Tanaka estimates that more than 30 restaurants in Lima offer it. A pioneer in the spread of ramen in the Peruvian capital, the Nikkei chef observes with satisfaction its popularization in a situation marked by the blows of the pandemic and the future opening of a new establishment. While preparing his rentrée, still recovering from the impact of …
Olympic History and Achievements: Nikkei Athletes from the Americas
July 25, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
In Peru, Nikkei contributions to art and gastronomy are what usually attract the most attention, and for good reason. Just to mention one, Tilsa Tsuchiya, a Nisei, is considered by many the greatest Peruvian artist of all time. When it comes to gastronomy, the impact of Nikkei cuisine has been so significant that many people who hadn’t even heard the word “Nikkei” know it now, thanks to the cuisine created by Japanese immigrants in Peru. But Nikkei in the Americas …
83 memories from La Victoria school
June 20, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
When the Second World War ended in 1945, the community of Japanese origin in Peru was headless, adrift, weakened by the attacks carried out by the Peruvian authorities, located on the side of the Allies. One of the most painful blows was the closure of the Lima Nikko school, the largest founded by the Japanese in Peru to educate their Nisei children. Three years after the end of the war, in 1948, four Issei from the Kumamoto prefecture—Masaji Yasumoto, Sueo …
Nikkei Families in Cuzco
June 6, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
The first Japanese immigrants arrived in Peru as contract workers for the coastal plantations. It was a limited and temporary move, sponsored by the governments of both countries. But as so often happens, reality takes over and changes one’s plans. The Japanese immigrants left the plantations, either as their contracts expired or fleeing the abuses they suffered there. Most settled in Lima and established their own businesses. Others traveled out to the provinces of Peru, with the most adventurous making …
Nikkei Plus: the showcase of Nikkei entrepreneurs in Peru
April 1, 2022 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
Football always gives you second chances. You lose one Sunday, but the next you can win. Time is not an asset to squander on regrets, but to prepare yourself with the goal of overcoming the next challenge. This is, roughly speaking, how journalist Roger Gonzales Araki deals with things. Like for millions of people around the world, the coronavirus pandemic was a knockout for him: he had to close the family karaoke business. However, Roger knew how to get up …
“Things should not be the same as before the pandemic because it would mean that I have not learned anything”
Dec. 22, 2021 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
We are already going through the two years of the pandemic and those first weeks of confinement, when people applauded the health workers from their homes for their extraordinary work and naively said that from this disastrous experience we would emerge better people, more united and supportive, They seem like times from a previous life. Today, with rich countries hoarding vaccines while a new variant emerges in Africa, millions of people dead and crowds rejecting masks or getting vaccinated even …
Live learning
Nov. 10, 2021 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
He was just a child, but he remembers it as if he were a witness again. From a window on the second floor of his house in Lima, Víctor Makino watched criminals break into businesses and homes of Japanese families to steal their belongings. It was in May 1940, more than 80 years ago, but he still preserves precise memories, such as the surnames of some victims, his neighbors: the Onagas, owners of a bazaar, and the Tsuboyamas, owners of …
Nikkei memories
Oct. 5, 2021 • Enrique Higa Sakuda
Sueko Noda, a 93-year-old Nisei, remembers that during the looting of Japanese homes and businesses in May 1940, her family was saved from the hordes instigated by the anti-Japanese sentiment of the time thanks to some Peruvian neighbors “such good people who defended us.” ”. Carlos Saito, 80, relates that his father, an Issei who arrived in Peru on the last ship that docked on Peruvian coasts transporting immigrants under contract in 1923, had a watch shop for which he …
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