(FEI - 2000)
Battling the Bloodlines
1 It's the small things the Brazilians do that annoy some Japanese in Toyota City. The immigrants don't throw their garbage where they are supposed to. They gather outside and play loud music at night. They play a strange card game that involves yelling "Truco!" at the top of their lungs. To Japanese in one densely populated public housing complex, it feels as if the foreigners are closing in on them, the smoke from the barbecues suffocating them, the Latin music drowning out an imagined tranquility. Ten years ago there were 200 Brazilians in the complex. Today there are 3,500. "The sidewalks are getting narrower," said a Japanese woman as she maneuvered a grocery cart through a gathering of Brazilian families. "There's no room for us anymore," said her friend.
2 Foreigners of any stripe can be upsetting in Japan, where conformity is a national creed and wa, the concept of harmony, is integral to maintaining stability and peace in a country of 126 million people crowded onto four islands. "I don't think it's a good idea to concentrate Brazilians in one place," said Masae Matsui. Two years ago, a residents' association Matsui headed proposed restricting the number of foreigners in his public housing complex; in April, he was elected to the city assembly.
3 The dark side of "wa", the part that excludes outsiders, erupted into violence earlier this summer in Toyota City, home to thousands of workers of the carmaker Toyota, its subsidiaries and suppliers. After a dispute with a noodle vendor got out of hand, about 100 supporters of a right-wing nationalist group paraded around the public housing complex where 3,500 Brazilians live. They shouted through a loud-speaker, "Foreigners go home," taunted the Brazilians to come out and fight and waved metal pipes in the air.
Time, August 9, 1999, p.19.
"I don't think." Coloque na forma positiva e no tempo futuro:
I do think
I am thinking
I think
I won"t think
I"ll think
Gabarito:
I"ll think