Discover Japan in Brazil

02-05-2024

Have you heard of Liberdade? This neighborhood in São Paulo is emblematic: it is the largest Japanese neighborhood outside Japan, where the descendants of emigrants who have developed their businesses and culture in an interesting merger live.

With an area of about 3.7km2, it is a real tourist attraction in the big city of Sao Paulo. The Japanese settled there from the 20th century, mainly to work in coffee plantations in the interior of the state of São Paulo, while a dozen settled in the city itself, along Conde de Salzedas Street. From this, the neighborhood expanded little by little, experiencing different migratory waves. Cinema played an important role in the development of this neighborhood, which developed around Galvão Bueno Street, with the opening of Brazil's first Japanese cinema "Ciné Niterói", and later three other cinemas. Shops and activities have developed, and today nearly 2 million Japanese expatriates live there.

More recently, Chinese and Korean communities have also settled from new waves of migration, making the neighborhood even more cosmopolitan.

Photo : Helena Erin