Stir Fried: The interiority of Japanese Brazilian food

At A Casa Do Sushi in Florianopolis, Brazil, chef Karolynne Silva is Brazilian from Sao Paolo, the nigiri and sashimi are Japanese fresh, and the sushi rolls are…deep fried with cream cheese? Emblematic of Brazil’s deepening infatuation with Japanese food, Japanese-fusion restaurants like A Casa Do Sushi have proliferated all over Brazil in the last 20 years, serving cheese-laden mutations of sushi and nigiri side by side with white fish sashimi.

Hot rolls, which are battered and fried sushi rolls stuffed with fish and cream cheese, are a Brazilian specialty, with the Hot Philadelphia (salmon, cream cheese, cucumber) being a top seller. Another ubiquitous item is temaki, cone-shaped sushi hand rolls filled with (you guessed it) cream cheese and drizzled in taré, the syrupy dark cousin of teriyaki sauce. And no Brazilian sushi joint is complete without serving Brazilian yakisoba, which uses a brothier an-kake sauce that can be preheated and poured over fried noodles and local vegetables.

Brazil is home to more than 2.5 million people of Japanese descent—the largest population outside of Japan—so it’s no wonder there are nearly as many Japanese restaurants in the birthplace of Fogo de Chao as steakhouses (ubiquitous, by the way). Beyond casual dining fusion menus, Brazilian sushi chefs like Telma Shiraishi and Daniel Maciel are drawing international acclaim combining Nikkei techniques and local ingredients.

“I think people in Brazil are getting more and more used to traditional sushi. Nowadays, I see people eating more tuna, more white fish, whereas at first it was mostly salmon. Now we’re starting to educate people not to drown their fish in soy sauce, not to use too much cream cheese—though the majority of people still do that,” says Silva, who has been working in sushi restaurants for 13 years and was certified as a sushi chef by the Nagoya Sushi School, a Brazilian sushi academy specializing in authentic Japanese techniques with certificates recognized by the General Sushi Association of Japan.

However, Brazilian sushi is a relatively recent phenomenon birthed from the globalizing force of Japan’s economic boom in the 1990s. A deeper dive into Brazilian Japanese food reveals a more complicated history, telling the tales many modern-day Brazilians themselves would like to forget. 

The first wave of Japanese immigrants came to Brazil during the early 20th Century to fulfill labor demands on coffee plantations after Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888. From the abolition of slavery up until 1966, when Brazil finally passed a law legally banning race-based immigration, Brazilian immigration policies aimed to literally “whiten” the population by encouraging European immigrants while intermittently banning and imposing strict quotas on immigrants from Asia and Africa. Decree No. 528, signed in 1890, prohibited non-European immigrants while encouraging European immigration, until labor demands pushed the Brazilian congress to nullify this decree in 1892 and allow Chinese and Japanese immigrants to enter Brazil. 

Japanese immigration to Brazil officially began in 1908, when 781 immigrants arrived onboard the Kasato Maru to work in rural Sao Paolo. Many modern-day Nikkei continue to honor this date, which is why Kasato Maru is a common name for Japanese businesses throughout Brazil. 

World War II and Brazilian soba

Whereas the Nikkei of Peru clustered along coastal cities and became known for nuanced takes on fresh seafood, Japanese immigration in Brazil bloomed from the rural interior around Sao Paolo, Paraña, and Matto Grosso del Sul, adjusting to the Brazilian appetite for meat, deep-fried carbs, and cheese that fueled plantation work. The iconic Brazilian street food pastel, pockets of crispy fried dough filled with ground meat, cheese, or hearts of palm, likely originated from Japanese or Chinese (or potentially Japanese passing for Chinese) immigrants adapting dumplings to local palates. One origin story highlights the dark history behind these tasty snacks. Pastels originated in 1940s Sao Paolo, a particularly fraught time for Japanese Brazilians.

Nationalism in the 1930s leading up to WWII had reimposed strict quotas (two percent of the number of immigrants per nation it had received in the last 50 years) on everyone except European immigrants. Though Brazil never deported their Japanese population to U.S. concentration camps like Peru, by the 1940s Japanese residents were subject to severe restrictions, property confiscation, and localized imprisonment in makeshift facilities around Japanese-Brazilian communities in Sao Paolo and Southern Brazil. About 4,000 Japanese were forced to evacuate the Santos-Sao Paulo area in 1943 and sent to camps around Tomé-Açu.

It’s possible Japanese immigrants started selling fried wontons as snack vendors to hide their heritage (and because they were banned from banking or government jobs during this period), though another theory credits Chinese immigrants adapting their spring rolls. Whatever the origins, Chinese immigrants eventually took over the pastel game—by the 1990s, an estimated 2,000 Chinese immigrants owned pastelerias in Rio de Janeiro. This number has since declined, mostly due to rising ingredient costs and competition making the business not as profitable as before, but Cantonese-owned pastelerias remain a staple in the Rio street food scene.

After the devastation of WWII and ensuing U.S. occupation of Okinawa, thousands of Okinawans migrated to the central-west region of Matto Grosso Del Sul, initially to work on coffee plantations, then later migrating to the provincial capital of Campo Grande. Craving a taste of home, many immigrants began selling Okinawa soba—which uses wheat noodles rather than buckwheat—at street fairs and markets. Since the region produces cattle, vendors often replaced pork bone broth and toppings with beef. Today there are more than 100 Okinawan soba shops in Campo Grande—an urban center the size of Pittsburgh—alone, and soba was officially registered as part of the city’s intangible cultural heritage in 2006.

What Japanese Brazilians really eat

When most Japanese Brazilians sit down to dinner, they’re not serving hot rolls or high-end sashimi. Ricardo Kuba Sgobbe, who grew up with a third-generation Nikkei mother and Italian Brazilian father in the middle of a vibrant Japanese Brazilian community in the rural outskirts of Sao Paolo, says their cuisine centered on local produce. Nichime, a one-pot Japanese root vegetable stew simmered in dashi, was a staple. “It’s not the regional one from Japan because you don’t have all the ingredients here in Brazil, so each family has their own recipe,” Sgobbe tells me. “My mother used to put carrots, turnips, and okra.”

Another favorite is fried tofu, made from soybeans that are extensively grown in the area.

Sgobbe’s maternal grandparents came over from Okinawa as children and, like many Nikkei of that generation, spent their lives working in the fields. They own a small farm, where they grow most of their own vegetables and used to raise animals, though they’ve sold most of them off now after their children went to college and moved to the city. “The Japanese now have a really good relationship with the government of the city,” says Sgobbe. “It’s interesting to see the synergy between these different cultures.”