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mambo and the samba, even if they never did so when they lived back home in Brazil. Reyes-Ruiz argues that although “tropicalization” is a crucial part of establishing a new identity in Japan for dekasegi Nikkei, it also functions as a kind of cultural capital for people in the Latin community in Japan that allows them definite economic advantages.
Female transnational migrants often have special or unique problems that can be very different from the challenges facing men. In chapter 8, Lucia Emiko Yamamoto examines how the dekasegi phenomenon has impacted all aspects of Japanese Brazilian society. Emiko Yamamoto especially focuses on female dekasegi migrants in their evolving social roles as family members. She gives accounts of five Nikkei Brazilian women who were single when they first went to Japan to be temporary workers. She worked with them in both Japan and Brazil for some six years. Over this period, Emiko Yamamoto found that the opportunity to be a migratory worker in Japan provided economic independence for these women. Although her informants felt that their experiences abroad brought improvements in their self-confidence and autonomy, they continued to perform according to their expected roles. Returning to their home country, they felt strange and needed to find ways to cope with life there. Living abroad, they could think about their family's expectations and became aware of the gap between their lives in Brazil and in Japan, but those experiences did not bring about changes in their gender roles.
In the last chapter of this part, chapter 9, Charles Fruehling Springwood talks about how a fourth-generation Japanese American woman, Cathy—who takes over her grandmother's high-profile kimono fashion business—tried to fill her grandmother's very public and very traditional role in Japan. Springwood focuses on the construction of identity for a single Japanese American woman and her family members in the United States and Japan as she takes on unfamiliar challenges. After struggling with being Japanese, Cathy accommodates herself to new expectations and duties. She uses both her Japanese and American cultural capital—that is, being a member of a Japanese family and being a native English speaker—to expand her business internationally.