Dirty Hearts: The History of Shindō Renmei - Paperback

by Fernando Morais (Author), Seth Jacobowitz (Translator)

Fernando Morais' Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan's defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindō Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas' Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan's victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil's fraught racial democracy.

Back Jacket

​Fernando Morais' Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan's defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindō Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas' Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan's victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil's fraught racialdemocracy.

Author Biography

Fernando Morais (b. 1946) is a Brazilian journalist, writer, and politician. He is the author of nine books, which include his biographies of Communist operative Olga Benário Prestes, media mogul Assis Chateaubriand, Brazilian Air Force Marshal Casimiro Montenegro Filho, and best-selling author Paulo Coelho. His own works have sold over two million copies in nineteen countries, and four of his books have been made into films. He received the Prêmio Esso three times and Prêmio Abril four times for his journalistic work. Corações Sujos (Dirty Hearts, 2000) was awarded the Jabuti Award, the Brazilian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, in the category of Best Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2001.

Seth Jacobowitz is Assistant Professor of Japanese in the Department of World Languages & Literatures at Texas State University, USA. He is the author of Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture (Harvard Asia Center, 2015), which won the 2017 International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize in the Humanities. He is also the translator of the Edogawa Rampo Reader (Kurodahan Press, 2008).