This short book follows two sets of missionaries in South America, the Japanese fundamentalist Christian religion Makuya, and the new religion Tenri-kyo, among Japanese immigrant communities in Brazil and Paraguay. We see these newcomer immigrant missionaries who arrived in South America during the 1980s as they assimilate socially and culturally, constructing social environments needed to adapt both within and without their diasporic communities. In particular, the book analyzes processes of social adaption and the web of introductions they employ to access jobs, homes and marriage partners. Japanese began to migrate to Brazil in 1908 and have created there the largest overseas community of Japanese in the world.

Christopher Reichl is an anthropologist, teaching at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He earned his PhD in anthropology at the University of Iowa, and specializes in linguistics, Japanese Studies and research into the Japanese diaspora: Japanese in Brazil and in Hawaii.