The Colombian diaspora has reached even the most distant countries: Martha Diaz Suarez, a 64-year-old woman from Tolima, has been living in Japan for nearly 40 years.
Diaz emigrated to Japan in 1984, following her Japanese husband, whom she met in Colombia while he was working for a large Japanese company. “At that time, Colombia was very dangerous because of guerrilla warfare and drug trafficking,” she recalls. After a Japanese businessman was kidnapped and killed, many Japanese expats, including her husband, were recalled home for safety reasons.
For the sake of love and her family, Diaz embarked on a formidable adventure that continues to this day.
Finding love and emigrating from Colombia to Japan
Diaz met her husband by chance, while she was a student at the Cooperative University of Colombia in Bogota and he was on a business trip. “At the time, I was a revolucionaria, I wanted to change the world,” she recalls joyfully.
Despite coming from different worlds, the couple fell in love and went on to get married in Colombia. The Colombian-Japanese couple soon had their first child, Kenji. He grew up in Colombia and in various other countries in Latin America, where the family moved for his fathers work assignments.
While her husband was an expatriate worker, Diaz pursued her passion as an artist. “I’m a dancer and designer,” she says proudly. “During my husband’s travels in Latin America, I always formed my own traditional Colombian dance group,” she recalls.
However, as the security situation in Colombia deteriorated due to drug wars and armed conflict, Diaz’s husband was recalled to Japan. Without hesitation, she followed him, and the Colombian-Japanese family settled in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Initial challenges
Diaz’s arrival in Japan was challenging. “When I arrived, Japan was a completely different world, nothing like the Japan of today,” she recalls. “Many people didn’t know where Colombia was, and those who did only knew it for the bad things,” she says.
One of the first and biggest challenges of Martha was the language. “The language was a huge barrier. It was like arriving on another planet,” she remembers.
Kenji, who was by then 10 years old, shared the same challenge. Born in Colombia, he did not speak a word of Japanese despite having a Japanese father.
To learn the language, Diaz and her son began watching movies dubbed in Japanese, but above all, they traveled. With her husband’s support, Diaz started exploring Japan, traveling across the country, and relying on her basic English to communicate.
The tuna cans
The language barrier led to some very amusing situations. One funny incident occurred when Diaz went to the supermarket with Kenji. There, she spotted what seemed like a great promotion for tuna cans. “The cans had this beautiful pink color,” she recalled. Feeling a sense of familiarity, Martha bought a whole supply of them. “We ate tuna for a week, with rice and tomato sauce, while watching movies,” she said.
When she went out to throw away the cans, she encountered an elderly Japanese lady. The lady, with her arms crossed, started shouting and asking Diaz for the cans. Frightened, Diaz rushed home to tell her husband about the strange encounter. “She’s crazy! Every time I go out to throw the cans away, she asks me for them,” she told him.
After trying to understand the woman’s behavior, Diaz’s husband asked to see the cans. Upon seeing them, he laughed and explained, “That’s because you have been feeding us food for the cats!”
“Which cats?” Martha wondered, just before her husband explained, amused, that the “tuna” they had been eating was actually cat food.
Cultural shocks between Colombia and Japan
Diaz also remembers her first impressions of Japanese social codes and culture. “At first, I was very sad in [Japan]. I felt so alone, with no one to talk to. It was such an immense loneliness that when my son went to school, he would call me from a payphone, and we would just stay on the line talking,” she recalls, moved.
“It was like a cemetery. You couldn’t sing, you couldn’t laugh,” Diaz recalls. “When I whistled in the street, my husband scolded me, saying that’s not done. You can’t ride a bike too fast. Everything is about maximum respect. You can’t sing in the bathroom, or the neighbors will complain,” she says, concluding with what was the worst for her: “I couldn’t go dance in the street!”
Diaz also says that her husband’s behavior changed when they returned to Japan. While she had known him as very open-minded, Japan’s social pressures brought out different traits in him, particularly discipline, seriousness, and a strong focus on work.
“My husband is a descendant of samurai. At first, he told me he couldn’t marry me because his family didn’t accept foreigners,” she says. Samurai, the Japanese nobility, traditionally control marriages to avoid mixing their lineage with lower classes or, worse, with foreigners. However, Martha’s husband defied this rule for her even at the risk of losing his family name, Yokoi.
Despite everything, the family accepted Diaz and their marriage proved to be very strong. As well as Kenji, the couple has three other children: two daughters and a son.
First steps in dance in Japan
Diaz quickly met and became friends with other Latin Americans who, like her, had emigrated to Japan. She had arrived at a time when Latin immigration to Japan was just beginning. Most of these immigrants were descendants of Japanese people who had emigrated to Latin America in the late 19th century. Despite their shared ancestry, these Japanese Latinos were culturally very different from the inward-looking nature of Japanese society.
With Latino American friends she met in Japan, Diaz joined a folk dance group made up of Peruvians and Bolivians. “They didn’t know about my folklore,” she says. “They had songs by Los Panchos, like “Bésame Mucho” or “Historia de un Amor.” The most upbeat song they had was “Moliendo Café,” she recalls.
In time, Diaz began representing Colombia in the group, via traditional dances like Cumbia and Bambuco. The group did well, traveling around the country by bullet train and performing in schools.
Fiesta Esmeralda, Colombian folklore in Japan
A year and a half after her arrival in Japan, Diaz finally decided to start her own Colombian folk dance group. With the support of the Colombian embassy and a Peruvian friend, she founded Fiesta Esmeralda. It was named both in homage to her childhood dance group, Ballet Esmeralda, and to catch the attention of the Japanese.
Through her many travels, Diaz realized the potential for Colombian dance to become popular in Japan. Being from a completely different background to Diaz, the Japanese found the exoticism of Colombian culture fascinating and attractive. “Our success with the Japanese was overwhelming,” Diaz says.
“The Japanese saw Colombia as full of passion and joy,” she explains. “For a Japanese person, the image of a Colombian is a cheerful, spontaneous person. What they want to see from us is scandal,” she sums up, laughing. For this reason, the name of the group had to resonate with the Japanese, hence the incorporation of the internationally-understood, Spanish-language word “fiesta” (“party”).
Initially a dancer in the group, Diaz is now resting due to health issues. However, she continues to supervise the group and design the traditional dresses worn by the dancers.
While the group still serves as a place to learn Colombian folk dances and as a troupe that performs throughout Japan, its membership has changed. While the original dancers were Colombian and Latin American immigrants, the group now includes Japanese women and, notably, the mixed-race daughters of Latinas and their Japanese husbands. One of Diaz’s own daughters, Katalina, now 23, is currently a dancer in Fiesta Esmeralda.
Embracing Japanese culture, with a Colombian touch
Over time, and thanks to Fiesta Esmeralda, Diaz has acclimated and embraced Japanese culture. “I really like Japan, its history, its strong traditions, and how much they value them,” she says.
At home, she wanted to ensure that her Colombian culture was passed on to her children, as well as the Spanish language. Except for Kenji, who was born and raised in Colombia and Latin America, her children were born and raised in Japan. A multicultural atmosphere prevailed at home.
“My husband speaks perfect Spanish, but at home, he spoke Japanese,” Diaz says. “My children made sure to translate between me, speaking Spanish, and my husband.” As a result, all of her children are perfectly bilingual.
Societal changes in Japan
Diaz and her family have also benefited from changing attitudes in Japan. “Before, people were ashamed of being a foreigner or having a foreign mother,” she recalls. Today, “the doors have opened,” she says. “Now there are many more foreigners and mixed-race people than before, and people are becoming more open to these outside cultures.” Several Japanese celebrities such as Naomi Osaka, or Diaz’s own son, Kenji Yokoi Diaz, now a famous speaker, are of mixed-race background.
Faced with economic and demographic challenges, Japan has gradually opened up to immigration and foreigners. Initially, this was through the immigration of temporary workers from China, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, as well as via marriage contracts between Japanese men and foreign Asian women.
“Now Japan is full of tourists,” Diaz says, amazed, in reference to the 25 million tourists from around the world who visited Japan in 2023.
Despite Japan’s growing internationalization, Diaz still misses Colombia. “The food, the empanadas are what I miss most. In my house in Tolima, there were always tamales, arepas, and beans,” she recalls with nostalgia.
Diaz and her children are an example of a cultural bridge between Colombia and Japan. During visits to their mother’s homeland, and despite some culture shocks – particularly regarding social trust – these Japanese people with Colombian roots have found common ground with their cousins, especially in their shared love for manga and anime, which are very popular in Colombia.