Japanese Peruvians

Japanese Peruvians (Spanish: peruano-japonés or nipo-peruano; Japanese: 日系ペルー人, Nikkei Perūjin) are Peruvian citizens of Japanese origin or ancestry.

Peru has the second largest ethnic Japanese population in South America after Brazil. This community has made a significant cultural impact on the country, and as of the 2017 Census in Peru, 22,534 people or 0.2% of the Peruvian population self reported themselves as having Nikkei or Japanese ancestry. Though the Japanese government estimates that at least 100,000 Peruvians have some degree of Japanese ancestry. The Peruvian Congress indicated that the emigration of Peruvian Nikkeis to Japan began in the 1980s, and the Japanese government estimates that around 300,000 Peruvians of the Peruvian-Japanese community, 40,000 Nikkeis went to work in Japan.

Peru was the first Latin American country to establish diplomatic relations with Japan, in June 1873. Peru was also the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigration. The Sakura Maru carried Japanese families from Yokohama to Peru and arrived on April 3, 1899, at the Peruvian port city of Callao. This group of 790 Japanese became the first of several waves of emigrants who made new lives for themselves in Peru, some nine years before emigration to Brazil began.

Most immigrants arrived from Okinawa, Gifu, Hiroshima, Kanagawa and Osaka prefectures. Many arrived as farmers or to work in the fields but, after their contracts were completed, settled in the cities. In the period before World War II, the Japanese community in Peru was largely run by issei immigrants born in Japan. "Those of the second generation [the nisei] were almost inevitably excluded from community decision-making."