Conviviality-in-Action : Of Silence and Memory in the Cultural Performance of Generations of Japanese Migrants in a Riverine Town in Brazil

The paper describes the effects of the encounter between the Brazilian intangible cultural heritage policy and the celebration of Tooro Nagashi, a cultural practice performed by groups of Japanese descendants in the Ribeira Valley. Based on the notion of “friction”, it identifies points of engagement through which new accounts and unsuspected silences involving Tooro Nagashi and its history emerge. Moreover, it characterises how silence as a collective manifestation is a sensitive feature of certain configurations of conviviality in contexts marked by histories of migration, global war, and state repression. In following the complexities of the case, this analysis reveals the evolution of the convivial situations of the families of Japanese descent in the Ribeira Valley as a living process, characterising it as conviviality-in-action.