SAO PAULO – 

Diario Brasil Nippou, the last remaining Japanese-language newspaper in Brazil, is struggling to keep its presses rolling.

The South American country is home to the largest Japanese community outside the East Asian nation, with some 2.7 million Nikkei Japanese immigrants and their descendants.

Behind the difficulties facing the paper is a decline in the number of subscribers, partly reflecting the aging of immigrants from Japan.

The daily hopes to stay afloat by stressing the cultural role it plays. As part of those efforts it has started soliciting "supporters," and will print a special edition to coincide with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's visit to Brazil in early May.

During World War II Japanese-language newspapers were banned in Brazil, and many immigrants from Japan believed the propaganda broadcasts made by the Japanese government on shortwave radio. While publication of Japanese-language papers was resumed after the war, a conflict erupted between Japanese immigrants who believed Japan had won the war and those who knew it had lost.

Masayuki Fukasawa, the 58-year-old chief editor of Diario Brasil Nippou, says that the conflict highlighted the need to provide correct news as a Japanese newspaper.

Japanese-language papers in Brazil, which have a history stretching back over 100 years, had dwindled to two by 1998 — and one of them went out of business at the end of 2018.

The remaining paper was forced to cease publishing at the end of 2021 due to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it was reborn as Diario Brasil Nippou in January 2022 thanks to funding by an investor who was eager to continue the publication of a Japanese-language newspaper.