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The Kasato Maru ferried 325 Okinawans to Brazil in 1908, making it the first Japanese immigrant ship to do so. That history is highlighted by the opening of the documentary “Saudade Okinawa,” (“saudade” is a Portuguese word for bittersweet nostalgia, usually around a memory or place). The film takes a look at the results a century later, now that around 200,000 Brazilians of Okinawan descent live in Brazil today, and director and cinematographer Yoju Matsubayashi finds a unique and emotional path to a complex history. The director has previously covered the subject to some extent in “Okinawa / Santos” of 2020, a film that gathered evidence of the expulsion and even of Japanese immigrants in Brazil in the 1940s. families of two third-generation Okinawan-Brazilians, especially those with an interest in – and longing for – the island from which their families came, something that has been explored in part through the arts.
A visual motif of waves seen from above punctuates various sections of the film, usually because its theme reflects on the past movements of the families. In the beginning of the picture, the spread of a young girl practicing a traditional Japanese dance on her family’s farm in Brazil immediately conveys that feeling of “saudade”, a soft and gentle shadow that hangs over much of the film. That feeling of “saudade” can be seen in the incidental details that the director chooses to include, such as how one subject’s grandfather grew dragon fruit with Okinawan seeds, as well as capturing more emotional moments, such as a tearful reaction to unseen photos in an unseen time.
The teenage girl Yumi practices Ryukyu Buyo, and a man named Everton practices Eisa, an Okinawan folk dance that includes drums. By bringing out the commitment to the history of these traditional Okinawan arts and the history of their families, Matsubayashi also reverses the history of movement. This appears in a collection of small personal stories, such as how one character describes the family’s war-induced exile from Santos. Yumi and Everton also learn more of that information for themselves, the film following them on their journeys to Okinawa through exchange programs and trains. (In some delightful cases, the learning cuts both ways, as Everton reunites with an estranged family, and Yumi’s Okinawan relatives marvel at the dialect being preserved halfway around the world.)
Capturing the journeys of their subjects with occasional and mostly spontaneous interviews, Matsubayashi prioritizes personal history over the big picture, as the assembly of the film and the occasional archival material make the relationship of this diaspora a little clearer. Some of these families left Okinawa to avoid the military draft as well as starvation. Others were divided due to land seizures by the US military after the war (“I’ve learned this is a sad place,” Yumi reveals, a quote superimposed over footage of American military bases on the island). Some viewers may be dissatisfied with how Matsubayashi never was well engages with the Second World War and the full history of the Okinawan connection directly, but the context feels like enough for the stories it tells, choosing to focus on the feelings that all children of immigrant backgrounds have felt: uncertainty about their connection to the homeland of their parents and grandparents, and a desire to understand it. The scenes are enough, as “Okinawa Saudade” gives a gradual picture of how the historical struggle of the island is translated to the diaspora.
Everton absolutely says why he is involved in Eisa drumming, saying “We are Brazilians, but we don’t look like Brazilians, so we are always looking for belonging,” and his connection to these traditional art forms will be part of this. Both learn the different nuances of their customs at home compared to Okinawa, though both enjoy teachers who refuse to be dogmatic about what is “real” (“We’re always changing,” Yumi’s teacher says, “there’s no such thing as perfection”). It is also just moving to see, through Matsubayashi’s rather underdeveloped camerawork, how the connections and emotions involved in the performing arts could be so broad over time and space, highlighting the community found by the Brazilian Okinawans who reserved a small piece of the island for themselves.
Grade: B+
“Okinawa Saudade” premiered at the 2026 Tokyo International Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
