Henrique Yagui Takahashi

Henrique received his PhD in Latin American Cultural and Literary Studies at Ohio State University in July 2024. His current book project, tentatively titled Mestizo Orientalism: Ethnic Urban Enclaves, Multicultural Tourist, and Racial Entanglements in Peru and Brazil, compares the transition of Lima's Chinatown and São Paulo's "Japantown" from Asian diaspora community spaces to multicultural tourist attractions and gentrified urban spaces from the 20th to the 21st centuries. His work uses a multi-sited ethnography approach, unstructured interviews, and archival research to explore how orientalization and gentrification intersect with the predominant narrative influenced by the racial ideologies in Latin America, such as the "racial democracy myth" and "mestizaje," as observed through press publications, monumental arts, food cultures, and digital platform videos.

Yagui Takahashi's research has been published in Textos Híbridos and book chapters by the Federal University of São Carlos Press and Desalinho Produções. His public essays are available in Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil and Portal Geledés.