126 



INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY PUBLICATION NO. 12 



cussing various topics of common interest. "Wlien 

 conversation lags or the hour grows late, the cus- 

 tomer will get up from his seat and ask the store- 

 keeper for the articles he has come to purchase; 

 or, if the owner is busy talking to someone else, 

 he may go behind the counter and wait on himself. 

 If the transaction did not follow some such se- 

 quence, the customer would feel offended and sub- 

 sequently buy his supplies elsewhere. The act of 

 making a purchase is thus more a social, than a 

 commercial, act; it is an extension of the pattern 

 of visiting which is deeply embedded in the local 

 mores. 



Exceptional in the village is the procedure in 

 the venda owned by the Japanese who, although 

 now largely assimilated,^^^ friendly in manner, and 

 well liked, has not yet taken over what might be 

 called the "visiting pattern" of commercial trans- 

 actions. Between this storekeeper and his cus- 

 tomers there does not yet exist the high degi-ee of 

 intimacy to be observed elsewhere. The relation 

 has a more formal character, a fact which is sym- 

 bolized by the closed counter in this store, effec- 

 tively prohibiting the customer from serving 

 himself. 



The following incident reveals to some extent 

 the lack of coherence between the expectations on 

 the part of local inhabitants and the actual be- 

 havior of the Japanese storekeeper. One morn- 

 ing, a farmer known as Ze do Porto rode up to the 

 venda and dismounted. He tied his horse securely 

 to a nearby fence and entered the venda where he 

 spoke to the storekeeper and then took a seat on 

 a kerosene can near the counter. For a long 

 time, no one spoke. At last, turning to the store- 

 keeper who so far had made no effort to converse 

 with him, Ze asked, "How goes it, Seu An- 

 tonio?" ^^* "Not bad," was the reply, followed 

 by another long period of silence. After a while, 

 Ze do Porto got up, went outside and looked up 

 and down the road as if hoping to see someone 

 with whom he might converse. He leaned ex- 

 pectantly up against the jamb of the door and re- 

 mained there for some time. At last, since no one 

 had appeared, Ze went to his horse, took the 

 picud '^ from behind the saddle and reentered the 



store. Laying the picud on the counter, he said, 

 "Give me a kilo of salt and half an arroha of 

 sugar." 



After the Japanese had weighed out the pur- 

 chases, Ze put them into the picud and, leaning 

 up against the counter once more, waited expect- 

 antly. Tlie storekeeper returned to his stool be- 

 hind the counter. After about a half hour had 

 passed, Ze turned to the storekeeper and said, "Put 

 a drinlc there for us." The storekeeper got up 

 and began to pour out the pinga, as he asked, "Five 

 hundred reis or destdof" ^ "You can give us 

 destcio.'''' 



Ze took the glass and, in keeping with the local 

 etiquette, turned to the storekeeper and said, "Are 

 you served ?" before drinking it at one gulp. He 

 then continued leaning on the counter for a long 

 time. Finally, he asked the storekeeper, "Do yon 

 have an empty bottle to carry kerosene in ? I for- 

 got to bring one." The Japanese brought a bottle 

 out from behind the counter and asked, "Will this 

 do?" "It will do," Ze replied, "I'll bring it back 

 later." The stoi-ekeeper filled the bottle with kero- 

 sene and returned to his stool behind the counter. 

 Several minutes later, Ze picked up the bottle, put 

 it into his pictui, taking care to separate it from 

 the salt and sugar he had previously purchased 

 and saying, to no one in particular, "Kerosene has 

 a terrible smell." After waiting a few more 

 minutes in silence, he took up the picud and with 

 an ^'■Ate logoP^ (So long!) to the storekeeper, to 

 which he added, "I'll be going; I have to look after 

 some pigs today," Ze climbed on his horse and 

 left. 



Approximately 2 hours had passed while Ze 

 was making his simple purchases of salt, sugar, 

 and kerosene. On the following Saturday, he was 

 observed to be enjoying himself immeiasely at 

 the principal hotequim. He spent the day there, 

 from 10 o'clock in the morning until 6 : 30 at night, 

 talking with his friends, drinking an occasional 

 glass of pinga and playing truco. At nightfall, 

 as he climbed into the saddle of his horse, he gave 

 every appearance of happiness and contentment. 



2=2 See Solid.arity, p. ]!)9. 



'^ The Japanese has taken a Brazilian first name. 

 == A bag tor oarryina articles while on horseljack or afoot. 

 (See plate 2, /). 



=* Destao is the local form of dez tostoes, once used as a slang 

 phrase to refer to the milreis and subsequently transferred to 

 the cruzeiro when, in 1942, the cruzeiro became the unit of 

 exchange in Brazil. The centavo. or the tenth part of a cruzeiro 

 Is now called a tostdo, as was previously 100 reis, or the tenth 

 part of a milreis. 



