notably, the first half of the 20th century saw a large inflow of japanese (mainly from honshū, hokkaidō and okinawa) and arabic-speaking christians from lebanon and syria. these christian levantine immigrants were wrongly called "turks" by many brazilians because their original countries were still under ottoman rule back in the period when their immigration to brazil began. the number of actual turks who immigrated to brazil was in fact very small. chinese, taiwanese and koreans influx became common after the 1950s.