The rise of coffee culture and the ending of slavery brought sweeping demographic changes to Brazil as free laborers were now in demand. The need for coffee workers first led to the recruitment of European laborers, especially Italians. However, abusive working conditions led the Italian government to end paid transport recruiting schemes. To meet labor demand, the government of Brazil relaxed its “whitening policy” that banned African and Asian immigration and allowed Japanese to immigrate to Brazil (Wikipedia: Japanese Brazilian 2009). Today, in terms of racial composition Brazilians are mainly white with 53.7% of the population. Those of mixed black and white heritage (a.k.a. mulattos) comprise 35.5% of the population. Blacks comprise 6.2%. Other races total about 1.0% of the population. In particular, Brazilians of Japanese descent total approximately 1.4 million (Wikipedia: Japanese Brazilian 2009).