Culture and identity in contemporary Brazil

What is Kendo?

Kendo is derived from the Japanese Samurai’s dedication to the Japanese art of swordsmanship (Ken-jutsu). Training with a sword that has a live blade, as can be imagined, is very dangerous so various schools of swordsmanship in Japan’s past developed ways to lessen the danger. These methods are the origin of Kendo.One weapon introduced as an alternative to the Katana (The Japanese sword used by samurai) was the bokuto, a wooden sword used in kumitachi or seiho now known as kata (set forms). (Source: http://kodokankendo.org/what-is-kendo/)

In the Santa Catarina plateau there is a Kendo Academy of Practice Kendo BunBuKan, maintained by descendants of Japanese immigrants who settled in the region in 1964. The colony of Frei Rogério maintains artistic and cultural practices as a way of maintaining the cultural identity of the country of origin. Sensei Elzami Miwa Onaka is responsible for teaching Kendo in Frei Rogério, where she conducts regular training and activities with students from different regions of Brazil. The images are from a gasshukus held with a Japanese master in October 2019.

Japanese culture is one of the most striking elements of the importance of immigrants in the formation of rural space in the Santa Catarina plateau. The colony of Frei Rogério is very active in holding commemorative events and preserving the memory of the country of origin.

This project is supported by the edital Bolsa Cultura 2020.

Projetos Bolsa Cultura

This project aims to use the art and the means of dissemination and communication in order to disseminate the culture of the territory, valuing the roots and reminding us of the cultural identities of the Serrano Catarinense Plateau in which many people circulate and where the University is inserted, thus aiming at the valorization of the regional identities, and the historical rescue of the social identity of the region, taking the past into consideration for understanding the current context, with a view to building a more inclusive and tolerant future. This is a multi-method exploratory research, which will be conducted through bibliographic research and documentation, interviews, photos, videos about the cultural identities of the Curitibanos region and the Santa Catarina Plateau.