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The city of São
Paulo in Brazil is surely the largest Japanese community outside
Japan in the world.
I was born in São Paulo. I've lived in Switzerland for
many years, almost my entire life. I love Brazil, I love Switzerland,
Italy, France and I love Japan - I love it much more, of course.
Like all my friends, when I was a boy I loved the episodes of
the television series National Kid (Nashonaru Kiddo) produced
by the Toei Company in 1960. The series was more popular in Brazil
than in Japan!
My father spoke Japanese when he was young.
As a teenager, for a few years, I used to attend Kendo rituals
in the Pinheiros neighborhood. The ceremony was restricted and
the swords were made of bamboo. But at the end, sometimes there
would be a great personage, already aged, who would draw pictures
in the air with old steel swords, which was forbidden. But there
we lived the memory of a world.
Everything was surrounded by mystery, formality and great respect.
I think I was one of the only non-Japanese there. And sometimes
I wonder why they allowed me in. And I quickly gave myself the
answer: because we were in liberty and there, we were all Japanese.
It was very strange to live that. Strange and fascinating.
Years later, when I lived in Lisbon, Portugal, every Sunday we
watched Sumo fights with our daughter Laura, who was still a
child. We identified the wrestlers. When Akebono Taro entered
the ring, it was a thrill.
When we learned that Akebono had died in 2024 from a heart attack
at the age of 54, it was, in a sense, as if something of us had
disappeared. And none of us had ever been fanatics or even regular
followers of Sumo!
I studied Katsura, Daitokuji, tankas, hai-kais, Zen aesthetics,
Japanese history and so on.
Both in New York and São Paulo, Japanese restaurants became
part of our lives.
I once met a very old man in São Paulo, a sushi man. He
only served lunch in a small restaurant for ten people, where
he gave real lessons on how to cut fish - without saying a word.
The memories are many.
In the 2000s, a dear friend, the architect Katsuhito Atake, introduced
me virtually to a friend of his, the choreographer Hanako Atake.
I never got to meet Hanako in person, at least not yet. But I
soon realized that her work is remarkable.
Katsuhito and I had met in Tsukuba in 1994.
So Hanako and I agreed to do a project together. Music and choreography.
These stories and a philosophical reflection on a Japanese word
- katachi - which I believe is impossible to be translated to
the West, can be found in my text Katachi - Mirror Labyrinth,
with a link on the side.
In it, I also tell you about the text-poem I created in 1994
when I was teaching and lecturing at the Tsukuba Institute of
Technology.
The project is extensive and also involves the music of the Noh
theater, Japanese art from the last 1250 years and a philosophical
reflection on the concept of katachi.
We are what we love.
And we are not bureaucracy!
Liberty must always be our very first sign
Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta
Porto Ronco, Locarno, Switzerland, 2024
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emanuel pimenta
hanako atake
Katachi - concert and movie
Katachi - virtual musical score (film)
Katachi - virtual musical score- pdf
Katachi - Labyrinth of Mirrors (2024) pdf
Katachi - in Japanese
Katachi (text-poem 1994) pdf
Noh theather:
Aoi no Ue
Tomoe
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