The Japanese spirit: updates, proximities and distances to an analytical relatedness.

• Grant number: 13/23839-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2014
• End date: March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Igor José de Renó Machado
• Grantee: Gil Vicente Nagai Lourencao
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In my master's research, I had evaluate the Japanese fencing as a device of Japaneseness, ie, a device that sought to "make Japanese" - being descendants or not. In this 'manufacturing' process, the Kendo focused three plans intimately connected: "spirit" [Ki], sword and body. While development of the previous research, this doctoral project seeks to collect data through reports of life of Kendo practitioners and analysis of documents that deal with the concept of Ki - energy - and deal with ethnographic fieldwork and through interviews in Brazil and Japan. The notion of Ki shows great potentialities - theoretical and analytical - for studies of kinship-relationality and japanese family including cultural recognition processes, still not duly evaluated by an anthropological point of view.