The Way of the (Imagined) Sword: martial heritage perceptions among kendo practitioners

Sebastián Chávez-Hernández

doi:10.18002/rama.v21i1.2604

Autores

Sebastián Chávez-Hernández Universidad Politécnica de Madrid https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8206-6684

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18002/rama.v21i1.2604

Palavras-chave:

Artes marciais, desportos de combate, budô, cultura física, cultura material, esporte, sociología, Japão

Entidades:

This research received no funding sources, nor the author received funding for this work.

Resumo

O kendo (esgrima japonesa) contemporâneo é um produto do Japão Imperial e da era pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial. Após sua expansão para o Ocidente e sua transformação democrática, povos na Europa e na América entraram em contato com sua herança cultural. No entanto, poucos estudos caracterizaram profundamente suas concepções de herança. Assim, decidiu-se conduzir 30 entrevistas semiestruturadas com kendoka (praticantes de kendo) residentes na Espanha sobre aspectos que constituem o “kendo correto”. Utilizando a Teoria Fundamentada e codificação aberta, quatro subcategorias foram identificadas: demarcação ritual, identidade material, passado tradicional e identidade kendística. As principais conclusões sobre estas foram que seguir o protocolo é fundamental para manter a harmonia e o respeito pelos outros praticantes; que o uniforme projeta uma ideia do passado samurai como tradicional, japonês e carregado de valores; que cerimônias e rituais colocam o kendoka em um contexto de prática sobrenatural; que os instrumentos de treinamento convidam o indivíduo a se considerar apropriados para o kendo e promotores de um “habitus kendístico”; e que a estética e a moral do kendo são concebidas e reproduzidas pelos kendokas por meios intelectuais e físicos, resultando em uma herança incorporada e interpretada por eles mesmos, mantendo o legado do kendo.

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Biografia Autor

Sebastián Chávez-Hernández, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Sebastián Chávez-Hernández (Chile), PhD Student at the Faculty of Sciences for Physical Activity and Sport (INEF), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain. Reviewer for Sociología del Deporte, and Affiliate Professor at Syracuse University. His current main areas of research are: martial arts and sports from ethnographic perspectives; heritage, visual culture and semiotics applied to physical culture, and body epistemologies. He has published works on the areas of sociology of sport, martial arts, sport practice for people with disabilities, sport labour and volunteering. His ongoing PhD thesis deals with the construction of the idea of “correct kendo” from an ethnographic and quotidian perspective, i.e., from the triangulation of action, discursive and representational aspects of kendo practice. Email: s.chavez@upm.es

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