Close your eyes. Imagine it is 1970 and you have come to São Paulo for a visit. Maybe you are from Rio de Janeiro or Rio Grande do Sul or Rio Verde, Goiás. Maybe you have flown in from New York or Paris. You have certainly heard that in São Paulo one place you must visit is Brazil’s “Japantown” of Liberdade. Now jump forward to 2008. The image of São Paulo remains the same. Even for residents of the city itself, Liberdade remains a top tourist attraction.
What makes Liberdade so fundamental to the outsider’s view of São Paulo? At its most superficial level is the tourist’s love of fantasy. Liberdade, imagined by many who do not live there as an exotic place in which a better Brazil can be found, is certainly a fantasy. It all started in 1912 when the first Japanese immigrants began to reside in the inexpensive housing on a street called Rua Conde de Sarzedas and within a few years the Taisho Shogakko (Escola Primária Taisho) was founded with 300 students. By the early 1930s about 2,000 Japanese immigrants and their children had moved from farms into the city for better educational and professional opportunities. These immigrants, some of who had arrived on the famous boat, the Kasato-Maru in 1908, would change the face of São Paulo’s capital, bringing new types of business and culture into the city.
It was in the 1950s and 1960s that Liberdade became known as a “Japanese” neighborhood as the population jumped to the point where schools, cinemas and community organizations popped up to serve the community. Nothing marked this more than the 1967 visit of Prince Akihito and Princess Michiko (now Japan’s Imperial couple). Just a few years later the Metrô (subway) arrived in the neighborhood and in 1973 the Liberdade neighborhood association placed the now famous “Suzuranto” lamps over the main streets.
Over the decades millions of people have come to believe that a stroll in Liberdade replicates a stroll in Tokyo, although nothing could be farther from the truth. At a deeper level, Liberdade represents a fantasy of modernity and tradition combined. For decades the ties between Brazil and Japan, and their linkage to Japanese-Brazilians, have created an imagined special relationship between Brazil and Japan that was spatially realized in Liberdade. As Japan-Brazil relations exploded beginning in the 1950s with enormous trade treaties, and continued through the eighties as hundreds of thousands of Brazilians migrated to Japan for work and identity reasons, Liberdade was the focus of attention.
In Liberdade this special relationship is constructed in large part through products, eroticism and food. Most “Japanese” goods sold in Brazil today are actually made in China but the label “Japanese” creates the presumption that they are superior to locally made ones. Many visitors to Liberdade associate the same qualities with Japanese-Brazilians, even when the people in question are actually of Korean or Chinese descent. Modernity is represented by the high-tech and high quality gadgets that supposedly flow into Brazil via its Nikkei community.
Tradition, on the other hand, is often represented by subservient female sexuality and Liberdade has always been imagined as a place where the line between proper and improper behavior was easily broken. This is spatially represented today as you walk down the Avenida da Liberdade towards the Praça da Sé. In Liberdade itself, the phone booths are filled with stickers advertising sexual services by “japonesinhas,” the overwhelming majority of whom are not of Japanese descent but rather play on Brazilian male fantasy by dressing as “geishas.” These ideas are not new; many of the São Paulo based films of Walter Hugo Khouri featured scenes in which Euro-Brazilian men had sex with the waitresses/geishas in Liberdade’s restaurants.
Food is perhaps Liberdade’s best known product. The neighborhood is filled with Japanese restaurants although most are owned by Brazilians of Chinese, Korean or European descent. Indeed, some of the least “Japanese” although still delicious food can be found in Liberdade, along with excellent Chinese, Northeastern and "por kilo" restaurants.
So on to our walking tour which will take about three hours, including lunch. While most visits to Liberdade begin at its famous “Praça” ours will end there. So let’s begin by getting on São Paulo’s Metrô and getting off at the São Joaquim stop. There we will walk a few minutes down São Joaquim Street and on our left we will see the first example of the fantasy of Japanese-ness in the neighborhood, the Assembléia de Deus Nipo-Brasileira (# 129), right near to the Igreja Evangélica Sangue e Fogo (# 235) and right across the street from the Palácio Maçônico do Grande Oriente de São Paulo (# 457) an exclusive members-only club.
Entering into the Assembléia de Deus Nipo-Brasileira is a surprise – the evangelical church looks like an old movie theater which in fact it was. Indeed, through the 1980s the Cine Tokyo (it had been founded in 1954) was a place (along with four other cinemas in the neighborhood) that showed thousands of Japanese films not only for Japanese immigrants and their children, but for some of the most well-known names of Brazilian cinema including the aforementioned Khouri, Carlos Reichenbach and Alfredo Sternheim. The other surprise in entering the Assembléia de Deus Nipo-Brasileira is that most of the worshippers are not Nikkei. Indeed, a cynic might say that the name is meant mostly for non-Nikkei who might believe that this church, unlike the nearby Igreja Evangélica Sangue e Fogo, is a model of modernity and tradition.
As you continue walking down the road you will see on your left the ruins of the Escola Estadual Campos Sales (# 288). This school was built in 1911 by the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Bianchi and later preserved as a historic landmark. In 1992 a fire destroyed the school which is wistfully remembered by middle-aged members of the middle class as one of those “excellent” public schools that are so hard to find today. In a 2005 decree, then-São Paulo State Governor Geraldo Alckmin decreed that the ruins would be transformed into the Museu de Arte Moderna Nipo-Brasileira Manabu Mabe, a spatial upgrade of the institute which today houses information on the artist.
Right across the street at # 285 is the Templo Budista Busshinji, built in 1994. Busshinji, which means “From the heart of the Buddha”, was founded by Japanese immigrants who came to Brazil after World War II (some 50,000 came between 1954 and 1980). The Templo Budista Busshinji is the official headquarters of the Soto Zen School of Buddhism in South America. The Temple is open most days for meditation at 6:30 and 18:30.
Our final stop on Rua São Joaquim is at the “Bunkyo” - an enormous building that houses many of the entities which make up the formal Nikkei community in São Paulo. It is a place to take Japanese language classes, read books and learn flower arranging. But for our purposes, we will enter at #381 and go to the 7th floor to see the Museu Histórico da Imigração Japonesa no Brasil. Like all museums, this one tells the “official story” of Japanese immigration in Brazil, focusing on success and integration. The Museum was founded in 1978 as part of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants in Brazil. The opening ceremony even included then Prince and today Emperor Akihito of Japan and then president and dictator (and today not very fondly remembered) General Ernesto Geisel.
The first two floors of the museum focus on the history of Brazilian-Japanese relations (formalized in 1895 with a Treaty of Friendship) and the early years of immigration. Of particular interest is the reconstruction of the houses in which immigrants lived on plantations. For me the most fascinating part of the museum is on the top floor (9th floor) which focuses on the period after 1950. Why? Because what was probably the most well known event involving Japanese Brazilians in the post-war era, the rise of a fanatical group called the Shindo Renmei (it had 100,000 members and was powerful enough that the federal government had to negotiate with it) is relegated to a tiny note, in a poorly lit case, which mentions the “problems” that the Nikkei community had in the post-war years. Yet this is not a surprise, the first lesson of all museums is to ask what is NOT included.
As we continue strolling down Rua São Joaquim we come to the first cross-street, Rua Galvão Bueno. Here we have a choice: if we turn right we will see the headquarters of the Força Sindical Worker’s Union and one of its famous “people’s restaurants.” If we continue straight we will enter a forgotten section of Liberdade, inhabited mostly by migrants from Brazil’s northeast. You can have a bite and dance at the Recanto do Nordeste or stop into one of the many little shops for a taste (or a bottle) of excellent cachaça.
Our walking tour, however, takes a left at the corner of São Joaquim and Galvão Bueno as we walk up the hill towards the Praca da Liberdade. Galvão Bueno and its various side streets are filled with shops and restaurants. One unusual gastronomic stop is at Lamen Aska, one of the few remaining lamen houses in Brazil. What makes Aska special is its menu – lamen (a Japanese dish of noodles served in broth that originated in China) and only lamen, in mini, regular and big sizes. The Lamen is made in-house and cooked on the spot in a big open kitchen. Remember, like many restaurants in Liberdade, lunch ends at 14:30.
As we walk up Galvão Bueno keep your eyes open for a number of interesting items. First, notice that many of the menus today are written in Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese, showing the heavy influence of the Chinese community in the neighborhood in the last decade. Indeed, in residential terms, Liberdade today is a mixed Chinese immigrant/Northeastern migrant area. Also look for some of the interesting syncretic expressions of identity that today mark the neighborhood. Many restaurants, for example, serve what they call “Yakisoba Chinesa” which mixes the Japanese fried noodles with Chinese cooking techniques. Similar syncretism can be found during Liberdade’s 35 year-old Feira Japonesa, a street fair that takes place every Sunday and where a single booth may offer yakisoba and acarajé!! A fascinating stop is at Galvão Bueno 364, where the Japanese language bookstore Casa Ono shares a space with the Peixaria Mitsuji. If you read Japanese, or just enjoy looking at manga, pick up a magazine, walk to the back, get a small order of pre-packaged but very fresh sushi, and sit at one of the tables near the Peixaria.
Continuing up Galvão Bueno still more choices appear for our walk. We can turn right on Barão de Iguape and walk down to Conselheiro Furtado. On that street, turning left (toward the Praça do Sé) we will find a large Chinese Temple. A block further down we come to the Museu da Associação Okinawa do Brasil which houses photographs, ceramics and dance costumes and tells the story of the province from which the largest group of Japanese in Brazil emigrated. You might also take a quick stop and look at the building of the Liga Itálica on Praça Almeida Júnior 86. What is particularly fascinating is the small door next to the main entrance, behind which you can take Japanese language classes or go the Sicilian Society of Brazil. In the Praça Almeida Júnior you will see a number of posts, with the words “Peace to the World” written on them in various languages. Keep your eyes open in Liberdade, as these posts are placed in many of the gardens and parks in the region.
If we stay on Galvão Bueno, there are also a number of interesting stops. You might take a left on Tomás Gonzaga, a street known to many paulistanos for its restaurants. You might stop on Galvão Bueno and enter one of the many Asian supermarkets, filled with wonderful fruits and vegetables, many of which are unknown to most paulistanos. Don’t forget to stop at Mini Kimono (Galvão Bueno, 22), Ikesaki Cosmetics (Galvão Bueno, 37) and the home Buddhist Temple store (I do not know the number). Each of these places may appear, on the outside, to be very Japanese but in fact are real hallmarks of Japanese-Brazilian culture which would be unrecognizable in Japan. Indeed, even the “typical” Japanese street lights that hang over many streets in Liberdade would bring a smirk to the faces of people from Japan. Liberdade’s food, street visuals and products are all classic examples of hyphenated ethnicity, the most common cultural form in the Americas. What you are seeing in Liberdade is how the descendants of Japanese immigrants create their special form of “brasilidade” by commingling elements of many different cultures into what they define as “Japanese-Brazilian.” Remember as you walk through Liberdade, no matter how much you want to believe that you are in Japan, no one from Japan would see Liberdade as anything less than “bem brasileiro” (very Brazilian)!!
As we move towards the end of Galvão Bueno, almost at the Praça da Liberdade, stop at the Viaduto Guilherme de Almeida for one of the most impressive and ironic moments of out tour. Visually, the view from the viaduct is impressive. It shows São Paulo at its most massive and uncontrolled. Yet the irony is that the viaduct is named after Guilherme de Almeida, a well-known vanguard poet who had participated in the 1922 Modern Art Movement and would flee Brazil after participating in the São Paulo Constitutionalist Revolt of 1932. In 1929 Almeida wrote a series of eight satirical articles on his "impressions of our diverse foreign neighborhoods" for the mass circulation newspaper O Estado de São Paulo that mocked exactly the kind of ethnic Brazilian neighborhood that Liberdade has become.
At the end of Galvão Bueno take a left down the Rua dos Estudantes. Check out the futon shops and especially the Itikiri Bakery. Enter the bakery and pick up a plastic tray and tongs, choose your delight (or delights and pay – but don’t forget to ask for a cafezinho as well since the very “Asian” bakery downstairs includes a very “Italo-paulistano” (yet another hyphenated ethnicity) coffee shop upstairs. A few steps further down the street is the Beco dos Aflitos which ends at a small church that is included in the Roteiro dos Mortes. Keep walking down the Rua dos Estudantes and take a left on the Rua da Glória and from there walk back up to Avenida Liberdade. Notice the mixture of rodízios, luncheonettes, Chinese and Japanese restaurants, almost all of which, incredibly, have foods in common including the ubiquitous yakisoba
Now that we have returned to Avenida da Liberdade, turn left and walk back towards the Praça (if you turn right you will come to the Praça da Sé). Walking in this direction towards the Praça da Liberdade, you feel you are in normative Brazil – there are used book stores, hookers, and luncheonettes. As you get closer to the Praça, the ethnic feel returns, first with a McDonald’s decorated in Japanese style and then with shops and restaurants with signs in Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese.
Yet Liberdade was not always an ethnic neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood was originally a Portuguese oxen trail which included “O Largo da Força” where the death penalty was enacted, mainly on slaves. In 1858, the Empire of Brazil changed the name to “Largo da Liberdade” even though Brazil would not abolish slavery until decades later.
It is this forgotten memory of Liberdade that leads us to the last stop on our tour, the Capela de Santa Cruz das Almas dos Enforcados, built in 1891. The church, built on the site of the whipping post (pelourinho) of the Largo da Força, has many legends around it. Some say that the site became a place of popular worship in 1821 after a soldier condemned to death by hanging had the cord break three times, leading the public to shout “Liberdade.” (The soldier was buried in the Cemitério dos Escravos, at the aforementioned Igreja dos Aflitos). Others focus more on slavery and point to the fact that worshippers in the church seem to mix African religions with Catholicism in their ritual. Indeed, some of the figures in the church are of African descent, women in African dress divine your future (using “búzios”) in front of the church and the Casa de Velas Santa Rita at the side of the church does most of its business with Afro-Brazilian Umbanda and Candomblé ritual items.
Liberdade – it may seem exotic, but it is really “bem brasileiro”!!
Prepare for Your Visit to Liberdade
General Information on Japanese Immigration and Nikkei
This article originally appeared in Portuguese in the book Dez Roteiros Históricos a Pé em São Paulo. An English language version is in the works.
The “dez roteiros” series features walking tours in and around São Paulo. Among the volumes already released are Roteiros Históricos a Pé Próximos a São Paulo and Santos e Litoral: Dez Roteiros Históricos a Pé. For more information about the series, visit the Editora Narrativa Um website.
