Dr. João Júlio Gomes dos Santos Júnior

Fellow during the winter term 2021/22

João Júlio Gomes dos Santos Júnior is Assistant Professor of Brazilian History at the State University of Ceará (UECE) since 2016. He is also the coordinator of the Laboratory of Historical Narratives and the Head of the Graduate Studies Program in History, Cultures and Spatiality. He hold a PhD History from the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) with a doctoral stage at Freie Universität Berlin. He has interests in Global History - historiography and methodologies - and recently is developing his research in Global History of Jiu-Jistu.

At the Munich Center for Global History he will be developing this project from the perspective of integration, highlighting the synchronicity of historical phenomenal in a context of intense circulation of instructors, books and presentations of Jiu-Jitsu around the world. The Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 experienced a period of modernization and quickly was able to establish a combination between the cultural tradition and the western novelty. In the early XX century Japan was able to military defeat important nations, like China and Russia, what create a great curiosity about the secret behind the organization, health and good physical of the Japanese army. That curiosity was transformed in cultural diplomacy through the circulation of people, books and warships during the first quarter of the century. In our argument, Jiu-Jitsu was an important cultural tool to foster migration and Japanese influence in a period of intense nationalisms. This project is focus in six big themes: the circulation of instructors and public demonstrations of Jiu-Jitsu; circulation of introductory books, public challenges against different national martial arts; institutionalization of Jiu-Jitsu in police forces and armies; women and children practicing jiu-jitsu; and the prejudice, resistance and national discourses against Jiu-Jitsu. Our primary sources, situated in five continents and organized in a personal database in the FileMaker software, are newspapers, ads, cartoons, photographs, reports and books from the period.