Ilton Guenhiti Shinzato
Son of immigrants from Okinawa who settled in Campo Grande, capital of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul, in 1925. Doctor with PhD, professor at UFMS and founding member of the Brazil-Japan Association of Researchers. He had an intense presence in the Nikkei community in the Mato Grosso region. Passed away on 01/20/2020.
Updated April 2021
Stories from This Author
History of the Okinawan Diaspora and the Silent Conquest
April 14, 2021 • Ilton Guenhiti Shinzato
In 1968, the skeleton of a boy was discovered at the Yamashita-cho archaeological site, near Naha Port, Okinawa. Testing for carbon 14 revealed it to be 32,000 years old, the oldest Homo sapiens sapiens in East Asia. Around 35,000 years ago, some Austronesians, using the “bridge” of islands, left Taiwan, passed through the islands of Yaeyama, Miyako, Okinawa, Amami and arrived in Kagoshima, Japan. Over thousands of years they formed the paleolithic Jomon people throughout the Japanese archipelago, from …
