Registro the capital of tea and Japanese tradition in Brazil

The Japanese culture has long been part of Brazil’s history. Due to economic and political reasons, hundreds of thousands of Japanese families migrated to Brazil throughout the twentieth century. Today, the country is home to the world’s biggest Japanese community outside of Japan.

Most Brazilians of Japanese descent are concentrated in São Paulo capital, but there are many others spread in cities like Curitiba (Paraná), Belém do Pará (Amazon), and Registro.

A small city located in the limit between São Paulo and Paraná State, Registro would probably go unnoticed by tourists, weren’t it for its fundamental legacy to the history of Japanese migration in Brazil.

Many people might not be aware, but Registro was where the first Japanese entrepreneurs, farmers, and businesses settled when they arrived in Brazil. No wonder the city is popularly called the Tea Capital in Brazil.

When it comes to Brazil’s agricultural history, the coffee tradition is often recalled – the commodity still plays a significant role in Brazil’s exports.

Still, it occupies a privileged place in the country’s national identity.

But, thanks to the many tea factories inaugurated by Japanese families in Registro and vicinities, Brazil was also a big tea producer and exporter in the 1940s.

According to local Historians, the first tea seed arrived in Brazil in 1919 with Torazo Okamoto, an immigrant who had to hide it inside a bread due to health surveillance restrictions imposed by the ship.

Although not as strong as has once been, the tea culture is still alive in Registro. Some of it can be experienced by visitors in family tea factories like Shimada, Amaya, and Yamamaru.

Because Registro preserves so much of Japan’s first migratory movement to Brazil, some of the city’s venues, buildings, and squares have been declared heritage sites by Brazil’s National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage.

One of them is Kaigai Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. Today, a warehouse and a rice processing factory from the 1920s to the 1980s, KKKK works as a Japanese Migration Memorial and eventually hosts cultural attractions. The building is worth a visit, especially for those in architecture.

If you want to explore the Japanese roots of Registro further, do not miss the city’s Torii. In Shintoism, a religion born in Japan, Toori represents a portal, an entrance to a sanctuary. Registro’s Torii, on its hand, also means the very place where the first Japanese settlers 20arrived.

There are also good open-air itineraries in Registro, such as Park Prefeito José de Carvalho.

The park not only offers a pleasant landscape to Ribeira River but displays, in its center, a sculpture by Tomie Ohtake, one of the most prestigious visual artists of Japanese descent in Brazil. The statue is a homage to the Japanese people who came to Brazil.

If visual arts is your thing, do check the sculptures of Yutaka Toyota spread across the city. Made of discarded material from old tea factories, warehouses, and the former rice processing factory, Toyota blends past and present in his art.

Another attraction at Registro is the Francisco Xavier Cathedral. That the sanctuary carries the name of Francisco Xavier is no surprise – he is, after all, known as “The Apostle of the East” for the time he spent as a missionary in Japan in the mid-sixteenth century.

Eating out at Registro is quite an experience too. A popular option that is hard to disappoint is Registro’s City Market. There, you can find Japanese food stands, organic products, ornamental plants, handicrafts, and fresh fish from the Ribeira River, which borders the city.

The São Paulo-Registro trip usually consists of a two-and-a-half-hour drive (without traffic). From Rio de Janeiro, this trip takes around 7 hours by car.