The trail of this samurai started in Peru

 The ChulucanasGym Project, that was created by Chulucanas, Peru-based lawyer Jhon Gómez, and produced online by me, has been launched in December 2014 to identify talents who highlight because of sports in general, and bodybuilding and fitness in particular, originally across Piura Region but extensively everywhere, and using the Internet like its main promotional platform.

In this sense, part of the project consists in searching and telling the stories of those talents for opening markets and inspiring the people, first and proposedly in the audience around Chulucanas City, but effectively in unsuspected places as both coasts of the U.S., England and Europe, and sometimes Eastern Asia (there were interactions in India and Cambodia, especially when we released features about martial arts). Obviously, those results were mainly gotten with the English versions of the features (originally published in Spanish).

Although I meet some bodybuilders and athletes, even online, when I suggested them to tell their stories, the most accept but start to postergate the interviews, or they simply remain silent. The few who lead producing a good feature agree to publish but vanish for promotion. There were ones who came to say straight if that could be worthy for them, totally skeptical, or simply prefer to stay undergrass or undisclosed, even having interesting points of view to be known.

However, my recent assignment brought me across the Pacific Ocean –well, at least online—to meet a 29-year-old dance trainer, a Peruvian migrant in Nagoya, Japan, named Mario Kanashiro, whose story was impossible to miss since the very first time he told me as a simple chat among friends.

He got a good job at a Japanese corporation until a hard health condition was diagnosed. The right side of his body was falling into a progressive stroke, so the surgery was the first response. But, as he lost strength in the arm, hand, and leg, he had to do rehabilitation, and a long rehabilitation by the way. Initially, he was not motivated to pass through, but a medical doctor pushed him, and that was his lifetime’s plot point: during a dance class, he realized he could do it very well.

I’m wondering now his face when he understood that. Indeed, one of his female cousins remembered on the comments when he shared the story, that he used to be quite apathetic to dance when they attended to the disco, totally unlike today. The fact is that Mario in re-invention got interested more and more, until becoming a master trainer in shaka-dance, which licensing for trainers in Japan is his new job position now.

Yes, it’s the hero’s myth but with a real-life character, somebody you can meet online or personally in case you are in Japan, and that myth is not necessarily oriental but universal – somebody who considers not to have a place or a mission, who rejects it everyway, until the own experience leads to take control and make more than the circumnstances could set to get a change for real, ultimately.

And the interesting thing is Mario is aware about it very, very well. I think that’s why he was so accessible to me for opening his heart and sharing his last decade of life, with all the lessons attached. My job was put everything in a logical order for the audience to recognize the tips, and realize how they apply into their life. That is the magic behind every journalistic feature made for touching your soul. And, obviously, his humility made me possible the rest of the assignment

I’m still wondering why Mario’s is working, because once we released the story (Spanish and English), the acceptance of the people was instantaneous and positive. My hypothetical answer for the moment is self-esteem. Reviewing my former coverages on this issue, I have the bodybuilder or the athlete, which image is enough to catch the interest of the audience, his story that usually reveals a hard trail to build everything (a body and a career, indeed), and they have got fans. So, what could fail? Thus, the attitude.

I can, you can, everybody can consider that bodybuilder or that athlete may be a reference for others, even when mistakes (or risky decisions) have been committed and overcome, but if that person believes it’s not worthy to share because of fear, shame, distrust, or any reason you can imagine, the problem are not the media those elude to support those people who really need exposure, but the own bodybuilder or the own athlete’s self-conception.

In Mario’s case, definetly his medical doctor was a mentor who knew how to trigger some strings inside that guy, and leading him to find a vocation he never supposed to have, but what is opening himself out to the world. But, what about  the other cases?

If we review the Peruvian chapter, the mentors in bodybuilding and fitness are inexistent or unclear about how to build a personal brand, even doing some things considered as inmoral for people who criticize everything in public but ask for special attention when nobody sees them in private. In other words, if your guide or model doesn’t have clear where the way is, how is going to guide you?

And I’m not talking to be an angel everytime –although it would be the ideal—but clarity to understand my place, my mission, my direction, and my legacy. That’s it.

Building the attitude (not enacting one that’s not yours) escapes to the field of the journalism and even the sport, and goes inside the psychology, and specifically the sports psychology. so you don’t need to have a diploma for that (but it’s recommended), rather the enough criterion to stop, not to push, help that guy for going inside his insights, and carry out again to recognize that the good or the bad is a lesson, and that lesson needs to be processed, and released it someway.

Let’s get back to Mario’s. I’m wondering what happened if his environment were not Japan but Peru. Could his attitude be the same? I live in Peru, and I know that being yourself, to be different, to stand up strongly on your opinion (even if it’s wrong), is a heroic act. People prefer to go with the flow because the local system says that you can suffer lifetime if you try to be unique. But, what is the lesson we find around the planet? To be unique is not bad, and if you know how to take it advantage, it can pay your bhills and even save your future and the future of the ones your love so much. But, to be unique, you need to build self-esteem before muscles, records, body, or career. That’s your basis. If you dismiss that, you can build the rest, but something could be weak down there.

And about this point, there is another aspect I’m aware of, the fact that Mario is a migrant, and as he told me on the story, it was not easy to climb up for him. As Mario trusted me, the Japanese society uses to be very close to foreigners. We blame the migrants in Peru for everything (well, there are some guys who act very bad, actually), but Mario’s experience could make us to do a little empathy homework.

So, when the environment is made to respect who you are, whatever you are, and is clear about the importance of the diversity not like a conflict source but a multi-factor development keystone, then you go up. Check other environments without prejudge and have your own conclusions. Life and science, ultimately, are made of much reflection, instead of prior conceptions.

Setting up that environments is not the only responsibility of the government, the system, but families in the first term, then schools, and finally all the spaces where we go to. And that system, if you want to name someway, is called peace culture – being yourself respecting the others like you want the others respect you. Simple logics, and from that start line, everything has to be built, self-esteem included.

Then, that is the way we must take in general, talking ourselves so respectfully, reaching consensus, learning what we can negotiate and what we can’t. That’s attitude, too!

I’m very happy to meet Mario Kanashiro, and I hope his climb-up to continue because he deserves each good thing he is getting now. I’m proud of him like a human, like a sports fan, like a Peruvian, like somebody else who also fights to enlight. And this is the time to invite you for knowing his great, inspiring story, so click here.

The photos on this post and on the story we produced were provided by Mario Kanashiro.