Maria Rodrigues, a Tokyo-based costume maker, was one of several Brazilian performers who joined Tokyo's Asakusa Samba Carnival this year, with the event returning in all its glory after a scaled-back version was held last year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. On a street lined with 480,000 spectators, the Sept. 15 carnival marked 43 years since the event's launch, with Rodrigues, who wore a skirt adorned with "solar panels" as part of her team's "electricity" theme, dancing to high-octane Brazilian samba music as she passed the landmark Kaminarimon gate of Sensoji Temple in Asakusa.
The veteran dancer of the Asakusa-based samba team named G.R.E.
S. Nakamise Barbaros contributed to its winning the fifth consecutive top honors in the contest by also making costumes featuring "lightning" for eight of its dancers. "I believe the Asakusa Samba Carnival is the biggest contest-style Brazilian carnival outside of Brazil," the native of the South American country's northeastern Bahia region said in an interview before the carnival in the Japanese capital.
The annual late-summer Tokyo highlight, modeled after the world-famous Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, featured nearly 5,000 performers and 15 teams who vied for prizes in an area of Tokyo that has embraced the event wholeheartedly. "I love the sound of Barbaros' 'bateria'," Rodrigues said, referring to a Brazilian Portuguese word for a samba music band. The band consists of various instruments including big bass drums that drive th.