| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | Mauro Cardoso (Horiyamasaku) |
| Type | Person |
| Era | Contemporary |
| Location | Sao Paulo, Brazil (based Stockholm) |
| Date | 1995 CE |
| Style / Technique | Traditional Japanese irezumi with bold, colorful classical layouts |
| Connected to | Japanese Irezumi, Ivan Szazi (alias Ivaan), Hernan Coretta |
Archive Note
Mauro Cardoso came up in Brazil with two obsessions, drawing and fighting. They nicknamed him Mauro From The Hills. In the Sao Paulo of the late 1990s he buried himself in traditional Japanese art, pulled in by its history and its narrative depth, and he trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu hard enough in local academies to earn a black belt. The mat taught him leverage and patience. He carried both to the needle. Those early years in South America, roughly 1995 to 2004, set his whole approach to self-discipline and structural design.
He wanted the real tradition, not a shortcut to it. So he found the masters. In Sao Paulo he studied under Ivan Szazi, the artist who brought traditional Japanese designs to the South American market in the 1990s. Szazi taught him the symbolism and the technical precision a large-scale piece demands. Then Cardoso flew to Tokyo and learned from Horikyo, a revered master of irezumi. From 1998 to 2010 he absorbed how the classical layouts are built and how the historical stories are told, bridging Western and Eastern methods before he ever opened his own door.
In 2005 he crossed to Europe and took ownership of Swahili Bob's in Stockholm. It started as an old-school street shop with a strong reputation. In 2008 he moved it to Bondegatan 16 in the Sodermalm district, where it still sits. Under Cardoso it grew from a local room into an internationally recognized hub, drawing a diverse roster of artists who work across many traditional and modern illustrative styles. He has run it without a break from 2005 to 2026.
Working now as Horiyamasaku, he built a name on bold, colorful classical layouts. He refuses the modern shortcuts. He wants heavy black backgrounds, strong outlines, and vibrant colorants, and he brings figures like dragons and warriors to life the way the tradition intends. His compositions are built to flow with the contours of the body and to obey the rules of Japanese iconography that have held for centuries. He mixes his own specialized colorants and pigments instead of buying commercial blends, so the color stays bright and durable for years.
Around 2010 he locked in that signature style and started showing the large-scale work at international conventions, including the Stockholm Tattoo Convention. That commitment to classical technique made him a leading figure in the European irezumi community. The reputation spread past Scandinavia. In San Francisco his traditional paintings were featured at the 111 Minna Gallery during its Year of the Dragon exhibition, putting his brush work in front of an American audience.
He never put down the other discipline. In Stockholm he trains at the Checkmat Prana Jiu-Jitsu academy, keeping his conditioning and his focus sharp, and in 2017 he competed at the Finnish Open Jiu-Jitsu Championship. The focus a long tattoo session takes is the focus a match takes, and one feeds the other. From 2015 to 2026 he has kept both paths running at once, a multifaceted artist whose life and career in Europe stand on physical discipline and historical Japanese art in equal measure.