The National Sports Festival (KOKUTAI) is the Japan’s largest national sports meet. The first National Sports Festival was held in 1946 in the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe region, mainly in Kyoto. Since then, the Festival has been held every year with prefectures competing against one another, with prefectures hosting the festival in succession. In 1961, the National Sports Festival was made an official annual event under the Sports Promotion Law, and since then the festivals have been held jointly by the Japan Sports Association, the Ministry of Education, and the hosting prefectures.
The competition currently consists of 37 different sports (and 3 winter sports). The martial arts section includes kendo, judo, sumo, naginata, jukendo, and kyudo.
This years kokutai will take place in Oita prefecture and is the 63rd.
The kendo events are split into shonen (primary and junior high school kids) and adult sections, both male and female.
I have never been to an actually kokutai kendo shiai, but I have attended the Osaka preliminary shiai. Every year this involves the top kenshi in the prefecture, and lines up behind the Todofuken as one of the most important team events in Japan. Unlike other events, however, it sees both adults and children working in unison, and it also presents a more prefectural-wide, non-event specific feel to it. Its kind of like the Japanese olympics!
This is an important event in the kendo calendar and deserves to be more widely known.
Kokutai Homepage (Japanese)
Results from the ZNKR homepage (Japanese)