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The Republic of Korea, a neglected little country in southeast Asia, that lives in the shadow of it’s behemoth neighbor China and is often in competition with it’s goodie-two-shoes cousin Japan. Korea has a rich and turbulent history, a strong national identity, has been a major player in global politics, and is one of the …

You’re all thinking, what’s a jitsugyodan, right? The easiest description is simply “A company”. That could be used to describe all of the entrants in the Nippon Budoukan last weekend. Basically, your company registers your internal kendo club, and away you go, you can enter the jitsugyodan Taikai. This means you see all manner of companies entering, …

I have created a new youtube channel where I will attempt to upload videos now and again. I much prefer photography to video, but I will do my best to add the occasional recording (promise!). At any rate, check it out: http://jp.youtube.com/user/kenshi247net The first video is of the Osaka Budosai (Osaka Budo festival) which was …

Tameshigiri has been quite the hot discussion on forums lately. It will always pop back up after a few weeks of dormancy and then someone will bring it back up again. In these discussions you always have the advocates of tameshigiri, the side that frowns upon it, and couple of guys who are just curious …

The Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei (ZNKR, in English: All Japan Kendo Federation, AJKF) has started a dedicated page for the Senshuken Taikai (All Japan Championships) and associated youtube page today. It features a video of the final of the first Championshipsm, which was won by Sakakibara (榊原 正), a 33 year old renshi from Aiichi …

Today the 56th Kansai University Kendo Championships (32nd for the ladies) was held in central Osaka. About 60 universities from the area battled it out frantically for the top spots. Too tired to write a long post now, but just wanted to share the picture with you, and the fact that Osaka Taiiku Daigaku (Osaka …

Today I watched the 54th TOZAI TAIKO kendo taikai, held in Okayama in western Japan. This shiai lines up with the senshuken taikai (known in English as the “All Japans”) and the todofuken taikai (which I explain here) as one of the top three kendo competitions in the country. Its a different kind of shiai, …

Here is the advice that was given to my favourite teacher just prior to him passing his hachidan on this 4th attempt at the age of 49 a few years ago. The advice was given to him by the shihan of my dojo, a kendo hanshi who was in the last class of 5 people …

August 29th – 31st saw Cho Hyun Hong Sensei (5th Dan former Korean National Team member and teacher at Tora Dojo in London) run an intensive Kendo seminar in the Swedish town of Wasby. Broken down into numerous sessions spread over three days the seminar focussed on a number of areas: correct stretching and warm …

Kata training in kendo nowadays is had via the well known and respected “nihon kendo no kata,” and it has played an important part in keeping the “sword” element of kendo alive to this day. We also have the newly introduced “bokuto ni yoru kihon keiko-ho” (although they not officially called “kata”) which is a …