Every year the University of Valencia in Spain makes an effort to bring the head coach of the Waseda University in Tokyo (Yano-sensei) along with some members of the team. They all train with us during a long weekend and eventually join the 3-kenshi team competition on saturday. This time around Yano-sensei suffered a severe achilles tendon injury a couple days prior to his visit to European lands, so Takashita-sensei 2nd in command took the wheel of the seminar.
Now, since I’ve been training with these waseda students for the 3rd or 4th year in a row on this one taikai I figured this year I could make a small survey about their views on both Spanish/International kendo and general modern kendo for kenshi247.net
The two questions are as follows:
1. What is your opinion on the International/Spanish kendo you have seen outside Japan and/or in this tournament?
2. What would you personally add to modern kendo, or bring back from old kendo/gendai budo?
Name: HARA (M)
Age: 22 (4th Year Uni Student)
Grade: 3-dan
1. “I’m very happy to see Japanese culture integrated and accepted in other cultures, seeing this I feel inspired to teach kendo someday”
2. “Everything is so beautiful and gentle nowadays, but perhaps it would be nicer if we could bring some of the more harsh/rough ways from old”.
Name: IIDA (F)
Age: 20 (2nd Year Uni Student)
Grade: 4-dan
1. ”I would like to see more international competitions between Japan and other countries. That would both benefit and give insight to foreign kendo as to what Japanese kendo is and also add some international things to Japanese kendo”
2. “I’m wondering if kendo nowadays is too much into competition, is this the right track for a better new kendo?”
(note: this one girl has been top elite kendo since early highschool and apparently back then even won 1st place on HS nationals… she was awesomely fast)
Name: YAMAZAKI (F)
Age: 22 (4th Year Uni Student)
Grade: 4-dan
1. “I’m surprised by the general level, I would love to comeback and see more”.
2. “Maybe modern kendo is lacking on spiritual form and human development. It’s too much into competition nowadays”.
Name: SHIDA (F)
Age: 20 (2nd Year Uni Student)
Grade: 3-dan
1. “I’m happy to see very friendly kendo people, and glad to notice kenshi outside japan are really into it. Also perhaps kendo in japan is not so social after keiko”.
2. “Kendo is too much into competition nowadays, some of the old values are being forgotten. I would like to see some of the spiritual aspects back”.
Name: HANAOKA (M)
Age: 23 (4th Year Uni Student)
Grade: 3-dan
1. “There were some sponsors for drinks on this tournament. It was nice to have something to drink”.
2. “The concept of kendo is something very hard to transmit compared to other sports, and this spirit is very hard to teach as well, but perhaps developing the competitive part of kendo will also help raise the interest of practitioners for the more spiritual side. It would be equally attractive”.
NAME: SAKAI (M)
Age: 23 (4th Year Uni Student)
Grade: 3-dan
1. ”I think that since kendo is a small sport outside Japan it is harder to breed top quality kendo practitioners, but if the level of shinpan is risen the level of competitors will equally rise”.
2. “I think there is a huge gap between the mentality of the competitors of old, and the mentality of competitors nowadays. It would be nice if there was some unity as a martial art. Though competitions are always positive in order to help the spreading of kendo”.
Name: KIMURA (F)
Age: 20 (2nd Year Uni Student)
Grade: 4-dan
1. “About the Spanish kenshi I practiced with, my impression was that there is a high grade of awareness about kendo. I’m not sure if it is because they happened to choose a minority art or sport in spain such as kendo but i greatly felt the enthusiasm and the seriousness about the training. I felt i should learn something from it as well”.
2. “Between old and modern kendo, i think there has been an evolution in the techniques. As a result of a daily study and training to become stronger some more sophisticated techniques have appeared. On the other hand there is a tendency growing up about focusing only on competition. That is why i think the adaptation of rules and norms are getting more strict by the day”.
Nice work.
They are very polite as they should be…..I wonder what the replies will be if the forms were anonymous.
oh, I did think for a while about making it anonymous so answers wouldn’t be so “stiff and formal” if you may… but eventually I figured I could also interview them during the sayonara party after a couple red wines and beers for a similar effect :]
Nice article Pablo. I think this kind of probing on the culture-exchange aspect of kendo is important, both for the Japanese uni students and for us. Even polite as they are, you can still learn a lot from what they do and don’t say. And the dialogue helps to stimulate thinking that might bring about more insights later on. b
Interesting, let’s see how they think under the influence
Nice one Pablo.
This is the best answer of the bunch:
“There were some sponsors for drinks on this tournament. It was nice to have something to drink”
Very in depth. I can tell this cultural exchange has had an impact on his view of the world.