Oops, I’ve been so busy with keiko that I almost never noticed that we turned two last month!!
I must admit that this last year has been incredibly hectic keiko-wise and as such I probably haven’t dedicated as much time to kenshi247 as perhaps I should have. We still managed to churn out almost 60 articles in that time however… more than one a week (my ambitious goal).
Honestly speaking, the site has been a lot more popular than I predicted… perhaps vindicating my personal opinion that the English-speaking maturing (matured?) kendo community is not only ready for more quality kendo-related budo material, but craves it! And not only the English speaking community either, as many articles have been translated into various languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, and Chinese to name a few.
In addition to working on this site and running my own kendo club at work, I also attempted to catalogue my daily kendo life in a photoblog (harder work than it seemed in the beginning!) as well as continuing to organise Eikenkai, the only non-Japanese run kendo group in Japan with a permanent dojo (afaik).
Eikenkai and kenshi247 are essentially the same entity, so to see two of my friends (both kenshi247 contributors and Eikenkai members) have a successful kendo year cannot go by without mention: my first sempai, Steve, from Edinburgh kendo club came to Japan and passed his 6dan under severe local testing; and my friend Andy moved to Kyoto and opened his own online kendo shop, Miyako kendogu.
Tomorrow I will head back to Scotland and visit my parents and generally take a break from keiko and kenshi247 for a bit (sorry!), but while I am there I will run a small kendo workshop in Edinburgh, and I will also take time out to consider the future direction for the site.
Anyway, too much chat. Thanks for reading the site and commenting on articles (here or on facebook) and I hope we can continue to provide interesting, informative, and educational information to the kendo community at large for the foreseeable future.
Please remember to join us on facebook.
Cheers from Osaka!
Maybe a blook? b
Hi Ben,
I seriously thought about that and looked at online tools to produce something… but they didnt really satisfy what I was after… artistically or otherwise.
As you know, I was offered an informal photography book deal 3 years ago. When that fell through I was bitterly disappointed and spent more time on written work. Around the same time I was asked by a very close sempai to me “Why don’t you write a kendo book… in Japanese?” which took me back as I am nowhere near the (kendo) level to do that. I know some people have published kata books when they were as inexperienced as 4dan, I don’t want to do that.
Since then I have taken a long term approach to things: I already have a plan/outline of a kendo manual prepared, I just need to write the content and take the pictures; a more complex book is in formation but I expect it will take years to take shape. Either way, I’m not sure I want to self-publish either.. not because I don’t think I would make money (I wouldn’t) but I believe that neither would reach a large enough audience to get any sort of message across.
Goddamn those informal deals! Seriously though, thinking about a book is a good idea. As you said it is a long-term process: thinking about what shape it’s going to take and who it’s for. I reckon you’ve got to have a specific need or audience in mind, otherwise you’re writing a book for the sake of it, not because you’ve got something to say. Which is basically onanism IMHO.
Bresson the film director had a good test. He said, “Manifest something that, without you, would never have been seen.” IOW, what can you write about that no-one else can? I reckon in your case a high-performance training manual aimed at high schools and universities (maybe bi-lingual? for both 日本と海外?) would be invaluable. One day I hope to be able to train a competitive team at BSC, and it would be great to have a template of how to run HP training, Japanese-style, with the added advantage of a foreigner’s eye for cultural differences. b