This year has been different one than the others due to being struck by a car on my way home from work and was hospitalised. After spending three weeks in the hospital and another week at home I was immediately back in the dojo for mitori-geiko.

Its been almost 4 months since the accident now, and I am back to teaching kendo at work and going between teaching and joining in with the beginners at my normal adults dojo. I’m still commuting to the hospital for rehabilitation and doing exercises at home. Just a little bit more and I will put my bogu on and see what happens. Thanks to everyone for getting in touch to offer words of support!!

Despite my keiko-life taking a turn for the worse, kenshi247 still managed to release 34 articles and publish our first ever real-world physical book (more on this below).

Amongst the articles released this year I’d like to highlight the following:

- Pursuing the spirit of modern kendo: a 5-part marathon translation of Morishima sensei about the state of modern kendo.

- Thoughts on tameshigiri from famous swordsmen: a translation of the words of Nakayama Hakudo and Takano Sasaburo. This caused a little bit of controversy online, despite it not being the translators words nor opinion.

- A lineage all but forgotten: the start of a series about the famed Yushinkan dojo. Hopefully the follow up articles will arrive soon.

- I am a deshi and The True meaning of gratitude: a couple of very short translations by children that remind us of some important things we must keep in mind while studying kendo (or any budo).

- Take-dou: A labor of love: my friend Eric handmade his own dou from scratch. Yup, you read right! Check out the link to see how he managed this incredible feat.

There are of-course loads of great articles to be found on the site… look around!

Part of my aim with this site is to produce accurate kendo information in English to the non-Japanese speaking world. I think we are succeeding in this mission somewhat. However, some articles get buried deep within the site and are hard to find. To combat this, one of the things I’d like to do is to gather and publish articles now and then. This will also help to pay for domain names, hosting, etc.

kenshi247: selected articles

This is our first printed publication. Created solely with articles off the site its a beautiful 50-page book in magazine format. To see more pictures and read more about it, please click here or on the image to the right. A link to buy it can be found on that page or alternatively you can click the picture in the sidebar to go straight to preview/purchase.

Your support is appreciated!!!!!

Kendo 2012 calendar

We put together a 2012 calendar using never-before seen pictures, click here for preview/purchase information.

2011 Xmas present – Kendo places

I have collected the ‘kendo places’ series into a magazine-styled book and have made available for FREE as a xmas present (pdf/iPad) !! If you wish to get a physical copy you will of-course have to pay a small fee for printing etc costs.

Please click here or the cover image on the right to preview/download it. Enjoy!

Publications for 2012

I am hard at work on two separate projects, hopefully to be finished in the first half of 2012. I will post information on the site and on facebook when they are released…….

Renewal and redesign

Over xmas/new-year I HOPE to sit down and do my yearly renewal and redesign. The site is getting a little bit cluttered, so I want to streamline it. In particular:

- make it easier to find older, high quality articles
- archive some of the old/short articles for historical purposes (rather than delete)
- a cleaner/easier managing process for the Eikenkai and Yoseikai sites
- a creation of a new website for kenshi247 publications – http://kendo-book.com/
- re-instatement/development of a proper gallery function

And thats it!!! I hope you have a good winter holiday period, and good luck with your keiko next year. See you in the dojo.

Cheers!

- George
Osaka, 21st December 2011.

Please click on the image below or in the side-banner (or here) to see a full preview and to purchase.

kenshi247: selected articles 2008-2011

By George McCall

50 pages, published 4 DEC 2011

A collection of the best kendo articles from kenshi247.net spanning 2008-2011.

Contents:

1. About kenshi247
2. Kenshi (swordsmen): Takano Sasaburo; Fujimoto Kaoru; Takizawa Kozo; Ikeda Yuji; Furuya Fukunosuke; Kendo no kata creators.
3. Oshie (teachings): The reality of seme – Furuya Fukunosuke; Kendo Is – Sawaki Kodo; The Concept of kendo – Nishino Goro.
4. Waza (techniques): Kobayashi Mitsuru hanshi’s katatezuki; Dead or dying.
5. Shinsa (gradings): A brief investigation of the shogo system; How to pass hachidan (2 versions).
6. Extras: The formation of reiho in modern kendo; Some naming guidelines.
7. References and sources.

Why publish something now?

From the start kenshi247.net has always been free and will remain so in the future as well. All the articles in the publication above are still available online for you to enjoy completely free. So why bother? Basically, I had 2 reasons why I decided to publish now:

1. Over the years I’ve had many people ask ‘how do I donate?’ or ‘how can I support you?’ an answer to which I’ve never really had. Rather than just accept money, I thought I’d collate some of the articles for posterity and give people the chance to donate by buying them. Any profit made will go into hosting and domain costs and theme purchasing. If a miracle happens and 10 million copies are sold then I’ll build a dojo!

2. Next year I am aiming to publish at least 2 kendo books, one is a completely original book written by yours truly, and the other is a top secret translation piece. This ‘selected articles’ is a sort of dry run for these. I have never published anything online before, and never done any book design or what have you, so this is all new to me.

Thanks!

Just a final word of thanks to the kenshi247 readers out there. Hopefully we can continue to produce interesting and informative content (online and in print) for many years to come!!!

Cheers,
- George
Osaka, December 2011.

Sounds terrible, I know, but I was relatively lucky: only a single bone was fractured and I suffered nothing else other than a few scrapes and bruises. I had a cast around my back-abdomen/chest area for 10 days, and am currently consigned to wearing a corset/brace for the next couple of months or so. I can walk fine and – given time – I’m expected to make a full recovery. The fact that I’m in pretty good shape due to kendo probably helps to speed this up. Not so bad, considering. I don’t want to think about what could have happened had the accident been worse.

It’s been exactly 3 weeks since the accident and it looks like I’ll be allowed to leave a couple of days short of a month. The first few days where painful and full of worry, I panicked that I may not be able to do kendo again. In fact one of the nurses said it would be impossible… which I admit scared the life out of me for a minute or so before I thought “I’ll show you!” At any rate, I plan to be back in the dojo asap, for kengaku at first, then with my men on and scrapping by the start of next year.

During the first 2 weeks so many people came to visit me that I was a bit overwhelmed: over 60. I got so much food that I had to refuse the hospital meals (thank god!) in an effort to eat what I was given. The fact that I am vegetarian (and have been for 20 years) threw the kitchen staff into turmoil resulting in random (almost always non-veggie) dishes. Had my friends not given me food I would have probably starved! If your vegetarian and living in Japan don’t get hit by a car.

Most of the people that came were kendo people of course, from my students to hachidan sensei. In fact, one of those sensei suddenly arrived to find me lying on top of my bed in only my cast and pants (I mean “pants” in the British sense)… it was hot after all!!!

Obviously I’ve had a lot of free time to contemplate the accident and to think about kendo. Up until now, kendo has just been another part of my life, something I take for granted. Occasionally I have pondered over the fact that I am lucky in my kendo situation/environment – usually when I a starry-eyed visitor from abroad comes – but I never *really* thought about about exactly how lucky I am just to be able to do kendo.

Serious kendo study requires that you are in pretty good health (especially if your keiko volume is high), are relatively well-off, and have the time to spare… things that maybe some of us take for granted. I know I did. Had I been born under different circumstances perhaps kendo would have been impossible or just some sort of silly fantasy. Something to ponder.

The sheer amount of kendo friends, sempai, and sensei that visited me has reinforced what I’ve long believed to be one of the main outcomes of a successful pursuit of kendo: the forging of trusted relationships, the creation of an extended social circle, and a feeling of belonging. In that way I gained a lot of confidence in my kendo life just lying on my hospital bed.

Apologies for the chatty, attention-grabbing over-sentimental blog-like post: I’ll shut up now and hopefully start work on some real content for the site soon.

As you may have noticed, I have been busy here updating the website. Apart from the obvious visual changes quite a lot has been done under the hood. There is still some ongoing work to be had, but rather than sit here trying to get it perfect I’ve decided to just unleash it!

Visual interface

This is obviously the largest change. As far as things go, the navigation is pretty much the same. Because we have almost 200 articles online I couldn’t reformat older articles to match the current design exactly… so expect some articles from 2008-2010 to have some dodgy formatting!! Eventually I will get around to reformatting them (maybe…).

Users

Due to limited time and due to lack of easy migrating/porting features on wordpress for users, I decided to start again (a big pain). All contributors to the website have had their login id changed to the format “firstnamelastname” (no space) and their password reset (please contact me or use the forgotten password option to set your password).

For non-contributing users I have decided to not-force a login. Whether this will generate loads of spam I am not sure as yet (it probably will!).

Still to be done…

- Some more visual tweaks here and there, colour, widgets, etc;
- I have removed the gallery sections and am currently working to get some pictures online soon;
- reformatting of old articles;
- other stuff that I can’t think of!

Anyway, thats the update out of the door. If you find any dead links, please post a comment here or on facebook.

We have a couple of interesting articles coming down the line, and I hope we can continue to keep our readers engaged for the foreseeable future!!

Cheers!

- George. Osaka, Jan 20011.

Merry Christmas!! I am sure many kenshi247 readers around the world are enjoying a holiday today, eating, drinking, and generally being merry. Your editor stuck here in Japan has no such luck… just keiko as usual for me!!!
(secretly, I probably prefer it that way…)

This year we published just over 40 articles, which brings the total of published posts on the website up to around the 180 mark… not bad for 28 months of work! Although we have published less articles than last year, I believe the quality has increased, and we’ve added a further depth to our content. Before we end the year, I’d just like to briefly re-visit some posts.

The first group of articles I wish to highlight are what I would term micro-translations; i.e. small translations of famous sensei’s words. Generally the following simple present the sensei’s words as clear as we can in English, leaving the reader to decide the meaning for themselves. Hopefully the translations are ok!

* The concept of kendo in action – Nishino Goro
* Kendo is… – Sawaki Kodo
* The white hakama of Yushinkan – Nakayama Hakudo
* Anvil – Takano Sasaburo
* Shiai with bokuto – Yamaoka Tesshu
* The truth behind swordsmanship – Yamaoka Tesshu
* The effect keiko has on the character of its practitioners – Horigome Keizo

The second group of highlighted articles are geared more towards the more serious kendo-researcher and were supplied/translated by Isaac Meyer. This was not easy work, and I believe Isaac’s contribution to the non-Japanese kendo community to be invaluable… perhaps more so than some people may realise at the moment.

* Kendo Kyohan (1909)
* Kendoka Shashin Meikan (1925)

We also released some video footage, of which I am sure we will see more of in the future.

* Eikenkai PR
* Tachikiri
* Kendo Kamera

Many more articles were published over the year (and don’t forget over 130 posts before 2010!) so please feel free to go back and re-read some older posts. Many were more popular than the ones linked above.

Lastly, I’d like to say thanks to the people who take time out to read kenshi247.net, and who contribute on the website itself or on facebook. Even if you don’t comment, the statistics show me the growing number of people that view the site on a regular basis, and that gives me the drive to keep going – cheers!!

If you are ever in Osaka, please feel free to get in touch. If possible, perhaps you can join an Eikenkai keiko with me and other kenshi247 contributors!

Good luck in 2011!!

- George, Osaka.

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!

Just a quick bit of short news: in this months kendo jidai (May edition), kenshi247.net was introduced very briefly on page 127. The prior months “Kendo Blackbox” by Abe Akihito was about how to use the web to spread kendo information and popularise it more using social media sites like facebook, youtube, twitter, etc. I had met Abe-san at the 12th World Kendo Championships a few years ago and took the chance to introduce kenshi247 to him as an example of a kendo-based website that uses the web effectively (well, kind of!).

Anyway, thanks to Abe-san for the short introduction, and I hope that kenshi247.net gets some more English-reading Japanese readers from now on!

Check us out on: facebook – youtube – flicker – twitter.
Remember to check out Kendo Jidai as well.

A new side-project from kenshi247 editor George was unleashed on the unsuspecting public today:

kendo365
http://kenshi247.net/photoblog/

The premise of the website is simple: using an iphone, take and upload a creative kendo related picture everyday (if possible) for a year.

The aims of the project are two-fold:

1. develop a better eye for creativity whilst taking pictures;
2. share images from my daily kendo life with readers of kenshi247.net.

I hope people will enjoy looking at the pictures as much as I do taking them, cheers!!

p.s. the picture in the banner above is am iphone taken and edited pic

SHOGO (称号) in Japanese translates simply as “title” or “rank,” and the word can be used in many areas, for example formal titles of nobility, military ranks, scholarly ranks, etc, and informally in the sporting world, between friends, etc.

The use of the word that I will look at here is of-course that to do with the budo world, and specifically the usage promoted by the Dai Nippon Butokukai (1895-1946), and that continues today in one of its spiritual heirs, the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei (All Japan kendo federation). Please note that the Butokukai information presented here relates to Kendo (variously called gekkiken and kenjutsu) but that eventually all arts under the Butokukai ended up using the system (kyudo, jukendo, et al).

Although this article is meant to be focusing on the shogo titles, I could not ignore the DANI (段位) system during my investigation. The dani system used by the Butokukai was obviously heavily influenced by the system used in Judo that was instigated by Kano and used at Kodokan. Amongst other things, Kano was the principal of Tokyo Higher Normal school between 1893 – 1920 and Takano Sasaburo began working there as a kendo teacher in 1908. Of-course Kano was influential in many circles (including governmental ones) but I don’t think its illogical to suppose that he had a large and a direct influence on Takano’s thought in this matter. Takano, of-course, went on to become a kendo leader in Japan, and a senior member of the Butokukai.

Also worthy of mention (and some details are included in the list below) is that Keishicho (the Tokyo Metropolitan police department) established their own dani system which ran separately from the Butokukai one. There was obviously some strong collaboration between Keishicho and the Butokukai (in fact, the government issued a writ expressly forbidding keishicho from meddling too much in Butokukai affairs).

Anyway, here is a breakdown of the most important events that went into the system that we have today. Items of particular interest are highlighted in bold.

At the end of the breakdown I have taken two or three key areas and expanded them a little bit more.

Significant events in the creation/history of the shogo (and dani) system rendered chronologically

Seirensho (精練証)

Of particular interest is the SEIRENSHO award. This was awarded for the first time at the 1st Kyoto Taikai in October 1895 to 15 highly experienced kenshi out of the 386 participants (the picture at the top of the article shows 12 of them). This award is the forerunner to the RENSHI title and would be continued to be used until 1934, when the former replaced it.

Since these were the first ever shogo awarded by the Butokukai (It would be a further 8 years until the titles of kyoshi and hanshi were created), its hard to guess exactly the worth of the title. My personal feeling is that it was an exceptional honour awarded to individuals with great prowess and who commanded respect within the Butokukai community.

The first people to receive the award were (name, style):

Ishiyama (Itto-ryu), Hagiwara (Jikishinkage-ryu), Hara (Tenji-ryu), Tokuno Sekishiro (Jikishinkage-ryu), Okamura Sakonta (Jikishinkage-ryu, shin nitto-ryu), Kagawa (Muto-ryu. The tallest guy in the back row in the picture above), Yoshida (Seitoku taishi-ryu), Negishi Shigoro (Shinto mumen-ryu, Nakayama Hakudo’s teacher. hanshi 1906), Umezaki (Shinkage-ryu), Matsuzaki Namishiro (Shinkage-ryu. Long white beard in the picture above), Takayama Minesaburo (Jikishinkage-ryu), Mamiya (Ono-ha itto-ryu. The picture above is his Seirensho), Kominami (Muto-ryu), Abe (Jikishinkage-ryu), Mitsuhashi (Musashi-ryu).

So you can get an idea about how many were issued in the early years, here is a quick breakdown of the numbers awarded over the first 6 years (still prior to the issuance of kyoshi, hanshi):

Year (number of Butokusai participants / number of seirensho awarded) :

1895 (386/15); 1896 (472/15); 1897 (482/6 including Naito Takaharu); 1899 (766/8); 1900 (493/7); 1901 (825/8).

Kyoshi, hanshi (教士・範士)

In 1903 four Kyoshi and seven Hanshi titles were awarded for the first time. The first ever hanshi were:

[name (style, prefecture, age)]

- Ishikawa (Itto-ryu, Kochi, 74)
- Takao (Tecchu-ryu, Nagasaki, 73)
- Shibue (Shinto munen-ryu, Nagasaki, 68)
- Sakabe (Kyoshin mechi-ryu, Aiichi, 66)
- Watanabe (Shinto munen-ryu, Tokyo, 66)
- Mitsuhashi (Musashi-ryu, Tokyo, 62)
- Tokuno (Jikishinkage-ryu, Tokyo, 61)

Hanshi became the top title you could get in the Butokukai and an age limit of 60 was set (that rule was broken in 1913 when kenshi including Naito Takaharu and Takano Sasaburo got it at an earlier age). Nowadays hanshi is still the highest title that can be achieved in kendo, with the very earliest you can get it being 54 years old.

Rokudan and above (六段〜十段)

Starting from 1937 the grades rokudan and above began to be used. There were 5 kyudans, 5 hachidans, and 20 nanadans appointed at this time. However it was still common to use the shogo-title above godan, and not the dan. The first ever kyudans were:

- Ogawa Kinnosuke
- Naito Takaharu
- Saimura Goro
- Shimatani Yasuhachi
- Mochida Moriji

In 1957 it was decided to award grades as far as judan, and the following people received the honour:

- Ogawa Kinnosuke
- Mochida Moriji
- Saimura Goro
- Nakano Sosuke

In 1962 a further – and last – judan was appointed: Oasa Yuji (pictured).

Although there are a number of kyudan sensei alive and practising in Japan today, the last living judan – Mochida Moriji – passed away in 1974. Nowadays, the highest obtainable level is hanshi hachidan.

This article started as a brief introduction into the development of the shogo system but kind of expanded into looking at how the dani system in kendo evolved as well. I pondered about talking more about the meaning behind the shogo system as I think its very misunderstood, but I have decided to leave that for another day. What I will say is that I do believe the shogo titles have an important role to play in the culture of kendo.

Nowadays in Japan you have to sit exams – both physical and on paper – to get renshi and kyoshi. Hanshi, however, is awarded by the ZNKR on recommendation by your local associations president and – I believe – this top award is not given automatically nor lightly. In that way, the difference between a kyoshi hachidan, and a hanshi hachidan is huge.

Note

Please remember I am not a professional translator, nor have studied Japanese at university nor in an institution. Any errors in fact, misunderstandings in the reading of the text, errors in translations, etc, are all my own. I can but apologise in advance.

Sources
全日本剣道演武大会のあゆみ：明治期にみる武徳際大演武会（通算100回大会記念出版）。全日本剣道連盟。2004年。
剣道を知る事典。日本武道学会剣道専門分科会。平成21年。
日本の武道（日本武道協会設立30周年記念）。日本武道館。平成19年。

In the short 16 month life-span of kenshi247.net we have published over 130 articles over a large spectrum of budo-related (not just kendo) subjects. The heaviest bias is of-course on kendo related material, but we do hope to expand it as time goes on.

By far the greatest thing has been the comments, both on the site, on facebook, via email, and face to face. Its clear to me that kenshi247.net is filling a niche market: a regular, interesting, educational, and at times topical online magazine. I don’t know of any other website that comes close to what we do.

However, I have also received comments from people I’ve asked to contribute saying that the level is “too high” or there is too much original work with which they “can’t compete with.” I want to stress that what you see here is all amateur work. Nobody posting is a kendo professional, nor are we university history professors. We are simply passionate budo individuals (like you) putting our ideas and experiences into black and white. Nothing more, nothing less. Even if you feel you can’t contribute now, I hope you will do so in the future.

Stand out articles this year include (apologies for adding some of my own here!):

• The outstanding Tanka of Eishin-ryu series by Richard (not finished);
• The invaluable translation of portions of Takano Sasaburo’s Kendo Kyohon by Kent;
• A bio of Gordon Warner, the American kendo pioneer by Leiv;
• An exploration of dead and/or dying kendo waza;
• The topical Tsubazeria rules changes in high school kendo;
• The popular story of Fujimoto Kaoru;
• Loads of editions to our Kendo Places series.

There is – of course – many more great articles out there, so please browse around.

Thanks.. and remember to join us on facebook and syndicate us! Have a good new year!!