Traditionally, when someone joins a dojo there are a couple of terms used to express “student”: monkasei (門下生) and deshi (弟子). There are some other terms (e.g. 門弟 or 門人), but those two seem to be the main ones used. Unless you are part of a koryu dojo, or watch and read anime/manga, you will probably never come across the first term. The second term, however, is still used – though uncommonly I must admit – in the Japanese kendo community today.

As regular readers probably know, I run a high school kendo club here in Osaka. When I first started teaching my sensei turned to me and said:

お前も弟子がおるぞ
Now you’ve got your own deshi.

This kind of stopped me on my tracks: “deshi… what should I do?” I thought.

Rather than attempt to explain the meaning of “deshi” myself, let me translate a piece from a 13 year old kendoka from Kyushu that I found in this months Kendo Jidai.

p.s. Please check out this old article after you read the one below.

The following essay was awarded the kantosho prize in the Junior High School section of the “32nd kendo youth research seminar.”

I am a deshi

Written by: Hasuda Tomoka
1st year Junior high school student (approx. 13yrs old)
Miyazaki prefecture, Miyazaki city, Shujakukan dojo

Suddenly, after keiko one day my sensei said “you are my deshi.” I was surprised at the suddenness of words, but I was also happy that he called me “deshi.” However, I somehow felt strange. Its because I didn’t actually understand the word “deshi” or what being one means or involves. I thought hard about the meaning of the word and searched out information about it in books and dictionaries. I discovered that “deshi” is part of a “teacher-student” relationship (師弟の関係). On one side of the coin we have the teacher – one with technical skill based on, and knowledge cultivated through experience – who imparts this through instruction; and on the other side we have the deshi, who learns from and studies under the teacher. In a dojo environment, the sensei are the teachers, and we are are the deshi.

So, what is a deshi’s job? What is a deshi supposed to do? A deshi has many various jobs to learn, including seeing off and meeting the sensei when they come to the dojo (shiai), getting any shopping thats needed (for the dojo and/or sensei), taking care of various things around the sensei (to do with the dojo) etc. In kendo, for example, tidying up/putting away the sensei’s bogu and making sure he is comfortable are both part of the deshi’s job.

I started taking tea to the sensei after keiko when I was a 6th grade primary school student (11/12yrs old). This started because my sensei said “bring me tea,” but now it just natural happens. During that short interval, sensei gives me praise, or brings my bad points to attention.

We also talk a lot about non-kendo things as well. What my future dreams are, whats going on at school, the taikai my sensei goes to, the change in seasons, etc all of these are valuable conversations for me. On the occasion that visitors came to keiko, I brought them tea as well. At that time I was told to sit in the corner and listen to the conversation (between the adults). I couldn’t really understand what was being talked about but my sensei said later “even if you can’t understand whats being said, even if you are not part of the conversation, listening to other peoples stories and conversation is important. There will come a time when you will understand.” When he said this to me I pondered that the chance to listen in on these conversations was something different when compared to my usual daily life, and approached these chats with a new feeling.

Another thing that I pay attention to is when my sensei leaves by car (after keiko). When I see him off, I wait until I can no longer see his car before turning away. I learned this after watching how the Riot Squad Police treated their sensei (its possible she is talking about the elite tokuren kenshi in her prefecture).

By continuing to be a deshi like this I have learned some good things, for example: how to use language properly (i.e. learning to by polite in Japanese) and how to be sensitive to nuances in peoples conversations, so now I am at ease with speaking to people who are my superior (i.e. by rank, age, profession, etc). There are other things as well, for example I am able to think and predict what sensei will say/want next, and am already in motion before anything is actually said.

At one time, my sensei told me that deshi have responsibilities. I didn’t really understand what these could be and I thought about it to myself. I think a deshi’s responsibility/job is to keep whats taught to them by their sensei and act within there limits, and to pass these teachings onto their kohai. I still don’t have the ability to do this, so in the meantime I will try my best at keiko, and aim to become a good sempai in the future.

At first I didn’t really know what it means to be a “deshi,” but thanks to everything that my sensei has taught me, I think I am getting closer to understanding the true meaning. Ever since becoming a deshi my sensei has shouted at me a lot; but since there few people around to scold me, I am thankful that he is there, as I know it for my own benefit.

From now on, through kendo and as a deshi/person, I want to keep learning about life.

剣道時代2011年4月。「私は弟子です」。蓮田和佳。

他人の弟子をアドバイスするな。

子供たちは順調に伸びていくわけではない。
右に行ったり左に逸れたりしながら伸べていくのだ。
右に曲がっているものを矯正するには、
真っ直ぐではなくて。
左に行きすぎるぐらいにしないと真っ直ぐにはならない。
それが解って指導できるのは、直接の師匠だけなのである。

出稽古などに行って、よその門下生と稽古するときは、
スキがあったら打ってやればいい。メンばかり打ってくる子に、
「コテもドウもあるよ」などと言わない方がいい。
訳あって「メンの稽古をしろ」と言われているかもしれないのだ。

Don’t give advice to other peoples students!

If you go for degeiko (training outside your dojo) etc and keiko with other teachers students you should strike them whenever you see an opening. If all they do is attack your men you shouldn’t stop them and say “you can also strike kote and dou as well you know.”
After all, they might have been told (by their teacher) to “practise only men” as far as you know…

Arriving in Japan back in 2003 I immediately started searching for a dojo and a good teacher. Although I finally found a good dojo, and practised there constantly for 2 years, I didn’t really find a the kind of teacher I was after. Strong sensei, yes, but nobody that inspired or mentored me like Mr Miyagi did Daniel.

When I moved to Osaka I quickly found myself practising in various locations and was mostly at a loss about which dojo was “good” or “who was who” etc. For what seemed a long time I found myself being invited to various places and receiving instruction and advice from a whole host of people. After a while I realised this drifting was not a good situation to be in as I often got conflicting advice, and I found that I was not only confused but a bit directionless as well. It was at this time that I decided to concentrate on a couple of dojo and an extremely small handful of (mainly professional police) teachers. The advice from all quarters didn’t stop however.

After a while I started to get a little bit miffed with the constant barrage of advice… “why was this guy who failed rokudan 5 times giving me advice when he knows I receive instruction from a police hanshi?” etc, I sometimes even got advice from people I had never laid eyes on before. Of course, part of my negative reaction to this was (I freely admit!) lack of humility and some pride on my part. Still, I felt bad: surely its my job to work on the things my day-to-day teacher has told me to do, and not bother about the random advice?

Although the random advice still hasn’t stopped, I’ve (mainly!) gotten over the issue and learned to deal with it in a more positive light. That was until quite recently.

I train a group of high school students on a daily basis. Some come to me with 9 years of experience and are already nidan (with a rokudan father and godan mother in one students case), some with neither kendo experience nor any sort of physical or sporty background, and some from the spectrum in-between this. Its my job to instruct and raise everyones level. I see them on a day to day basis and work on both long and short goals with them, be it simply suburi, suri-ashi, or their overall fitness, balance between keiko and study, whatever. Although I do this mainly alone (with help from the senior students), my sempai/sensei sometimes come to help, and so to do students who graduated from the dojo a few years before. Everyone offers invaluable help.

However, occasionally someone rolls up who can’t help but volunteer advice… despite neither being asked for it, nor being a bona-fide teacher. Of-course, I have no problem with different ideas and methods in relation to kendo… but if you are giving contradictory and unasked advice to people who already have teachers that are more experienced than you then, well, what message are you actually transmitting?

I’m obviously not going to go into details of any specific cases here, but I pondered on what should be done in circumstances where someone who should obviously not be giving advice decides to do so. Do you say something? Do you step in? Should you tell your students (later on) to ignore them? In the end, I personally have decided to opt for silence, and place trust in the students to know whats going on. I’ve also decided that my already reticent matter towards other teachers students will remain as is… the extent of my advice being “louder kiai” or “strike harder,” this type of thing. Nothing specific.

Maybe this is just my personality: I believe that learning is something you acquire on your own and its not something that is somehow given to you. In a kendo context that translates into preferring teachers who transmit teachings physically, and learning by watching and copying (i.e. doing). I like to think that I came at this obvious conclusion by myself via some mysterious un-spoken guidance by my teachers over the years, but I’m not sure. At any rate, I currently exist on both sides of the coin: as a student and as a teacher, with quite a fair distance to travel in both directions. I am glad that I don’t think I know everything already as that makes me the more eager to learn.

I hope this article makes sense……. !

End note

Recently I volunteered to teach a small kendo workshop in Edinburgh (spread over two days, I think we had around 40 different individuals come). Even though I was explicitly asked to teach it was not something that was on my agenda: they already have a very good teacher so they don’t need my instruction. What I decided to do was a simple introduction to a couple of kendo areas I think are important and keep the chat minimal. My rationale: I don’t see these kenshi on a day-to-day basis, so no “real” instruction can actually occur anyway.

Just something extra to throw into the discussion…!

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
求めれば無限大。体育スポーツ出版社。平成１０年発行

If you spend any time practicing kendo, you will be called upon to start teaching.

Some people relish the thought of finally becoming an instructor. For me all the gloss came off when faced with a class of people looking expectantly at me awaiting direction and maybe even (gasp!) advice as to how to they should improve. The sense of responsibility was massive. “I can hardly perform basics myself, how can I seriously teach others not that much less experienced than myself?”

When you think about it, if you end up spending 50 or 60 years of your life practicing kendo, only about 10 of those will be spent as a full-time student. After that you will spend the rest of your kendo career teaching (and learning too of course).

This article is an attempt to write down a few things that perhaps would have made my life a bit easier back then. I hope they will be of value to those who themselves are just starting out on the instructor’s journey.

Following the pattern

In the beginning it is enough just to run the class. Follow the pattern, you’re just a supervisor. Warm-ups, suburi, kihon, uchikomi, kakari, jigeiko: it’s a time-honoured sequence that does not need much fiddling with. If my sensei asked beforehand to add in some time practicing some specific technique, I realised it was OK just to repeat sensei’s teaching method even down to his exact phraseology. In a sense the junior instructor is a cypher for their sensei and is not expected to display any personal flair or skill. They certainly are not expected to have an interpretation of waza based on their own experience.

As time went on I was called upon to decide on the actual content of the class. This started with taking care of the lower kyu grades and then on to planning and teaching beginners’ courses. This is where a junior instructor starts to bring their own take on how to perform basics. However in my opinion the gap between a junior instructor’s actual grade and the level of the techniques on which they can instruct should be quite large. Here is my own personal metric for an ideal world: shodan should not express an opinion on any techniques but simply announce them and call “hajime/yame!”; nidan/sandan can instruct footwork and suburi, basics of kamae and wearing of dogu. Kihon and other waza should only be taught in depth by yondan/godan and above.

Issues of teaching

There are a number of reasons for the gulf between technical proficiency and teaching ability:

• it is one thing to be able to perform an action with one’s own body, it’s quite another to be able to explain it effectively
• recognising that different people learn at different rates and often require completely different kinds of instructions to reach the same goal is a diagnostic skill that takes much practice
• kihon, although ‘basic’ are fundamental and can lay a good or bad foundation, depending how they are taught
• teaching is about observing and fulfilling the needs of others, not displaying one’s own skill for personal gratification

Japanese versus ‘Western’ teaching methods

As I gained the experience to be able to run an entire class unsupervised, I realised I needed an overall approach as to how to teach. In kendo, two conflicting methodologies operate side-by-side in many dojo, very often without the conscious knowledge of the instructors. For argument’s sake let’s call them the “Japanese approach” and the “Western approach”.  Typically the Japanese approach is to make the student perform repetitive drills with little or nothing in the way of advice. Historically, even high-level waza were not explained and it was left up to the individual to observe closely and imitate. The rationale for this approach was that once the student could see a waza, they would also be ready to do it.

The Western approach is frequently characterised as being more analytical. Students usually have the waza explained to them verbally first, then demonstrated, then more verbal explanations follow. Often the waza will be broken down into its component parts, and each one of those practiced, before reassembling them back into sequence. This is seen as being a more time-efficient and student-focused approach, as it allows students to question the instructor and get clarification on specifics of the waza that are pertinent to their individual needs.

Which path is best?

The big disadvantage with the Western analytical approach is that it encourages over-thinking. Students will often mistake a superficial grasp of the main concepts for real understanding. One indicator of this is the ability to perform the waza momentarily but not later on. On the other hand, few ‘Westerners’ have the patience for the old-school Japanese approach of “three years kirikaeshi, three years uchikomi”. There’s usually insufficient cultural conditioning to be able to stay with the apparent neglect of this teaching style. In other words, many ‘Westerners’ will get pissed off and leave because they think the sensei is ignoring them or is not aware of their ‘needs’.

Perhaps in spite of their conflicting nature, a hybrid methodology is possible. How to combine these two approaches will differ according to individual instructors and their students. My personal opinion is that it is a continuum: that in the beginning most foreign instructors start off with an excessively Western approach and over time, as their experience grows, they are able to teach more effectively while doing (and talking) less. How to achieve that makes up the last part of my notes.

Learning to observe

As the old saying goes, “God gave us two ears but only one mouth so that we should listen twice as much as we speak.” As a guideline for teaching kendo I think this is hard to beat.

When I was in doubt about what to tell my students, I gradually realised it was best to tell them nothing. Not being sure about what to say was, in fact, a sign that I had nothing worth saying. So I learned to kept my mouth closed and my eyes and ears open. Actually, I’m still learning how to do that…

The very best instructors, the ones who really reflect on their teaching and sincerely seek to improve, avoid giving advice to themselves when speaking with their students. If you know what I mean then you know how hard that is. If you don’t know what I mean then you’re likely doing it without realising.

Over time I learnt to observe, to really notice my students, letting their actions tell me what I needed to do in order to teach them what they needed to know. This is an active process that, like kihon men-uchi, is never perfected but always revealing new insight into the shortcomings of your present ability. What looks to an outsider to be aimless wandering around the dojo can be quite hard mental work. And then other times it is in fact aimless wandering. Sometimes it is necessary to focus intently on what individuals are doing, other times it is best to ‘browse’, letting the important points jump out at you. Sometimes you look at the trees, sometimes you look at the whole forest. Like meditation, to observe effectively one must be in the moment, free of self-absorbed internal conversations about your crappy day at work or what awaits you when you get home.

Some sensei, Japanese in particular, are observing machines. They rarely feed back to their students but when they do, it is worth the wait. Their methodology is to observe for very long periods of time, piling up information whilst resisting the urge to spill it. I have a suspicion that the amount of time you spend observing is directly proportional to the depth of the insight you gain. Eventually when the time is right, they talk. An old Japanese analogy is that of an oil lamp: if the wick is high it will provide light but will also produce a lot of black smoke, too low and it will go out completely. The optimum is to produce light without smoke.

Whatever the outcome for their students, the result is they become masters of observation as much as masters of kendo.

Q&A

I do believe in being available for questions from students. However I am frequently struck by how technically unhelpful not only the questions are but more especially my answers. It is rare that I feel that I ever get it so right that the student has a light-bulb moment from something I’ve said. On the other hand the discussion can serve an important social function. Interaction between teacher and student is important and your demeanor as instructor, and the fact that you are open to questions can, in and of itself, be a valuable learning and motivation tool for your students.

Mohan 模範

Mohan means an example or a model which students should copy. This is a really tricky part for those of us whose own kendo is somewhat short of hanshi level. How can we perform an example of a particular waza for our students and do justice to it? How can we do that time and time again without mistakes? How can we avoid the nervousness that comes with being in front of an entire dojo? How can we avoid stuffing up?

The short answer is, we can’t.

And we shouldn’t. One day you will fluff a seemingly simple waza in front of all your students. You will see them knot their eyebrows in puzzlement. You may even feel a little sick as you try to work out how far you have just slipped in their estimation. Best thing you can do is apologise and try again.

But the thing to realise is that these moments are not to be avoided. When you have the ego knocked out of you in front of your students it is good for your kendo, and for you as an instructor. Why?

• It shows you are human.*
• It shows that the techniques are difficult.
• It shows you are striving to improve just like everyone else.
• It shows that striving for improvement is a process that doesn’t end.
• It shows that you are a decent bloke/sheila because you don’t take yourself too seriously.
• It makes the technique look even better when you nail it next time.
• It gives you instant feedback on what you did wrong – when you do it wrong in front of a crowd, you know.
• It gives you the motivation and focus to improve that waza.
• It forces you to perform under stress, just like a grading or shiai.

Eventually you will get used to it and these moments will become less stressful… at least until the next time you have to demonstrate a technique that you can’t do very well! But keep doing it, stuffing up now and again, and trying again. Your students are watching you for a whole lot more than just how you perform a technique. After all, you were a 模範 to them as soon as you entered the dojo.

Conclusion

The secret to being a worthy instructor is, I believe, to keep in mind at all times that you are first and foremost an example. You never know what your students are taking in and what they aren’t. Certainly you can rest assured that they are checking to see if you can “walk the walk”**. When I started kendo, I remember the first time I visited the dojo and saw Nagae sensei I knew I wanted to do kendo. He was Japanese and he looked like a sensei. But apart from fulfilling my basic cultural assumptions, he was also a whole lot of other things I couldn’t have known at 14. Something about his unhurried confidence, his relaxed command of the dojo gave me a glimpse of everything kendo could and should be. He didn’t teach me any technique, didn’t even speak to me. Yet here I am, 27 years later, that example he provided on the first day has remained true and continues to guide me.

* Probably the best example of this was at an iaido enbu in Melbourne by the late Nakakura sensei (Iaido hanshi 9-dan). Upon doing noto he failed to check the position of the kurigata with his left hand and attempted to replace the sword into an upside-down saya, only realising his mistake when the sword became jammed. If a 9th dan can make a beginners mistake like this… well, that’s a “get out of jail free card” for everyone I reckon.

**For those whom English is not their first language, the full saying is “Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.” In other words, can you really do all the things you’re telling your students to do?

“Motomereba Mugendai” (求めれば無限大) is my favorite Kendo book.  It is a small, easily readable book composed of 100 short essays on Kendo training and leadership topics.  One of the things I like about it (in addition to the uncomplicated, straightforward word choice and sentence structure) is the way the author has divided the book in to chapters based on the themes of the essays.  The first two chapters are devoted to the practitioner’s personal technical and spiritual development.  The third chapter is focused on advice for the kenshi as an instructor.  The last chapter is for parents, both those with children already practicing Kendo, and those considering encouraging their children to start.

Some of the advice is highly Japan-centric (such as one vignette in which the author posits that people with dyed hair shouldn’t be put in leadership positions).  But anyone doing Kendo should enjoy this book.  I re-read a page or two every few days.  The book is beneficial to me because I am wrestling with my own challenges as a student and junior instructor, and hope soon to be a Kendo parent as well.  I don’t believe that a translation exists yet, so I have included some of my own translations of my favorite passages below.

From chapter 1, which is entitled “When you start practicing Kendo, so that your efforts will yield results”

Essay 5:  If you want to become strong, develop two rivals

One’s approach to keiko is very different depending one whether or not one has a rival.  This is particularly true if there is a person to whom one does not want to lose.  When your rival is from your own dojo, and is always in sight, you never let you can’t get lax.  When your rival is in another dojo, since you can’t see what he is up to, you can’t get lax because you are always concerned that he or she might be working harder than you.  So it makes sense to have a rival both inside and outside of your dojo.

From chapter 2:  “Is it possible that the way you are practicing is inappropriate?”

Essay 28:  You should always practice as if your teacher is watching you

The other day I was forced to do a demonstration match (mohangeiko-模範稽古) in front of everyone.  In my personal opinion, I feel that I did a good job.  People even gave me compliments, saying that it was fantastic.  Someone approached me and gave me the following advice, “Isn’t the reason you were able to do so well because you were being watched by so many people?  If you were able to do so well even if you were not being watched, you could even get stronger.  That’s certainly possible, since you did it this one time.”  These words really made an impression on me because there is so much truth to them based on my daily practice.

Essay 39:  One purpose of keiko is to be able to feel that a moment is “long.”

Even during a fierce exchange, serious competitors can capitalize on opportunities that appear for only a moment.  To the people watching, it may only seem like it was a split second chance, but to the competitor, he or she might say that it seemed like quite a long time.  That’s why they’re capable of these kinds of things.  They say that the [famous baseball pitcher] Kawakami Tetsuharu said during his best season “I was able to see the stitches on the ball.”  This is a matter of how much mental leeway [kokoro no yoyuu-心の余裕] a person has, not a matter of a length of time.  If one is placing one’s opponent under pressure, one gets the mental leeway.  If one is being pressured by one’s opponent, one will not have the mental leeway.  What is important in Kendo is not whether one is hitting or one is hit, but whether one is pressuring the opponent or being pressured by the opponent.

From chapter 3:  “When you become a instructor and you are doing your best, at least so that you do not spin your wheels”

Essay 64:  Never give advice to someone else’s students

Children don’t always progress smoothly.  Sometimes they go to the right, and sometimes they curve backwards to the left.  To correct something that is leaning too far to the right, sometimes it is not enough to try to straighten it out, and one must overcorrect by overshooting to the left.  The only person who knows the right thing to do is the child’s direct teacher.  So when you are visiting another dojo, one might have an urge to say to a child, “if there is a chance, you should take it.”  To a child that goes only for men, you should not say, “you should also go for kote and dou.”  It is possible that for a particular reason this child has been instructed to only practice hitting men.

From chapter 4:  “In Kendo, children will improve two or three fold with their parents’ understanding and cooperation.”

Essay 80:  If you want to force a child to do something, don’t ask his or her opinion

These days you often hear parents say, “We respect our child’s independence.”  I can understand that when it is a matter of the child wanting to take on a new challenge, but not when the issue is that the child has gotten sick of something and wants to quit.  Using an example from Kendo, there are no children that say, “I am going to try hard at Kendo for the sake of character development.”  For most children, it is normal for them to say, “It looks like fun, so I want to try it.   Now I am sick of it, so I want to quit.”  If a parent feels it is necessary, it is OK to force the child to do it of the parent’s volition.  In any event, all of the responsibility for a child’s education is with the parents.

Essay 91:  Troublemakers are the ones who excel.

When you are in charge of a large group of children, you will have quiet and diligent ones that are easy to deal with, and you will have troublemakers that you can’t ignore for a minute.  The ones who you don’t have to watch are easy to deal with, but they are uninteresting as individuals.  And in that sense, the troublemakers have  an allure that you can’t dislike.  In the first place, troublemaking comes from ways of thinking that can’t be kept inside a box.  They have bountiful curiosity, and make trouble because they get bored with only what they have been taught.  Hence, if one does not endlessly scold these types of children, but rather channels their energy into positive endeavor, these children will excel even more.

求めれば無限大, 4-88458-199-7

My area as some of you know is teaching kendo to young people. In high school I teach kendo as an elective subject to 12 and 13 year olds. One tool I have found very useful for firing their imaginations is telling them stories from Japanese history, stories that most of us have read or heard at some point I’m sure.

The other day I was telling the story about the student who went to learn from a teacher in the mountains but instead of waza, he was made to cook and clean for sensei. Most of my students even today have seen the movie “The Karate Kid” so this was something they recognised. The next part of the story tells how the teacher starts hitting the student out of the blue, to the extent that the student is on edge at all times, never sure when the next blow is coming. The resolution of the story is, of course, the moment when the student spontaneously reacts and protects himself from the unseen blow, the teacher says, “Now we may begin”. I realised as I finished that some students were looking at me puzzled as if to say, “so what is the moral of that story?” Indeed what is it? Is it that there is something inherently abusive in traditional sword pedagogy?

Later though it struck me (pun intended) that there are some parents that raise their children like this even today. Perhaps with less deliberate intent than the sensei in the story, but for some reason the aim seems to be to toughen up, or to unsettle. Except with these kids all they are left with is the feeling of never being safe, always on edge. This means when they get to school they are the first to get in fights, they see danger all around them, they react in extremis to the slightest stress, and generally are the unhappiest of all. Of course they can’t concentrate and usually resent those who can, so they actively seek to disrupt. They also bond quickly and instinctively with other kids whose histories match their own. Those who don’t receive help from a trusted adult in how to deal with this internalised sense of constant danger usually go on to self-medicate in harmful ways.

All of us who do kendo and other sword arts are stuck in the paradox of practicing a traditional art within a contemporary setting. Further, we are engaged in transmitting militaristic mindsets to people who will (by and large) never require them. Ironically, what I know of koryu pedagogy is much less authoritarian than kendo. It is the high school and university budo clubs with the worst teaching practices in this area (granted this ‘teaching’ often comes from fellow club members and not instructors). Hazing and bastardisation are still practiced in many of these clubs: Kokushikan University’s reputation as a kendo powerhouse was in no way dimished by the tragedy that occured there some years ago. One might even argue that it was enhanced. This is what perpetuates the kind of behaviour that in any other context would be considered at best, anti-social, and at worst, criminal. On the one hand our 21st Century sensibilities tut-tut these practices, but on the other we secretly admire what appears to be extreme rigour and fortitude.

Which reaction is appropriate? Where is the line drawn between hard training and abuse? How much responsibility does the sensei bear for the well-being of the student? What are the protective factors that allow hard training without lasting psychological or physical damage? How far can a sensei push their student (or a sempai push their kohai) before the relationship (or the individual) is broken? Should the instructor be at all concerned with that? Which training tools, if any, are anti-social in their effect? How do we measure the effect of our training methods, particularly on younger kendoka?

These questions are important ones I think, as more of us non-Japanese kenshi become instructors. They are particularly important outside Japan, but I think that within Japanese society as well the cultural climate that supported the old styles of teaching is rapidly changing. It is imperative for us to understand what our teaching methods are, and to examine whether they are best for both the art and for our students.  b

It’s almost the end of my fourth year of teaching high school kendo and time to reflect on the year that’s past.

A bit of background: I teach kendo in an Australian high school, in two classroom settings: years 7 and 8 (12-14 years old), and after school to a wider range of students. I have already written an article that appeared in the last issue of Kendo World which described in detail the process of establishing a kendo culture in a non-Japanese high school. Building on what I’ve learned in the previous three years, this year I trialled some new approaches.

The main one was to introduce the students to shiai sooner. Each class does kendo for a semester, and previously I judged that this was too short a time to get to doing competition. However I realised that many of the least engaged students were also the most physically gifted in class, and I thought hard about how to include them more, how to get them to connect to kendo.

So this semester I introduced regular shiai, even though many of them didn’t have what I would describe as ‘solid’ kihon. What I found has really forced me to re-evaluate how I evaluate readiness in a student. Almost without fail, the ‘disengaged’ students responded brilliantly to shiai. They couldn’t perform reiho or kirikaeshi properly, but they could achieve recognisable yuko datotsu and in some cases also perform genmyo-na waza such as men-debana-men and men-suriage-men moving fowards. I was astounded to see waza that I can only perform rarely cropping up time and again in that strange, alchemical cauldron known as shiai.

It also helped all students realise the importance of strong kiai (many would just mumble if they were doing kihon drills, but screamed and threw themselves into it when faced with an opponent). They also realised the riai of kendo timing, distance and opportunity in ways that lectures would never get across.

The final surprise was when I acceded to their requests to shinpan some matches. Really I thought there was little chance it would be more than an interesting experience for them. No way could they realistically perceive yuko datotsu, especially at this problematic skill level. But judgements were by-and-large pretty good, about 75% in agreement with what I would have scored. And some shinpan teams were even able to maintain the “triangle” better than most adult yudansha.

One of the interesting things about this classroom kendo approach is that of all the students that start the program (which is about 100 students per year), 100% of them end up wearing full bogu, doing jigeiko and now also, doing shiai. In a normal club or dojo setting, from my own experience at least, only about 30-40% at most would progress to wearing full bogu, and only 10% or less would experience shiai. So there is 100% participation until the end of the semester, when there is 100% attrition! It is appropriate that these students are able to leave the class feeling that they’re experienced a little bit of everything that kendo has to offer. I don’t think I’m selling them a watered-down version of kendo (which is something I’m constantly reflecting on). Those rare souls who then turn up to after school training do start to glimpse the depth behind kendo’s outwardly simple form.

So what’s the learning from this? Well, for me it’s two-fold. Firstly, at certain ages, young people can run before they can walk so to speak, so the traditional timetable of skills acquisition that we’ve inherited sometimes has to be discarded, or at the very least amended. Secondly, if the students ask to do something in kendo I should take more notice of what is behind their request. It may be that they’re asking because, against my better judgement, they’re actually ready. By doing so it is possible to bring the excitement of the kendo journey to students who otherwise might have been turned off by the rigidity of its traditional structure and step-by-step approach.