Categories
equipment kendo

Old style

As long term readers of kenshi 24/7 may have noticed, this site strongly emphasises the traditional and historical aspects of kendo. I also find myself – both online as well as off – thinking about and having discussions about how kendo has evolved through the years, for both good and bad. Although there is a […]

Categories
kendo kyototaikai

Kyoto Taikai 2015

The Kyoto Taikai is Japan’s premier kendo event, this year being the 111th time it has been held (it’s only stopped a few times over the years, either due to war or because a tenran-jiai – competition in front of the Emperor – took precedence). Although this year was my 13th time (I think!) I […]

Categories
eikenkai kendo

Eikenkai April 2015

Eikenkai is a kenshi 24/7 led kihon-heavy keiko session that takes place usually every couple of months in central Osaka. Due to the unavailability of our usual venue (Sumiyoshi Budokan) we used one of our member’s work dojo for this months session. Numbers were kept deliberately small in order to try a slightly different menu […]

Categories
miscellaneous

Keiko in Osaka

This post was originally entitled “Keiko in Osaka before and after the World Kendo Championships.” Since the championships are finished I have amended it to act as a general introduction for kendo in Osaka. Recently I’ve been getting a lot of messages about doing keiko in Osaka. So many requests are coming, in fact, that […]

Categories
dojo history kendo

Kitano Butokuden

Every practitioner of Japanese budo has heard about the legendary Butokuden. Completed in 1899, it served as the HQ dojo for the Dai-Nippon Butokukai from then until the end of World War 2, after which it changed hands a few times, finally coming under the safe ownership and protection of Kyoto city. Despite undergoing a […]

Categories
kendo

Doing kendo in Japan (cheat sheet)

Update November 2023; lots of people are coming to Japan post-pandemic so I decided to update this article. I hope it is helpful. This post was originally published in March 2015. Recently – perhaps because of the impending world kendo championships – I’ve been receiving an increased amount of inquires about doing kendo over here […]

Categories
kendo

Towards true internationalisation of kendo (1989)

After the popularity of the last post I’ve decided to translate something else along the same theme. It comes from around the same time frame and is the work of another academic, though this time a sort of – whats the right word? – maverick of the Japanese kendo community: Baba Kinji sensei (kyoshi nanadan, […]

Categories
eikenkai kendo

Eikenkai February 2015

Today’s Eikenkai practise – the first of 2015 – was absolutely packed. 40 kenshi from shodan to nanadan representing five prefectures (Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Mie, Nagoya) and five countries (Japan, the UK, Spain, Thailand, America) got together for over two hours of intense keiko. In amongst the participants there those that have competed at the […]

Categories
kendo

Thoughts on the internationalisation of kendo (1992)

The following is a highly abridged and loosely translated excerpt from a book entitled Gendai Kendo (“Modern kendo”) published in 1992. The book consists of articles (based on lectures) by academics discussing kendo in it’s then current situation and was sponsored by the Ministry of Education, All Japan Kendo Association (ZNKR), and the All Japan […]

Categories
iaido

Bowing to the “7”

Editors note: The following is a guest post by NYC Ken-Zen dojo’s iaido instructor, Pam Parker. Last year Pam became one of only a small handful of American’s to pass the iaido nanadan exam in Japan (and probably the first American female) and as such I immediately asked her for her thoughts on the matter. […]