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publications

Cheers!

Thanks to everyone who grabbed a copy of Kendo Coaching Tips and Tricks since its release on Saturday 8th of October. Its been a resounding success!! In the first two days alone it sold more copies than I had imagined, and printed copies have been shipped out to at least the following countries:

USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Greece, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia… all in all about 60 different locations!!!!

Categories
kendo publications

Its finally out!!

Its finally out!!! It only took 4 years!!! The idea for my latest book – Kendo Coaching Tips and Drills – first came to me in August 2008. I had just returned from a short trip to Fukuoka University of Education, where I joined a bunch of British university students at a gasshuku. It was […]

Categories
media

Japanophilia

Check out this video by a friend of mine from Austria, Marcus. He visited Japan and created a photo/video documentary of the country. He of-course visited my dojo here in Osaka – Yoseikai – and took some footage… a small part of which is shown here. Anyway, check it out!

Categories
kendo

Tough kendo man

I can’t remember the first time I saw any pictures of kendo or any kendo on the TV (James Bond maybe?), but I do remember the first article I read that mentioned kendo… at least I remembered the content and which magazine it was in, but not the writer. This summer I returned to the […]

Categories
kendo

2012 – UK trip

As followers of kenshi247 know, I just spent the last 3 weeks on holiday in the U.K. Mainly it was to see family and friends, and to do a bit of relaxing. The whole trip went something like this: Osaka->London->Inverness->Orkney->Inverness->Edinburgh->London->Osaka… In amongst all this I managed to fit some keiko in, as well as run […]

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edinburghkendoseminar kendo

Edinburgh Kendo Seminar (2012)

Exactly 2 years after the first Eikenkai in Scotland seminar I returned to Edinburgh and held another. In amongst the busy backdrop of the Olympic and Edinburgh festival mayhem around 30 people spent a couple of days together doing kendo, drinking beer, eating curry, and generally having a fun time. The Saturday session ran for […]

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kendo

Hyoshi

HYOSHI (拍子): musical time, tempo, beat, rhythm When people use the term HYOSHI they usually use it when they talk about something that is “out of rhythm” or “offbeat” and the likes, but when you try to express the term precisely its often hard to do so, even for scholars. When I consider what HYOSHI […]

Categories
kendo theory

The overall construction of modern kendo

Eikenkai

The following is a presentation of a couple of charts found in the book ‘Nihon kendo no rekishi’ (The History of Japanese Kendo) that I found interesting and my commentary on them (apart from the charts themselves, this is not a translation). To read more about whats discussed here in more detail, including the background […]

Categories
history kendo

The Argument for the Revival of Gekken

Gekken Saikoron – The Argument for the Revival of Gekken Editors note: The Jikishinkage-ryu swordsman Kawaji Toshiyoshi (1834-79) was a Satsuma-han samurai who lived during one of Japans most tumultuous periods. A military man, he took part in many of the battles that happened over the country as it reacted to western encroachment and fell […]

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kendo

The kendo practitioner and rei (etiquette)

The true meaning of rei is found in the midst of seriousness The following article was originally published in April 2011 and is by Ota Tadanori hanshi (see author bio below). I placed this article on my ‘to-do’ list a while back and picked it up randomly a few days back. With the 15th World […]