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history kendo kenshi

Busen and Koshi

Over the last few years I’ve repeatedly mentioned Budo Senmon Gakko (Martial arts vocational school, known as “Busen”) and Tokyo Koto Shihan Gakko (Tokyo Higher Normal school, or “Koshi”) in articles. Their respective kendo head instructors, Naito Takaharu and Takano Sasaburo, have also made appearances all over kenshi 24/7. Despite this I hadn’t really gone […]

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history kendo kenshi

The last Busen graduate

As every kendoka knows, Busen (Budo Senmon Gakko) was – along with Tokyo Koto Shihan Gakko – the premier place for training kendoka before the war. It was run by the Butokukai and was based in the legendary Butokuden in Kyoto. People who graduated from here went on to train kenshi all over the country. […]

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kendo media miscellaneous

Kendo Miscellanea

I’ve been practicing kendo for, what, about 30 years now. Or nearly that, I’m not exactly sure. In that space of time I have collected so many kendo-related bits and bobs that I have lost count. Well, after moving to Japan that is – before that (20 years+ ago) there wasn’t really anything kendo-related to […]

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history kendo kenshi

The iron will of the kendo god Ueda Heitaro

Intro: part one Spring, 1894 (10th-11th of April). To celebrate the building of a new dojo at Saka-no-ue police station in Takamatsu city, Kagawa prefecture, a two day Budo embu-taikai was held. Just a couple of days earlier, on the 8th, another large taikai had been held at the central police station in Takamatsu. Kenshi […]

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history kendo kenshi

Takayama Minezaburo: the scourge of Keishicho

The political revolution that occurred in Japan across the entire second half of the 19th century brought in a slew of changes in all aspects of life for everyone in the country. The coup d’etat on the 3rd of January 1868 was the principal political event of the Meiji Restoration, but it took decades after […]

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kendo

Kendo saved me

Just over five years ago one of my sempai suddenly said – knowing I am a kendo book addict – that he was cleaning out some of his stuff and would I take a couple of boxes of kendo books from him. “Of course” I replied, and soon after he gave me a trove of […]

Kendo History

This page attempts to organise well over a decade of kenshi 24/7 historical articles in broad themes to make them more easier to access for the discerning reader. Sections are divided in to: Historical Timeline, Kendo People, Kendo Places, Kendo Events, and Kendo Books. I have also hand picked some of my favourite/useful/popular articles (when […]

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history kendo kenshi

Shinbu-ken

About three and a half years ago I wrote about the sad fate of one of my dojo here in Osaka. It had been my “second home” for about 15 years, and 2020 would’ve been it’s 50th anniversary. As I wrote in the the linked article above, the disappearance of local dojo in Japan is […]

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kendo kenshi

Kendo ideology

In the last article I briefly touched on The Concept of Kendo and The Purpose of Practicing Kendo as published by the All Japan Kendo Federation (ZNKR) in 1975. In the piece I referred to Ogawa Chutaro as the principal architect behind both. Now, this is my inference based on the kind of person he […]

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history kendo kenshi

Finding Naito

On a boiling hot morning in May 2017 I set off armed with a 50 year old picture to find the grave of the person who I consider the single most influential kenshi in the history of modern kendo: Naito Takaharu sensei. I had known for a while before then the general location of his […]