Category: books

All through this month I have been going through the mountain of kendo books one of my sempai gave me. The way I approached it was to put the really good books to the side and concentrate on the mass of general books in the pile… but, I must admit, I’ve started to tire of looking at so many books with pretty much the same or similar content. So for the fifth instalment of my March book project I’ve instead picked four of the more interesting books written by famous sensei to go through. Originally I’d intended to keep these …

The fourth instalment of my March book project will look at a handful of books that are primarily for children. I guess many kenshi 24/7 readers aren’t too interested in kids kendo books and, honestly, neither am I very much. However, when flicking though the books I realised one area that they can be of great benefit: as a Japanese learning tool. In a (now archived) article I wrote back in October 2008 I discussed the benefits of studying Japanese for the serious kendoka. Let me resurrect the body of that post for you now: I live here so I …

For the third instalment of my March book project I chose four titles that have variations on a similar name/theme: Shashin de miru kendo (“Kendo by pictures”). One of the four is actually a revised and reprinted version of the other, so it’s really three books I’m looking at today. Kendo by pictures and diagrams The first book was actually printed originally in 1966 but was later revised and re-printed in 1979 to match changes competition rules. Other than the shiai and shinpan areas, both books are pretty much the same. The contents of the books are, to be honest, …

The choice of books for the second instalment of the the March book project was simple: I picked up two books that were the same shape! I picked up one square book, saw another one, then picked that up too. Amazingly, like in my first instalment of this series, the books were not only authored by the same person, but one is simply a renewed version of the other. The books I picked up were Ichi-ryu no waza wo mi ni tsukeyo: Kendo (“Kendo: learn the best techniques”) published in 1971 and the simply named Kendo published 10 years later …