Category: japanese

Published on 01 October

Kendo art 剣道美術品

By George , In japanese, kendo, kenshi, media

When the Tokugawa-Bakufu was dismantled in 1867/68 budo education was thrown into turmoil: gone were the domain schools as well as the short-lived Kobusho, and with that budo instructors suddenly lost their profession. Many (now ex-) samurai were suddenly jobless and facing destitution. One person that stepped up to help these people was the ex-samurai, Kobusho kenjutsu instructor, and Jikishinkage-ryu kenshi Sakakibara Kenkichi. He instituted what was called “Gekken-kogyo” – the highly popular public budo shows. “Gekken” refers to the nascent form of what we now call kendo. Although mainly sword-based shows, bouts with other weapons also occurred, and women …

Read More

Published on 21 October

Ichiban Yari 一番槍

By George , In japanese

One of my primary reasons for coming to Japan (other than kendo) was to learn the language. I’m nor sure why, but I’ve loved listening to Japanese for as long as I remember, at least since primary school when I was first exposed to it via the 80s television drama Shogun (based on the James Clavells novel). Even now, after more than a decade in Japan, I still find joy in learning new phrases or interesting (sometimes surprising) combination of words. Pretty much everything I read, and a large percentage of conversations I have, are about kendo or budo related …

Read More

Published on 21 August

Sword of the virtuous, sword of the inferior 君子剣、小人剣

By George , In japanese, kendo

Almost straight away after graduating university back in 1996 I moved to the east coast of America and began working in the I.T. industry. I’d already started kendo a couple of years before and wanted to continue while I was over there. It took a while for work to settle down and to find a dojo (at that time kendo was not nearly as popular as it is now), but when I did get back into it I was lucky enough to become a member of Ken-Zen dojo in NYC. Different dojo do things differently and this dojo required that …

Read More

Published on 13 April

The stream of tradition

By George , In japanese, kenshi

The building my main dojo is based in is undergoing renovation. Part of the work involved includes increasing the size of an already existing office at the back of the dojo and to so were told that we would lose a little bit of the space in our changing room (luckily the dojo will remain as is). Due to this we had to completely clean out the changing room, which meant disposing of unneeded bogu and contacting those that didn’t come to keiko often to come and pick their stuff up. Hidden in the back of the changing room, in …

Read More