There is a Japanese phrase from zen teachings that reads: 啐啄同時 – Sotaku-doji The image it suggests is this: Imagine a chicken and her egg. When the chick is about to hatch it makes a scratching noise inside the shell. Hearing it, the mother chicken comes along and gently taps on the outside of the […]
The first half of this article is a short translation. Enjoy! Up until I was a third year junior high school student (14/15yrs old) I lived in Tottori prefecture. I started kendo in first year but was very weak and lost many competitions. I was so weak that sometimes people would even taiatari me out […]
Happy new year !!!! I hope all kenshi 24/7 readers had a great xmas and Hogmanay/new-year period. Japan, being a non-Christian country, basically doesn’t stop for a holiday break until December the 29th or 30th depending, and even then many shops will remain open throughout the whole period, perhaps closing only on January the 1st. […]
I promised myself and kenshi 24/7 readers that I’d write at least one or maybe two new articles before the years end but, hands up, I’ve run out of time. Mainly this has been because kendo doesn’t slow down for the end of the year, it speeds up !! So for the last post of […]
December is generally a relaxed time of year for me work-wise, but kendo – as usually – continues unabated right up until the end of the year (and re-starts again only after a short break). This gives me a little bit of extra time to reflect back over the last past 12 months and see […]
We held the 6th and last Eikenkai session of 2014 yesterday at our usual dojo at Sumiyoshi Budokan. 27 people participated with kenshi coming from as far afield as Kumamoto (Andy from All Japan Budogu), Nagoya, and Okayama, as well as from around the Kansai region (Osaka, Nara, Hyogo, Kyoto). We did our trademark 45-30-45 […]
Last August I was lucky enough to receive a set of the brand new Kendo Taikai (kendo playing cards) from it’s creator, Ákos Vachter from Hungary. Having never seen or even heard of anything like this, I was quite exited to see what it was like. First of, have a look at the video rundown […]
This years All Japan Championships were won by 21 year old Takenouchi Yuya, a 3rd year student at Tsukuba university, one of the top kendo universities in the country (not to mention the direct descendant of one of the most famous kendo establishments that ever existed: Tokyo Shihan Gakko). It’s only the 2nd time in […]
Yesterday we held this years 5th Eikenkai session at our usual place, Sumiyoshi Budokan next to Sumiyoshi Taisha in central Osaka. Sessions at this time of year are generally quite cool but since we’ve been having some unseasonably warm weather over the last couple of weeks the dojo ended up being boiling!! This of course […]
The following is a translation of short piece by Haga Junichi. Haga was born in 1908 and started kendo when he was 18. Moving to Tokyo he joined Nakayama Hakudo’s Yushinkan and became one of the top pupils there. With Nakayama’s introduction he got a post as an imperial guard in 1930, eventually being transferred […]