A couple of weeks ago in the dojo a young kohai of mine, about 24 years old, attacked and knocked over one of the older sensei in his late 70s (needless to say, it wasn’t deliberate). The sensei fell backwards and knocked his head on the dojo floor. Keiko stopped and everyone rushed to him. […]
This year lets, with the goal of polishing our kihon, endeavour to spend a lot of time doing ‘uchikomi.’ Kyoto Budo Senmon Gakko’s (Busen) head instructor, Naito Takahuru, emphasised ‘uchikomi’ (what we now call ‘kakari’) – as transmitted by Hokushin Itto-ryu in Mito (Tobukan, where Naito started kendo) – as an important part of training. […]
A month or so ago – I can’t quite remember – I was reading a piece in one of the local kendo mags about someone who had, after many years of kendo practice, decided to quit. Of the many reasons he gave for this, one stood out: that there was no special ‘polishing of the […]
This is an abbreviated/casual version of a chapter that was originally in my just-published Kendo Coaching Tips and Drills book, but which I removed in the final version as it didn’t really fit in the way that I wanted it to (and also because I am terrible at making attractive visual charts… which is why […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]