2 min read September 20, 2016 at 3:51pm
Obviously I love kendo books. Only this past weekend I got another handful of books given to me by a particular sensei (a repeat book-giver... I think he is dumping all his old books on me!). A retired high school teacher whom I've only know for a couple of years, I am particularly taken by his respectful demeanour in the dojo... one that I should endeavour to make more of an effort to copy.
Most of the books that were given to me in this batch were written by the now-deceased Inoue Masataka sensei. Raised in Fukuoka he went on to study kendo at Tokyo Shihan Gakko under Takano Sasaburo from 1929. Graduating four years later he became a kendo teacher back in Fukuoka, continuing to study kendo under Shibata Mansaku at the Fukuoka branch Butokukai. From there his bio gets increasingly complicated as it seems that he flitted about between Fukuoka, Osaka, and Tokyo, both pre- and post-war teaching kendo here and there (mainly at schools and universities, but also public places like Osaka Shudokan pictured above), and studying under various luminaries such as Mochida Seiji.
An educator in the very sense of the word, Inoue sensei not only wrote a lot, but he doesn't seem to have been afraid to point out inconsistencies in kendo philosophy nor criticise.
I know that humans are apt to see patterns where is nothing but chaos, or to divine meanings from the ether, but somehow me getting passed the books by another teacher who actually knew Inoue sensei somehow feels like some sort of transmitting of something was going on (or perhaps it was a nudge). That the books have scribbles in them and lines marked in red ink also suggests that someone is trying to tell me something. I could be making this all up, of course, but there is something I feel that I strongly share with my teacher kendo-friends that I don't share with my other kendo friends (of whatever profession).
The picture below is calligraphy by Inoue sensei hanging on the wall of Kitano high school kendo-jo which I visited earlier this year (again, fate). It reads "DEN-KEN-FU-METSU" which I can only translated clunkily into "The (correctly) transmitted sword is immortal."
Actually, this probably isn't exactly what Inoue sensei meant. Perhaps he was suggesting that the sword is merely a tool to transmit something much deeper. Once I read all his books and give it a few more years thought maybe I'll update the translation here. Maybe.
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