十段になれた筈：大島治喜太の物語 About four years ago I briefly introduced a kenshi who I have been interested in for a good while via a couple of small articles: Oshima Jikita. In one of those articles I wrote a brief bio, but today I want to look at his life in more detail. This more detailed article is […]
第四十二回伊勢神宮武芸奉納演武 Last weekend my dojo mates and I visited Ise-jingu in Mie prefecture which is, along with Izumo-taisha in Shimane, one of the most important cultural and historical institutions in the country. There we were honoured to take part in a “dedication demonstration” of budo to the sun goddess Amaterasu with a handful of other […]
あなたの胴打ちはドウですか？ I spend a lot of my dojo time attempting to acquire good kendo. By “good” I don’t mean I practise in order to win shiai or beat people but, but rather I am trying to develop a “solid” style firmly rooted in the basics, one that anybody could look at then nod and say: […]
A few years ago I wrote and published my high successful Kendo Coaching Tips and Drills manual, the first of its kind, and still – afaik – the ONLY publication of its kind in the English language. The idea to write a more advanced manual for instructors first came in 2008. It then took four […]
This year, as normal, I headed to Kyoto to attend/watch the Kyoto Taikai. I have written about it numerous times on kenshi 24/7, so I won’t bore you with a full recap – check out the kyototaikai category to read past posts and get the full rundown. This year was a little bit of a […]
On April 29th every year the All Japan Prefectural Championships (Todofuken taikai) are held here in Osaka. I have been attending the shiai as a spectator for well over a decade now, and have seen it change in format from a mixed male/female competition, into a separate male (the one I was at today) and […]
For the past maybe five years or so, at the start of April every year, I’ve been attending a large godo-geiko session at the famed Butokuden in Kyoto. I think last year was the first time I wrote a small article and shared info on the event. I don’t really have much to add on […]
Whew, what a month. March has always been a busy month for me, both work-wise and kendo-wise, but this year has been… too much. Kendo-wise my club took part in four shiai (three university invitationals and a local competition) plus we hosted a five-school renshujiai. Work-wise, things started with the usual high-school entrance exam craziness, […]
The window for applying for this years Kyoto Taikai has finished. I have been attending now for over 15 years, taking pictures and cataloguing my experiences here on kenshi 24/7. Unexpectedly, my first experience of actual participation was in the koryu section, not the kendo one… way back in 2009 I think it was.
The following is a short translation of part of a lecture by Ogawa Chutaro (hanshi, kyudan) in which he discusses the the shugyo process of one of his main teachers, Mochida Seiji (hanshi, judan). Ogawa sensei’s serious pursuit of kendo began when he moved to Tokyo and entered Takano Sasaburo’s Shudogakuin. There he met the […]