For the third instalment of my March book project I chose four titles that have variations on a similar name/theme: Shashin de miru kendo (“Kendo by pictures”). One of the four is actually a revised and reprinted version of the other, so it’s really three books I’m looking at today. Kendo by pictures and diagrams […]
The choice of books for the second instalment of the the March book project was simple: I picked up two books that were the same shape! I picked up one square book, saw another one, then picked that up too. Amazingly, like in my first instalment of this series, the books were not only authored […]
For the first instalment of this months book project I picked two books that were written by the same authors: Oshima Kotaro and Ando Kozo. Oshima Kotaro was the son of Oshima Jikita (another article here) and Ando Kozo was the shihan of the Waseda university kendo club from 1999-2002. The two books being looked […]
Forty-three kenshi got together in Sumiyoshi Budokan, next to Sumiyoshi Taisha in central Osaka, for yesterday’s jam-packed kenshi 24/7 led Eikenkai session. People travelled to Osaka for the practise session from as far as Iwate, Shizuoka, Okayama, and Mie prefectures, but the title to furthest away goes to Canada. Of course, most participants came from […]
As many regular readers already know, I love books, especially kendo books. The older the better. Last October I had a free afternoon and introduced a portion of my book collection on this site. A couple of weeks after seeing the article a sempai of mine got in touch: “I found a bunch of old […]
Just under six years ago I published an article entitled The Kendo Lifecycle. It was quite popular at the time and, based on my site stats, is still visited regularly by people from all corners of the Internet. As an extension to this I started, from about two or three years ago, to attempt and […]
During June last year I was invited to join an open keiko session at the dojo which probably has oldest (kendo-related) tradition in the Kansai region. During the break between the kihon and jigeiko parts of the session I was wandering around the dojo looking at the various pieces of calligraphy and what not that […]
Another year done! Unlike the end of last year where I basically didn’t stop kendo, this year I am spending the entire holiday period back home in the highlands of Scotland (where I’m posting this from now). This means that, for the first time in who knows how long, I’m actually taking a couple of […]
The following is a translation from a privately published 1928 book entitled “Noma dojo ki.” I assume that a set number of copies were printed and distributed to Noma dojo members only (it was finally re-published publicly in 1996). The book is essentially split into two halves: the first discusses Kodansha founder Noma Seiji’s ideas […]
Takano Hiromasa (1900-1987), kendo hanshi and headmaster of Itto-ryu*, was the the second son of kendo legend Takano Sasaburo. A brief bio: Hiromasa began studying the sword when he was 6 years old in his fathers dojo, Meishinkan. He graduated from Tokyo Shihan Gakko in 1923 and, in 1927, took over the day-to-day running of […]