(Note this is a guest post from Richard Stonell) In many iaido ryuha, chiburi is a fundamental part of kata. Chiburi, usually written 血振 in Japanese, literally means “shaking off blood,” and the image presented is that of flinging the blood of a defeated enemy off the blade with a deft movement before resheathing. Perhaps […]
When I heard that my friend Eric Aerts had actually hand made a dou from nothing I had to get an article out of him! He kindly wrote the following and supplied pictures. Check out the link at the end of the article to see more pictures of the various steps. Enjoy! I can recall […]
Situated in the second most populous area of Japan, and the heart of the Kansai region lies Osaka. Not as over-the-top busy and stuffed full of people like Tokyo, the city is easily navigable (even by bicycle) and its population friendly. The two main areas in the city – Umeda and Namba – are known […]
The following is a translation of another short article by Takizawa Kozo hanshi. As someone who was never taught tsuki for many years of his kendo career I think I would have liked to have had Takaizawa hanshi’s advice on the matter earlier. I started my own experiment (almost untaught) as a member of the […]
(Note this is a guest post from Jakob Schmidt) This is not meant as a guide for learning jodan, but more a guide of how to implement jodan training in your dojo. I’ll assume that you already have permission from your teacher to practice jodan and skip the whole ‘why train jodan’ issue. I also […]
Nestled in the hills in the north of Okayama prefecture close to the border with Tottori prefecture is the small town of Mimasaka. It is here, around 1584, that the Miyamoto Musashi was said to have been born. From there Musashi embarked on his study of swordsmanship, with a narrative well known to all students […]
In 1906 the Butokukai made its first research into making a set of standardised kata for teaching its students (standardised kata for teaching had already been made in Tokyo shihan-gakko – Takano Sasaburo‘s gogyo-no-kata – and Keishicho – keishi-ryu). 17 members were selected from various ryu-ha, and a set of 3 kata were created called […]
As a followup on the article on the Transition of Kendo, I present another of Takizawa Kozo hanshi’s charts. This is different from the one before and works from the bottom-up and shows you what you need to do to in order to acquire great kendo. Again, I offer no explanation, simply a translation. Please […]
The following is a bio of the person that can be considered one of the fathers (if not the father) of kendo as it exists today. I spend a lot of my time either reading his books, or reading books of others that trained under him or were influenced him in one way or another. […]
As a followup on the article of Takizawa Kozo hanshi a while back, I present a translated chart of his that shows how kendo has transformed/evolved over the years. I wont attempt to explain it, I will simply present and translate it; I leave any conclusions to yourself. Please click on the chart to see […]