The building my main dojo is based in is undergoing renovation. Part of the work involved includes increasing the size of an already existing office at the back of the dojo and to so were told that we would lose a little bit of the space in our changing room (luckily the dojo will remain […]
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Hi, my name is George, and I’m a kendo and classical Japanese martial artist based in Osaka, Japan. Amongst other things I am the only non-Japanese fully qualified public high school kendo teacher in Japan, an amateur historian, a fluent Japanese speaker, a bit of an antique kendo book collector, and a life-long vegetarian. I […]
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Don’t become a Tengu
Last Sunday after keiko, I was lining up to say thank you to one of the older 7dan sensei (lets call him S-sensei). 77 years old now, I remember going to his 70th birthday celebration the highlight of which was him doing tachigiri keiko – he fenced a shodan, a nidan, a sandan, a yondan, […]
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Kendo Books
UPDATE: I’ve decided to renew this particular article every so often when new and interesting books become available. The original post was published in April 2013. Most recent updated January 2017. As I write this post at work, I have dozens of kendo books standing in the shelf on my desk: ones about learning the […]
Naito Takaharu (1862-1929) was one of the most influential kenshi to pick up a shinai. Born as as Ichige Takaharu in Mito in 1862, his Samurai parents were of budo stock: his father an archery instructor for the domain and his mother the daugher of the Hokushin Itto-ryu shihan Watanabe. At the age of 7 […]
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Being struck
During keiko, when you are struck by your teacher or a friend its really them giving you kind, wordless, advice: “Be careful, this is a weak point.” If you are resentful and think “damn it, I’ve been hit!” then – when you have reached the status of being able to take part in the Kyoto […]
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. […]
“Commencing in a moment, the final of the 70th imperial guards competition. The competitors: Takizawa Kozo kyoshi, Abe Saburo kyoshi; the shinpan: omote shinpan Mochida Seiji, ura shinpan Saimura Goro and Ogawa Kinnosuke.” At the same time that the announcers voice rang out in the packed Saineikan dojo, the two competitors and the three shinpan […]
Yushinkan was the dojo of Nakayama Hakudo (1873-1958) in Tokyo. Nakayama had a varied and rich budo life, achieving hanshi in all three arts promoted by the modern ZNKR as well as being a shindo munen-ryu swordsman amongst other things. Its impossible to do a full bio of the man here, so I will leave […]
(updated Jan 2020) SHOGO (称号) in Japanese translates simply as “title” or “rank,” and the word can be used in many areas, for example formal titles of nobility, military ranks, scholarly ranks, etc, and informally in the sporting world, between friends, etc. The use of the word that I will look at here is of-course […]