I touched on tenouchi in an early post on holding the shinai and in my report on Chiba sensei’s first UK seminar. I make no excuses for posting about it again, because it is an important aspect of kendo and in many cases, the final piece of the puzzle that decides whether or not a technique results in ippon.
Tenouchi translates simply as “the inside of the hand” and in kendo means the squeezing action of both hands at the point of striking. If you squeeze too hard or too early, the point of the shinai will not extend forward sufficiently to strike the target correctly and crisply. In some kendojo people were, and maybe still are, taught to wring the shinai between both hands at the point of cutting. Unfortunately this has the effect of causing the point of the shinai to rise on impact, so it actually defeats the purpose of using it as an aid to finish the cut correctly.
Like every other component of kendo, tenouchi should be relaxed and natural. Rather than create an artificial action at the end of your cutting swing, you should start the movement holding the shinai correctly. That is with the end of the tsuka fitting into the heel of your left hand and the little finger and ring finger applying slight pressure with the middle , index finger and thumb barely making contact. For the right hand the grip is the same, but if anything lighter and the knuckle of the forefinger should lightly brush the tsuba. If this is uncomfortable, chances are your tsuka is too long. I cannot overemphasise that your grip should be light. If someone tries to pull your shinai forward out of your hand, it should slide forward without protest or friction. A further key point is that your wrists should turn in slightly, so that the centre of the V formed by thumb and forefinger of each hand should be at a 90 degree angle to the ground.
Holding the shinai in this way, you should aim to cut through the men to chin level and kote through the thickness of the wrist and squeeze lightly with the little and index fingers after the point of impact. You should not change your grip at any stage of the cut.
As the kendo versus Iai debate has continued, I have given way to popoular demand by posting the two image polls below. The output from these should help sociologists, anthropologists and sports scientists reach a definitive understanding of how practitioners of the two arts regards each other.
The polls have been scientifically designed by Kendoinfo’s crack team of behavioural scientists and statisticians and meet the standards of objectivity and rigour insisted upon by national governments.
Please think carefully before choosing an option, whilst the purpose of these polls is to understand what you truly think. The future harmonious relationship of these kindred martial arts depends on the choice you make today.
On Sunday after the Dublin Open we ran a kendo seminar. It took the form that most people would recognise, with lots of work on basics in the morning and moving on to more technical waza practice after lunch. I taught suriage men as part of a series of oji techniques. As you may have seen in previous posts , my view on suriage waza is simple – You create the opportunity, slide up the shinai and cut down in one movement and without moving back or to the side, go forward to your opponents centre as you finish the attack.
After spending some time practising this, Henrik, one of the senior Dublin members, asked the question, “what happens when you try this and you have 150kg of Noel bearing down on you”. Now to be fair to Noel, he does not really way 150kg, but he is significantly bigger than Henrik. Rather than just explain, I demonstrated how it would work against Noel. As expected, he came forward strongly for shikake men, but stopped when my technique hit. I was able to finish my attack going forward, without moving from the centre line.
The logic is simple. As long as your distance is correct, you keep your point forward and stick to raising the shinai and hitting in one continuous movement, the strength of your attack will break your opponent’s forward motion. One other tip to bear in mind is that if your opponent is coming forward, you can use their movement, so you do not have to step in as deeply as for shikake waza.
So, problem solved, but then thinking about it after I realise that many people are reluctant to commit to aim for their opponents centre in a spirit of sutemi (sacrifice), whether they are initiating shikake or oji waza. This is particularly true for smaller people, who may fear injury from a collision with a bigger person.
If this is a concern, I have two suggestions. Firstly, seme – If you truly break your opponents’ centre, they have nothing left to hit you with. Secondly learn correct taiatari. If you keep your weight down and your hands low, you should be able survive clashes with opponents of any size. I can’t guarantee that you will not be the one who bounces back, but you can do it with strong posture and balance, safely ready to make the next attack.
I have just returned from a kendo weekend in Ireland and was impressed, to say the least, by the volume of comments, both on and offline, relating to my last two posts, that were awaiting my return. I was planning to follow up with a further poll on Iai and Kendo people’s perception of each other, but I have decided to hold that back until the Xmas pantomime season.
Richard Foster has stolen my thunder with an accurate summary of the preference poll. I will make no further comment , other than to add that I have no intention to defame any individual, living or dead. I don’t particularly like cricket, but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying Phil Tuffnel’s rhumba on Strictly Come Dancing.
Much encouraged by the healthy debate surrounding my “Why I hate Iai” post. I thought it worth throwing the subject out in the true spirit of democracy, that recent speakers at BKA meetings have assured us that people have “fought and died for” . So here is the chance for you to make your views known.
PS. If anyone can be arsed to fill this in, there may well be a follow up on the types of individual attracted by Iai and Kendo.
Last year the British Kendo Association was hijacked by a group of power hungry Iai players. In the true British spirit of protest I slightly raised an eyebrow at the time. Now I hear from my crack team of ninja informers that there are suggestions in place for every kendo member to learn some Iai. Well, in the words of my wife’s old dance teacher “I would rather do the splits over a blow lamp”.
To be honest I did try Iai in Japan, to please a teacher who taught both kendo and iai. A CV of my Iai career reads thus: 6.45 pm reported for practise – 7.00 with difficulty managed to stuff Iaito into hakama, pausing to adjust so the saya was on the outside – 7.05 attempted standing rei and iaito fell out of saya denting pristine dojo floor – 7.10 sensei suggested that I leave the dojo, eat a bowl of noodles and return for kendo practise – 7.30 enjoyed bowl of kitsune udon – 8.30 returned to dojo and practised kendo without further incident – 10.30 retired for drinks with sensei – 11.30 promised not to try iai again – 12.00 had another drink to seal deal. 12.30 – missed last train home – 1.00 a.m took taxi home at cost of JPY 30,000
Perhaps slightly scarred by this experience, I have watched Iai on a number of occasions since and not had even the slightest desire to try. I know a number of people suggest that, if you practise kendo you must do iai, or vice versa, but to my mind, you may as well add ikebana, sado or origami. Some of reasons I feel no connection with Iaido are as follows:
Kendo requires a minimum of two people, as does lovemaking – Iai requires one, (read into that what you will)
Iai requires you to dress up in silky clothes and strike poses
Iai shiai (is that the correct term?) have the winners decided by vote, rather like ice skating
Whereas even stopping for water is frowned on in kendo, Iai allows for the intake of tea and biscuits
As a fan of “sweaty workouts”, I would miss having to wring out my keikogi
Do not get me wrong. I can see the value of Iai when it comes to drawing and putting away the mogito, as part of Kendo-no-kata, but the idea of turning up for seitei iai is not for me.
I have recently been re-reading an english translation of Yukio Mishima’s Runnaway Horses. Although I am sure that the translator must have done a grand job, there are a number of references to kendo that are pretty difficult to recognise. For example he writes about “kendo forms” , “without masks” and refers to ”round one ending and round two beginning”. OK, so rough guess suggests Kendo no kata, ippon me and nihon me.
Mishima himself was an experienced kendoka, so it is likely that he used the original kendo terms. Obviously the translator tried to make Mishima’s description of kendo understandable to a wide audience, but in doing so, he made it harder for kendoka of any nationality to understand. Why? because we are used to Japanese terminology in kendo. Some time ago the ZNKR issued an english language video, where everything had been changed into English. We had “blows to the head” and the “forearm”, which we all had to mentally change back to men and kote.
Now I am not advocating the use of Japanese or English to describe kendo, but I suppose I am used to the status quo and find it easier to use Japanese, particulary for complex terms. Sen no sen still makes more sense to me than Mr Lidstone’s “forehand forestall”
When people come over to make the final one-to-one rei at the end of a practise session, there is always the expectation that the more senior kendoka is going to say something useful about their keiko. This is not always easy as the teacher or sempai might be thinking:
No change since last week, so nothing to talk about.
I did not really notice what you were doing, I was just enjoying the practise.
You are still doing what I have been telling you not to do for the past 2 years, so what is the point.
On the other hand and more likely, he or she may have some useful advice to give you. The only problem may be, that it sounds completely different to the advice you got from the guy you bowed to 30 seconds before. In this case you need to remember that different people see things in different ways. One teacher may tell you your feet are too slow, and another that your hands are too fast. If you think it through, it is clearly the same point made differently.
You do though often get conflicting information. I regularly visit a club where I invariably suggest to a number of members that they make a bigger men attack. The resident instructor urges the same people to make smaller movements. The reason behind my advice is not because I particularly like big techniques, but because there is a tendency for them to cut only with the right hand, which will limit future progress. My colleague on the other hand, wants them to make small attacks so that their kendo becomes quicker. Who’s right? Why me of course:-) , only joking, but the real issue for the student is which advice should you take.
I believe the solution comes back to the concept of shu ha ri. When you start, you should find a teacher you trust and follow his or her advice exclusively. Later when you have the basics established, you can benefit from the knowledge of other instructors, but evaluate the information thoroughly. Either that, or you can start cutting big in a small way, whilst moving your hands slower and your feet quicker
I was asked this week about the qualities I look for in kendo students and the answer is persistence. I seriously believe that without this quality, nobody would get to the end of the average 6 or 8 week beginner course without throwing in the towel.
I would hate to be a beginner again. With hindsight, I only managed to progress through that stage myself because of an inflated sense of my own ability and bloody mindedness. Unlike other martial arts where you learn a basic technique on day one and can sort of manage to throw or punch someone immediately, with kendo you have to do months of drills, (years in some dojo), before you can put on bogu and have a decent scrap.
Of course I understand the reasons why. To start gigeiko without good basics will hamper a kendoka’s future development and it would be just plain dangerous for his or her training partners. Still I take my hat off to anyone who can survive months of suburi and footwork practice, without having looked through the bars of a men.
You have probably gathered that I do not often teach beginners. I much prefer working with people who have developed the basics and want to move on. On the occasions when I have taught new students, I have been astounded to learn that not only have most of them not tried kendo before, they have never actually seen it. Instead their inspiration has come from manga or samurai movies or even the light saber moves in Star Wars. No surprise then, that after a few weeks of “mae, ato, migi, hidari”, when the realization dawns that they are not going to turn into Tom Cruise or Luke Skywalker, they hand back their shinai and join the Salsa class.
Whatever the motivation to start, there are a small percentage of like minded lunatics who survive the initial tedium and keep going long enough to be bitten by the kendo bug. If you are one of them, you can now be officially classed as kendo kichigai , (kendo crazy) – congratulations!
I am really warming to the subject of kendo teaching, so thought I would give it one more burst. I noticed that a dojo in the Mid West is offering online kendo tuition. This may be a great idea, but it reminded me, and perhaps it will my older readers, of the advertising in the back of bygone boys comics for postal courses on “jiujitsu” sic. and bodybuilding. One of these famously elicited the reply, “Dear Charles Atlas, I have completed your course, please send me my muscles”
Seriously, I do not know if you can learn kendo online, or from books or videos, for that matter. I have always thought that the traditional Japanese teaching approach of demonstration followed by the individual constantly repeating the action until everyone is satisfied, as being the easiest way to commit kendo techniques to muscle memory. I am also wary of over analysis and thinking too deeply about kendo in that we are aiming to react to opportunities instantly in a state of “no mind”.
Following Tesshu and Ittosai’s guidance on repetition leading to mastery, kendo has developed on the principle that you should train exhaustively until each technique becomes an extension of yourself. However on the basis of “garbage in garbage out” it pays to have a qualified teacher watching over you and ensuring that you get it right from the start and continue to make it better.
Do books and visual aids work? I am sure they do, but not in isolation. Books, web sites and blogs offer theory, history and discussion, but are not ideal to learn technique. Video whether online or DVD gives you the opportunity to watch techniques carried out by experts.
Chiba sensei’s latest book incorporates a DVD which shows each technique in full motion and correlates to the relevant page. Information of this kind is a valuable supplement to your normal dojo training, but would not work on its own for a raw beginner.
My own favourite instruction manual is Youtube, which has some great video footage of kendo. If you seek out the semi-final and the final videos of this year’s eighth dan holders’ competition, you will see a master class of how men and kote should be done in shiai. However as for learning exclusively from the screen or books, I am not so sure. As always please don’t, and I am sure you won’t, take my word as gospel, as I may be biased. My last experience of e-learning cost me a laptop, when I knocked a glass of wine into it whilst trying to learn a guitar solo.
I touched on tenouchi in an early post on holding the shinai and in my report on Chiba sensei’s first UK seminar. I make no excuses for posting about it again, because it is an important aspect of kendo and in many cases, the final piece of the puzzle that decides whether or not a technique results in ippon.
On Sunday after the Dublin Open we ran a kendo seminar. It took the form that most people would recognise, with lots of work on basics in the morning and moving on to more technical waza practice after lunch. I taught suriage men as part of a series of oji techniques. As you may have seen in previous posts , my view on suriage waza is simple – You create the opportunity, slide up the shinai and cut down in one movement and without moving back or to the side, go forward to your opponents centre as you finish the attack.
Last year the British Kendo Association was hijacked by a group of power hungry Iai players. In the true British spirit of protest I slightly raised an eyebrow at the time. Now I hear from my crack team of ninja informers that there are suggestions in place for every kendo member to learn some Iai. Well, in the words of my wife’s old dance teacher “I would rather do the splits over a blow lamp”.
I have recently been re-reading an english translation of Yukio Mishima’s Runnaway Horses. Although I am sure that the translator must have done a grand job, there are a number of references to kendo that are pretty difficult to recognise. For example he writes about “kendo forms” , “without masks” and refers to ”round one ending and round two beginning”. OK, so rough guess suggests Kendo no kata, ippon me and nihon me.
When people come over to make the final one-to-one rei at the end of a practise session, there is always the expectation that the more senior kendoka is going to say something useful about their keiko. This is not always easy as the teacher or sempai might be thinking:
I was asked this week about the qualities I look for in kendo students and the answer is persistence. I seriously believe that without this quality, nobody would get to the end of the average 6 or 8 week beginner course without throwing in the towel.
I am really warming to the subject of kendo teaching, so thought I would give it one more burst. I noticed that a dojo in the Mid West is offering online kendo tuition. This may be a great idea, but it reminded me, and perhaps it will my older readers, of the advertising in the back of bygone boys comics for postal courses on “jiujitsu” sic. and bodybuilding. One of these famously elicited the reply, “Dear Charles Atlas, I have completed your course, please send me my muscles”
