Kendo Christmas Reading

People often ask for tips on which kendo books they should buy and I suppose the answer depends on what  you want from your kendo reading. There are quite a few available publications ranging from “how to” manuals to those covering kendo history and philosophy. If you are thinking about asking Santa for a volume [...]

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Kendo at Hitotsubashi University

Last week when I was in Tokyo, I was lucky enough to be invited to practice with the kendo club of Hitotsubashi University. Whilst I have practiced at a number of Japanese university clubs over the years, I tend to forget just how hard kendoka work at this stage of their careers to ensure that [...]

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Chiba sensei’s advice on chudan kamae and cutting motion

Chiba sensei is back in the UK for his annual visit. He has an unerring ability to quickly spot what needs fixing and to offer a remedy. After two dojo visits for keiko, he reached the conclusion that may UK kendoka suffer from the lack of coordinated ki-ken-tai-ichi.  This stems from a number of timing [...]

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“Speak when you are spoken to!”

On my occasional visits to one or other of the kendo message boards, I often see requests for advice or clarification, to which someone invariably posts the response – “ask your sensei”.  This seems to me to be the most logical and accessible way to have questions answered, but obviously many people find it a [...]

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Teaching timing and opportunity

Recently I was lucky to practice with Sumi sensei on his stopovers in London to and from a seminar in Russia. Despite suffering from jet lag he taught a one hour kihon session prior to jigeiko at Mumeishi. As well as enjoying (if that’s the word) the opportunity to stretch myself in keiko with him, [...]

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Small steps!

The principle in most martial arts is that you use your opponent’s force to defeat him. In Judo or Aikido you make him push and then use minimal effort to break his balance and throw him. Many people seem to forget that this also applies to kendo. Because in kendo we set out to strike [...]

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Running before you can walk

Thinking back to Matsumoto sensei’s article, it emphasised that you need to “master the skills of kendo” to a level where they can be performed with “calmness of mind”. This is quite a tall order. We come to kendo classes to fight, so for most of us, an hour of gokakugeiko (jigeiko) is the way [...]

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Tame

The two comments on “tame” received in response to my post about Chiba sensei’s seminar were in line with the reaction of many people at the event, who had difficulty in understanding the concept of “tame”. I mentioned this to Chiba sensei at the meal after his farewell practice and his reply was that “you [...]

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Chiba sensei does it again!

Chiba sensei is back in the UK and we just completed a two day seminar with him. This time he was accompanied by Hayashi Tatsuo, Kyoshi Hachidan who acts as official translator for the ZNKR, so he took on the onerous task of translating Chiba sensei’s teaching into English. Firstly I had some good news [...]

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E-Kendo

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 [...]

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