Twenty years after the ancient Japanese samurai class was disbanded at the dawn of Japan’s Meiji Restoration (1866-1867), there was a resurgence of interest in traditional Japanese sword arts that led to the creation of kendo.
In 1886, the Japanese police began gathering forms from kenjutsu schools that were famous before the disbandment to develop a standard way of training in kenjutsu with the sword. By 1912, the controlling body for all martial arts in Japan, Dai Nippon Butoku Kai, introduced a standard core curriculum for the new “way of the sword, ” which was kendo.
Despite it’s shaky history, kendo has evolved into a sport with strong martial arts values in which the practitioner develops physical and mental discipline with an almost Zen-like oneness with his sword, no matter whether it’s a bamboo shinai, wooden bokken or steel katana.
The Korean version of kendo is called kumdo. Its name is written with the same two Chinese characters as kendo, and its techniques and rules are identical.
– March 11, 2013
If you’re a beginner, the Japanese sword arts — with their bokken, shinai, shinken, iaito and so on — can be intimidating. This article provides a brief overview of the categories of weapons and the ways they’re used in arts like kendo, kenjutsu, iaido and so on.
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– November 21, 2011
Ask the average karate practitioner to name the main styles of Japan, and chances are he’ll rattle off shotokan, goju-ryu and wado-ryu with no trouble. But unless he’s really up on his art, there’s a good chance that he’ll stumble over the name of the fourth major style, snap his
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– October 6, 2011
In 1588 the famous samurai swordsman Kagehisa Ittosai started thinking about which of his two students would officially inherit his itto ryu. Always enigmatic, he told them they were too equal in skill for him to decide. They’d have to come up with a test of their talents. The men,
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– June 27, 2011
Do not allow anyone to swing a sharp sword at you.
You’d think that would be common sense—like “Don’t walk in front of a speeding bus.” Apparently, though, while people walking directly and deliberately in front of oncoming traffic is blessedly rare, it’s fairly easy to see videos of people in
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– June 23, 2011
If you practice any form of Japanese karate, you need to understand that one of the most significant influences on your martial arts training has been kendo. Virtually all senior Japanese karate instructors in the West have been influenced by it since the 1960s. Sometimes the influences are conscious, other
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– June 22, 2011
In part three of our Samurai Facts vs. Samurai Myths and Legends series, Samurai Swordsmanship authors Masayuki Shimabukuro and Carl E. Long answer the age-old question: Who would win during a samurai staring contest?
Samurai Myth No. 1: On the battlefield, two samurai would often face each other for hours before
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– June 21, 2011
Welcome to part two of our series: Samurai Facts vs. Samurai Myths and Legends. To help us separate fact from fiction, we asked Samurai Swordsmanship authors Masayuki Shimabukuro and Carl E. Long to answer the most common questions we receive about Samurai history and Japanese swords.
Samurai Myth No.1: The best
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– June 20, 2011
From the medieval epics of Akira Kurosawa to the space operas of George Lucas, the samurai have long inspired us with stories of their legendary swords and superhuman skills. Nowadays, when we think of samurai, we imagine invincible warriors like Miyamoto Musashi nimbly wielding super-sharp swords, slicing through ninjas and
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– June 16, 2011
Tak-tak! Tak-tak! Bamboo training swords smash against one another, and interspersed among them are sharp kiai shouts. With row after row of seemingly alien figures clad in black armor, their faces hidden behind metal masks, it’s a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a Star Wars movie. Welcome
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– June 15, 2011
I found several kumdo schools (kendo in Japanese), countless taekwondo, hapkido and kuk sool academies, and a boxing gym within 100 yards of the apartment I occupied in Pusan, Korea. On the same block as my building, there stood a school that taught the rare art of tae kyon, and
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