However I have some inside info that the Fight Quest guys are headed to Japan in a few months to try kendo. That'll be a twist for that show. If all goes well, the episode will air in late summer.
Cameroon: Martial arts - Japanese Support for Fecakoken
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 27 March 2008
Fred Vubem
The federation was offered a consignment of equipment by the Japanese Kendo federation last Tuesday.
The Cameroon federation of Kobudo and Kendo, fecakoken, has received equipment that will enable the six-year old federation to continue with the work of implanting the sports in Cameroon. The equipment including swords, helmets and combat dresses were offered by the Japanese Kendo federation through the Japanese embassy in Yaounde. Offering the equipment in a solemn ceremony in the conference hall of the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education, the representative of the Japanese ambassador to Cameroon, Tsutomu Avai, who confessed having practised the sports in his youth, called for the judicious use of the equipment.
The Minister of Sports and Physical Education, Augustin Thierry Edjoa, thanked the Japanese government for the support they have been providing to the development of sports in Cameroon in general and fecakoken in particular. A cooperation which he said spans from the construction of primary schools in Cameroon to the renovation of the Ahmadou Ahidjo stadium and now the support to fecakoken.
The president of the fecakoken, Roger Feutse equally thanked the Japanese but like Oliver twist, called on the Japanese federation not to end at providing equipment but to also provide help in the training of trainers for the development of the sports in Cameroon. He said Cameroon was the second country in Africa after South Africa, to practice kendo. Kendo, he said, is a Japanese martial art that leads to the mastery of oneself through the qualities of concentration, vigilance, perception and adjustments to the attacks of the opponent. It became a sports discipline only after the Second World War.
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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Here. You need to sign up, but Niconico has a wealth of Japanese budo and kakutougi vids.
its safe to say that I train some martial arts. Im not that good really, but most people really suck, so I feel ok about that - Sunfist
Sometime blog on training esp in Japan
Congratulations to Shozo Kato!
Top-ranked kendo master Shozo Kato aces Japan samurai test
BY Paul H.B. Shin
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, May 24th 2010, 10:15 AM
New York City now has its own hometown virtuoso in the swordsmanship of the samurai.
Shozo Kato, 54, recently became the third person from outside of Japan to pass the notoriously difficult exam for eighth dan in kendo - the highest rank in the martial art of Japanese fencing.
The pass rate is about 1%, earning it the reputation of being the toughest test in Japan.
"I feel the real training for eighth dan is just now beginning," said Kato, a fine-art photographer by day who has been teaching kendo at the Shidogakuin dojo in Manhattan for some 25 years.
On the flight back from Japan, "it felt like I was still dreaming," he said, adding he now feels a heavy responsibility to propagate the art.
The achievement is all the more remarkable because he didn't have frequent access to high-ranking mentors, said Alex Bennett, a New Zealander who lives in Japan. Bennett passed his seventh dan exam on April 30 - a feat he said "pales in comparison" to reaching eighth dan.
"If you do pass it, you are elevated to demigod status in the kendo community. It's quite an achievement," said Bennett, 40, a Japanese studies professor at Kansai University in Osaka.
In kendo, practitioners wear padded armor and use bamboo swords for full-speed, full-contact combat. In an exam, you must not only score points by striking targets correctly, but also display mastery of the mental game.
Candidates must have held a seventh dan for at least 10 years and be at least 46 years old to be eligible to take the eighth dan exam, which is administered twice a year - in May in Kyoto and in November in Tokyo by the All Japan Kendo Federation.
"The people taking the eighth dan exam are all hard-core kendo people who have been doing kendo for many, many years," Bennett said. "To be that 1% that shines out above everybody else means they have something special."
Kato passed on his sixth try. Some people have been trying for decades.
Dr. Tsuyoshi Ino****a, an oncologist who founded Shidogakuin with Kato 25 years ago, said he was in a meeting in Florida when he learned his good friend had passed the exam.
"I had to get out of the meeting. I couldn't concentrate because I was so emotional," said Ino****a, 59, a seventh dan kendoist who now lives in Portsmouth, Ohio.
"It will give a lot of hope to people in countries where there are not a lot of high-ranking sensei," he said.
Kato said one way he tried to overcome the disadvantage of the lack of local mentors was to make every bout with every opponent count. "Sometimes a student is the best teacher," he said.
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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I have no words....
Brian Ashcraft on Kotaku
Today 4:00am
Behold, Hello Kitty-Branded Martial Arts Armour
You are looking at kendo armour covered in Hello Kitty. That's right. Kendo armour. Hello Kitty. Go figure.
When you think of kendo, you think of tough people, smacking each other on the head with bamboo sticks. You don't think of Hello Kitty. Not that people practicing kendo would actually wear this—at least, we hope not!
For four decades now, Hello Kitty has made a career showing up on all sorts of products—whether that's toasters, toilet paper, or that infamous ********.
And here we are now, looking at Hello Kitty bogu (防具) or "kendo armour." And yes, people in Japan think this particular choice is rather unusual.
But, it's not surprising, really. There's a joke in Japan that Hello Kitty "works too much" or "will appear on any product." That sounds about right!
The above Hello Kitty kendo gear was photographed by Twitter user Aya at the recent Hello Kitty Expo in Japan. Details on it are scant (no idea if that is actually for sale); however, you can see more forthcoming Hello Kitty branded products that were on display below:
Non-alcohol ****tails. Flavors include Japanese plum wine, cassis orange, and mojito. Alcohol 0.00 percent, but with that boozy taste you love!
Beauty masks. Because Hello Kitty is beautiful.
Air conditioners and air purifiers. Yeah, this isn't freaky. Not at all.
Kitchen electronics and other home goods. Okay, stuff you can see people possibly buying.
One of several Hello Kitty-themed musical instruments. Hey, that's clever.
The Very Hungry Hello Kitty. Why? No, why?
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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She's a little thin, but I'd "shinai" her
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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Just another example of how quickly Kendo went from "sword fighting" to stick fighting.
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
Kendo match: Enbu Taikai: Ota (Age: 102) and Takasaki (Age: 93).
Give it up to the elderly!!!!!
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
Support our forum by getting your gear at MartialArtSmart
Nice story.
Meet Esther Kim, the Clark Kent of martial arts
By Doug Williams | Oct 26, 2018
Special to espnW.com
Albert Facultad/AF Image
Esther Kim has won four junior national titles and two women's titles in the sport of kendo.
When she's not wielding a sword or wearing a helmet and armor, Esther Kim is a bit like Clark Kent.
She's described as quiet and even shy by her longtime kendo coach, Jonathan Chinen. Yet when Kim steps on a kendo court, she changes. Suddenly, she's aggressive and fearless.
"She turns on that switch and she's a totally different person," says Chinen.
At 21, Kim already has won two national women's championships in kendo, the Japanese martial art in which combatants duel like samurai using bamboo swords. Kim has been on two U.S. national teams at the world championships and won four junior national titles before her first women's championship at age 16 in 2014. Now a senior cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Kim is a force in any tournament she enters.
She knows she's not always the fastest, the strongest, or even most experienced in every match, yet she always believes she can win.
"I know that if I have a goal, I'm going to reach that goal," Kim says. "Having that mindset, I know some people are scared before they enter the court. They go in and are like, 'Oh, my god, this person is nationally ranked,' or 'Oh, my god, what do I do?' I'm more of the type to just go in, and they're also a person. I don't care where they stand. ... It's my strong suit."
Chinen and his father, Katsuo Chinen, have coached Kim since she was 12 or 13 at the Gedatsu USA Kendo Dojo near her home in Downey, California, just south of Los Angeles. Jonathan Chinen says Kim's dedication in practice always has set her apart. She's always put in more effort and intensity than those around her.
"She takes it very seriously," he says.
Chinen says Kim's strength has been her ability to react and attack. She's also become quicker. "Her best skills are what we call, it's a counter move," he says. "Anything her opponent has practiced, she's countering her opponent's attacks back at them."
That mental duel, says Kim, is one of the aspects she likes best about kendo. "I'm not super athletic, so I try to use my advantages I have," says Kim, who is studying in Japan for a semester. "I like to think ahead. So if I do this, how would they react, and what would I do if they react this way? If they don't react this way, what would I do then? I like to play around with that and unfold it."
Albert Facultad/AF Image
Esther Kim competing at the 2017 world championships.
Kim was introduced to kendo when she was 10 when her older brother returned to the sport in high school. At the time, her other brother also took it up. "My mom thought it would be cool if all of us did it together," she says.
Kim's heritage is Korean -- she grew up in Southern California speaking both English and Korean -- and her mother had seen the sport in South Korea (a variation called kumdo) and wanted her children to try it.
Kim loved it immediately. She loved its discipline and enjoyed learning something new, meeting new people and what the martial art -- and the culture surrounding it -- did for her. She sees it as more art than sport. She has achieved the rank of 2 Dan (similar to second-degree black belt). The sport's name means "the way of the sword" and is modeled after the bushido (honor) codes of the samurai.
"You learn how to respect other people and at the same time learn how to get respect from other people," she says. "And the fact you can do it at any age, at any time. It builds up your concentration."
And, once she won her first junior national title, she wanted more. "After I had a taste of what it feels like to win, after that I was like, 'OK, just get at it, get at it.'"
A women's kendo match lasts four minutes and takes place on a marked court in front of three judges. Those judges award points for a correct strike on an opponent's wrist, head or torso with the shinai, a bamboo sword. A match is won by the first competitor to get two (of a possible three) points, or whoever has the lead when time expires.
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Scoring a point is difficult. Opponents test each other, clashing swords and feinting. When they attack, they must show spirit by shouting out their intended target and stomping their forward foot in coordination with the strike. That shows the judges it's a planned strike with momentum.
"You're basically focusing all your energy on one attack," says Kim, who represents the Southern California Kendo Federation in regional and national tournaments.
To be fit, she focuses her training on her legs and core. She works out six days a week, with three days for cardio (long runs and sprints) and three days for weight training.
There's no kendo club at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, so she carves time out from her academic and duty schedule -- about an hour to 90 minutes a day -- to watch kendo videos and practice moves on her own with the swords she's brought from home.
After graduation this academic year, Kim isn't sure what role she'll have in the Air Force. She's interested in both logistics and languages (she speaks Japanese and Chinese as well as Korean). Her military commitment is for five years, but she's interested in making it a career because she says "the military lifestyle" fits her personality. No matter where she's eventually stationed, she says she'll continue practicing kendo.
"Even if I don't continue actively competing, I think it's something that can calm my mind, help me forget about any of the problems I may be dealing with," she says.
When Kim won her first national championship at 16, she said it was a surprise because she was the youngest competitor. When she successfully defended the title last year, it was a challenge because of her time away from regular practice while at the academy. But she's come to realize the benefits of kendo are with her wherever she goes and whatever she does.
"I may not be the best in academics or I may not be the best at running," she says, "but I know that one thing I have special to me is kendo. That gives me confidence within my life, and I think at the same time, it really helps me build the self-discipline within myself that I need in life, to know myself, to reflect upon myself. Those tools, I'm super grateful kendo was able to give to me."
Former sports editor, San Diego Union-Tribune
Freelance writer based in San Diego
ESPN.com contributor since 2010
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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continued next postAt 83, a Japanese Master Still Makes Martial Arts Gear by Hand
Kiichiro Ito spends his days creating uniforms for kendo, an ancient form of fencing.
Kiichiro Ito at work in his shop in Tokyo. He has been making gear for kendo, a form of fencing that uses bamboo swords and protective armor, since the 1950s.Credit...Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
By Vivian Morelli
March 27, 2022
TOKYO — When my 6-year-old son recently joined a local kendo club, I found myself at Yamato Budogu, a family shop that first specialized in equipment for the ancient Japanese martial art in the 1930s.
Kendo — the Japanese characters mean “the way of the sword” — is a form of fencing that uses bamboo swords and protective armor. And equipment for what is considered modern kendo originated in the 1700s.
My son needed a beginner’s outfit: a shinai, or bamboo sword; a dogi, the kimono-like top; and hakama, wide-leg trousers. A uniform for an older or more advanced practitioner has four additional items: a men, a type of face mask with metal bars to protect the head and shoulders; a do, or breastplate; kote, gloves to cover hands and forearms; and a tare, a thick cloth belt with flaps to protect the hip area.
“I can make every part of the uniform and repair everything,” said Kiichiro Ito, 83, the president of Yamato Budogu Seisakusho and a bogu craftsman (bogu is an inclusive term for kendo equipment).
His specialty is the men, the face mask. Its fabrication begins with two preparatory steps: layering pieces of cotton, wool and other fabrics to form a protective pad and wrapping rice straw around the rim of a manufactured metal face grill, called the mengane. The straw provides a base so the pad can be hand stitched to the grill, and the edges of the whole assembly is then bound with strips of rawhide to reinforce the structure and improve the piece’s overall appearance, Mr. Ito said.
The process takes about two weeks of work to produce the basic model, while higher-end models, which require finer stitches and decoration, can take as long as three to six months.
Patterns for kendo uniforms.Credit...Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Kendo uniforms in Mr. Ito’s shop.Credit...Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Mr. Ito also collaborates with other bogu craftsmen around Japan: For example, one of them, in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, specializes in aizome, or indigo dye. The artisan dyes textiles thread by thread and then sends rolls of fabric to Mr. Ito’s atelier, where it is cut and added to protective pads. (Other indigo-dyed textiles from artisans in other prefectures are used for the cotton dogi and hakama set.)
The family business was started by Mr. Ito’s grandfather in 1936 in Aoyama-itchome, an area in southwestern Tokyo. Over the decades the workshop moved, shifted to equestrian equipment when some martial arts were banned after World War II and, in the 1970s, was rebranded as Yamato Budogu by Mr. Ito’s father.
Mr. Ito joined the business in 1957, at age 19, and his younger brother, Tsuyoshi, came into the business a few years later. They took over the shop when their father died in 1980.
“Kendo is usually a family business,” Mr. Ito said. “I learned from my father, who was also a bogu craftsman. It’s not something you can learn at school. Some particular techniques or skills are related to certain families and handed down.”
The exterior of Mr. Ito’s shop, Yamato Budogu, in Tokyo.Credit...Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
The shop and the atelier are in Mr. Ito’s house, in the Shibuya ward, another area in southwestern Tokyo (“We used to be able to see Mount Fuji from here, but now all the buildings block the view.”). The shop, on the ground floor, is so small that two people can barely get inside: Once they slide open the front glass door, there is just a small genkan, or entry way, with bamboo swords and uniform pieces stored in glass case displays.
But when they take off their shoes, step up and walk through a doorway, there is the atelier, a large room that measures almost 900 square feet and has been outfitted with tatami mats and two long tables where the cutting and sewing are done by Mr. Ito, an apprentice and two female employees, 86 and 73, who are relatives of Mr. Ito.
Rolls of textiles, bottles of lacquers, cardboard boxes and small wooden drawers filled with tools have been crammed into any available space. Until its recent death, a large black and white cat named Fuku roamed around or napped by the gas heater.
Mr. Ito usually sits near the window on a zabuton, a Japanese floor cushion, with a blanket on his lap and a small wooden worktable nearby. Next to him is another zabuton — but that work space has been left empty for the last two years, ever since Tsuyoshi Ito died. “I wish you could have met my younger brother,” Mr. Ito said. “He was very entertaining and talkative.”
Yean Han, the 33-year-old apprentice, sits across from Mr. Ito. He is from Brunei, and had met Tsuyoshi Ito at a workshop in Malaysia in 2013. “I was already interested in how bogu is made since I was training for kendo,” he said.
When Mr. Han moved to Tokyo in 2016 to study robotics at Waseda University, his frequent visits to the atelier slowly turned into a training program.
“I became so interested and naturally I just sat here,” Mr. Han said. “Sometimes he would just throw small things at me, like ‘Try this, try that’,” he said. (Mr. Han first learned from Mr. Ito’s brother, but now Mr. Ito trains him.)
“We talk a lot sometimes. Other times he just does his work and I sit across from him for one hour or two and I just watch,” he said.
Mr. Ito seems to appreciate his apprentice: “Mr. Han is the one who welcomes customers. He speaks Japanese very well.”
Gene Ching
Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
Author of Shaolin Trips
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