Kendo Article
Korea - The Black Ships of Kendo
The Internationalisation of Kendo and the Olympic Problem
by Alexander Bennett, 1/23/2004
http://www.kendo-world.com/articles/web/korea/index.php
This is a long, but interesting article on kendo. It is nominally about the influence of Korean kumdo practitioners and their desire to get kendo in the Olympics. However, it is really more of a meditation on the nature and evolution of kendo—the struggle between art and sport.
I'm fascinated with the history of kendo, and the contradictions that it tries to keep at bay. It began as a training tool for traditional swordsmanship, which became popular in the pre-modern age as teachers feared their students were lacking in spirit. But this one-time tool has now become its own art; the degradation of Western fencing shows what can happen when sparring is separated from real swordplay. Kendo is right to fear becoming a sport. Fencing has lost something that kendo still has.
Yet, "correct kendo" is in many ways self-defeating. Evolution is inevitable and conservatives often grasp at an imagined past. If one holds too tightly to the soul of budo, will the body be lost?
Technique without spirit leaves one left constrained by the boundaries of one's training. Spirit without technique allows one to die beautifully.
"I have trained in dojo which concentrate entirely on ‘correct kendo’. Every strike is big, straight and powerful. These exponents are, for the most part, completely oblivious to finer techniques such as well-timed debana-kote as they roll through like bulldozers."
(from Part III of the article)
Balance in all things.
The Internationalisation of Kendo and the Olympic Problem
by Alexander Bennett, 1/23/2004
http://www.kendo-world.com/articles/web/korea/index.php
This is a long, but interesting article on kendo. It is nominally about the influence of Korean kumdo practitioners and their desire to get kendo in the Olympics. However, it is really more of a meditation on the nature and evolution of kendo—the struggle between art and sport.
I'm fascinated with the history of kendo, and the contradictions that it tries to keep at bay. It began as a training tool for traditional swordsmanship, which became popular in the pre-modern age as teachers feared their students were lacking in spirit. But this one-time tool has now become its own art; the degradation of Western fencing shows what can happen when sparring is separated from real swordplay. Kendo is right to fear becoming a sport. Fencing has lost something that kendo still has.
Yet, "correct kendo" is in many ways self-defeating. Evolution is inevitable and conservatives often grasp at an imagined past. If one holds too tightly to the soul of budo, will the body be lost?
Technique without spirit leaves one left constrained by the boundaries of one's training. Spirit without technique allows one to die beautifully.
"I have trained in dojo which concentrate entirely on ‘correct kendo’. Every strike is big, straight and powerful. These exponents are, for the most part, completely oblivious to finer techniques such as well-timed debana-kote as they roll through like bulldozers."
(from Part III of the article)
Balance in all things.
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