Comment
Since this Renmei was founded in 1973 we regularly published a monthly newsletter entitled Kendo–Iai–Naginata which aimed to provide an interesting variety of serious articles on Budo matters, on various historical subjects including history and ko-ryu, book reviews and suggestions for widening the reading scope of those members who so wish, reports on our training camps and occasional weekend meetings, besides more general notices and information. Then about eight years ago a break in ‘editorial drive’ (due to enforced immobility due to leg surgery) meaning a problem in reaching photocopying facilities, and the impact of more sophisticated means of communication that forced traditional Budo into the twenty-first century (!) led to the journal sadly falling into abeyance. Now is perhaps the time for a revival and to make use of the Renmei and Butokukan Dojo websites to provide intermittent interest that might reach a wider readership than just our own members.
It must be pointed out that the views expressed here are very much our own and are intended to present our interpretation of aspects of the Japanese martial cultures as we see them from the outside rather than from within. While we strive to maintain our more historically oriented viewpoint of budo, and especially of Kendo and Iai, we recognise that within the budo culture many people, and probably the majority, view these entities solely as sport, often only claiming lip-service to the real traditions which they do not really understand. If they wish to do this for whatever reason, that is their decision and, of course, their right.
Whilst many of the training methods of classical budo and modern sport-budo are almost indistinguishable, their underlying objectives are sometimes poles apart. This is especially so in Iai where the classical Iai-jutsu ryu-systems differ from the modern artificially constructed Iai-do in manner that must be immediately obvious to almost anyone who sees them in juxtaposition. Japanese Kendo is much the same. Since the ‘broadening of the base’ teaching of Kendo over the past thirty or so years, producing a strong bias towards competition and sport, usually attributed to the influence and dictats of the post-war American military government in Japan, many of the older values have fallen by the wayside, sometimes into serious neglect. Only in some dojo have the leading masters established a proper and traditional respect for discipline and it is through these masters’ example and dynamic teaching, do we encounter the Kendo that survived until the immediate post-WW II era. Elsewhere we observe signs of lack of understanding of the real meanings and practise of reigi, a degree of lack of correct attitude and determination, poor understanding of footwork, an almost total lack of real ‘in depth’ understanding of kata, and so on. Maybe this criticism is too severe, and quite possibly this is the case, but unfortunately to a greater or lesser degree it is also the unpalatable truth.
As we have observed above, these traditional and essentially conservative arts and ways have now reached the twenty-first century: the past, from this point of view, has long gone. The present is only here for a fleeting second then it, too, is gone; only the future stretches ahead. With the headlong movement towards competition-based Kendo and the consequent much greater stress placed on the necessity to possess a dan-degree – the higher the better, naturally – the sport-entities have gradually moved away from some of the fundamental teachings that had developed over past decades and centuries, possibly seeing in them things ‘old-fashioned’ and certainly having little application to Kendo as a sport or cultural pastime. This is a shift that may not have been wished for by the various authorities but one that is inevitable in the context of the material concepts of sport. On the other hand, to look back and approach these entities solely for what they were, possibly, in the inter-war period of the early-twentieth century, is also barren. Time has moved on, but the lessons of those formative centuries and the transitional period from the close of the feudal period to the end of WW II, meant that a traditional distillation of medieval Budo – always meaning here Kendo and Iai – has been transmitted to the present and the future with many of its valuable teaching principles intact. It is a legacy that we would argue cannot and must not be ignored.
Unfortunately, thirty or forty years ago came the parting of the ways. This is not so obvious in Japan where competitive Kendo usually exists comfortably alongside the more traditional forms, but it certainly is patently clear in some other parts of the Kendo world and, it seems to some of us, the problem has not and probably will never be addressed. If it ever is then one pessimistically supposes that it will be too late; the damage has already been done.
Harking back, yet again, to forty years ago, one of the arguments advanced in some senior quarters in Japan itself to justify the trend towards competition-Kendo, was that this shift of bias would satisfy the aspirations of many younger students giving them a outlet for their enthusiasm and, to some extent, for their ambitions. All would ‘readjust’ when these same students, nurtured on the tenets of sport, reached their middle years, meaning fifth or sixth degree rank, when they would then ‘return’ to the traditional beliefs of their wise masters and re-affirm their understanding of the importance of proper etiquette (reigi) and all things that stem from this. One must state, regretfully, that this hoped-for ‘return’ has not yet filtered through in some quarters; what has become increasingly apparent is that many of those in the middle and senior ranks of Kendo do not see the problem and are misled enough to justify their position with the claim that they are actually acting and teaching within the older tradition.
Of course it is true to say that physically and intellectually their technical Kendo has advanced. It must have done so through the natural acquisition of technical experience and understanding. On the surface their Kendo will be as good as ever. What will be lacking is the nurturing of inner understanding over those vital early formative years where the maxim that ‘Kendo begins and ends with respect (reigi)’ is absolutely essential to later development. It is of no value to profess this understanding unless it has become an integral part of one’s character and philosophy.
Doubtless the arguments will continue unabated far into the future but, unfortunately, those who aspire to really understand and experience the real values of Budo will have greater and greater difficulty in finding a master who can transmit the proper teaching.
November 2005