So you are sparing, you and your opponent are, of course, hitting each other. You get frustrated because you have not getting any points on your opponent. Now what are you going to do?
There are many techniques in kendo.
Have you thought why? Yes, I have. And my conclusion at the moment is that because the ancient samurai strove to come up with techniques that let them keep alive. And after putting a lot of efforts, many of well known samurai reached the same conclusion, which is “kenjutsu/kendo should not be for killing or hurting”.
So they invented many techniques and concluded that they should not use those techniques to kill or hurt others. That is very important for us to remember...
OK, now we do not have to kill anyone to survive. So what those techniques mean to us now? Let’s think about why do we do kendo? We learn kendo so we can train
ourselves physically and mentally. Do you agree? Even if not, let me say the reason to do kendo is to train ourselves physically and mentally.
In those techniques to survive, there are so called “faint” strikes. What that means is that you pretend to strike your opponent’s men but you are actually striking his/her
kote. Some call those techniques “trapping”.
Firstly, let me ask you.
Is that bad?
I don’t think it is bad. In kendo, I mean kendo now, you should try a lot of techniques. You know why? It is because you should know how people react to such traps. If you do not know how people react, you never know what work on what kind of people under what kind of circumstance. That is why you should try “trapping” techniques as well as all other techniques.
As a part of our training process, I think it is important to know how “faint” techniques work so not only we know how it works on our opponents but also we know how our mind works when such techniques are executed on us.
So why am I bringing that up here?
Let me ask you this question. In modern kendo, we do not aim to kill anyone. So knowing that, what do you think
The difference between sports and budo?
You might be surprised if I tell you.
This is what I was told.
“You show your opponent your intention to strike their men, for example, then you strike kote, it is sports, but you strike their men it is budo”.
This is really deep, I think. It is probably deeper than I think it is. The former is going for a
point. In sports, you fight to win. And in kendo too. You fight to win. But HOW you win, i.e. the process is valued in budo. I am sure the old samurai also valued how they won. Even when they are to lose, which means death, they cared how they would lose/die.
This is the foundation. If you
can do that, you are really strong. But before we get to this level, we should learn a lot of techniques. We should become so strong that no one can stop us even when they know what we are going to do.
Here is my experience.
I was 14 years old
going against the Late Tsurumaru sensei (9-dan, then 8-dan). On my first cut, I got his men. I have still no idea what I did. But from chudan, I executed a straight men with no faint. I got him He was under my shinai. It did not make me happy at all because 1. I did not know what happened. 2. by the time I realised what
happened he started putting pressure on me!
Usually 8 or 9-dan sensei won’t move first but they move us. But he started to coming at me with a big smile!!!! I know he was coming to get my men but I just could not do anything. I was just like a frog in front of a snake. Frozen.
This kind of kendo is really strong but to get there we have to learn a lot for sure :)