Kendo - History

[John W]

Hey all,

Quick question- how long has kendo itself been around for roughly? And by this I mean wearing protective armour and using a shinai etc???:confused:

[gszab]

Hi John W

There is an article in the Kendo World which describes the history of bogu. The first kenjutsu bogu was designed in about 1680?. In the article there is a quotation which is from 1684 and speaks about the importance of protective armour( This meant a face mask and gauntlets). The do and tare came from sojutsu(spear fighting) later. These had a very primitive construction compared with today's bogu. There was and I think there is quick evolution in the construction of bogu.

Gszab

[Ian Russell]

Extracted from Joseph R. Svinth's Kronos (http://ejmas.com/kronos/index.html) @ EJMAS


1909
Japanese physical educators begin calling shinai fencing kendo, meaning "the Way of the Sword." Pioneers included Takano Sasaburo of the Ona-ha Itto-ryu, who taught at the Tokyo Teacher’s College where Kano Jigoro was president, and Torakichi Ozawa of the Hokushin Itto-ryu. Although the Ministry of Education preferred the name shinai kyogi, or bamboo stick competition, the older name gekken remained in use in Japan until 1928, when the newspaper magnate Noma Seija created the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei ("All Japan Kendo Federation"), and in the Americas well into the 1930s. For example, a gekken tournament was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in October 1931. In this latter tournament, the participants were mostly Nisei youth. Their teachers were men named Sasaki, Teshirogi, Narita, and Miura. Gekken tournaments were also held in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Steveston, British Columbia during the 1930s. About 30 of the 200 Seattle-area kendoka were female.

1911
Under pressure from the Diet, Japan’s Ministry of Education decides to require schoolboys to learn jujutsu and shinai kyogi ("flexible stick competition"), as judo and kendo were known until 1926. The idea, said the Ministry in its reports, was to ensure that "students above middle school should be trained to be a soldier with patriotic conformity, martial spirit, obedience, and toughness of mind and body." An official curriculum was published in 1917. During the 1920s, Japanese high school girls also began to be required to study naginata-do using special lightweight wooden halberds. Sparring was introduced into the public school naginata-do in 1943. While teachers dutifully said that the girls liked the sparring, one suspects that many of them would have preferred playing "enemy sports" such as basketball and volleyball. Major public school martial art systems included the Kodokan judo of Kano Jigoro, the Itto-ryu kendo of Takano Sasaburo and Ozawa Torakichi, and the Tendo-ryu and Jikishin Kage-ryu naginata-do of Mitamura Kengyo and Satake Yoshinori.

1914
A Japanese police official named Nishikubo Hiromichi publishes a series of articles in which he argues that the Japanese martial arts should be called budo ("martial ways") rather than bujutsu ("martial techniques"), as their purpose was to teach loyalty to the Emperor rather than to be practical combatives. In 1919, Nishibuko became head of a major martial art college (Bujutsu Senmon Gakko) and immediately after taking charge, he ordered its name changed to Budo Senmon Gakko. Shortly afterwards, Dai Nippon Butokukai publications also began talking about budo, kendo, judo, and kyudo rather than bujutsu, gekken, jujutsu, and kyujutsu. The Ministry of Education followed suit in 1926, and in 1931 the word budo began to be used to describe compulsory ideological instruction in the Japanese public schools.

1941
Toward instilling martial discipline and patriotism into school children, the Japanese Ministry of Education introduces judo and kendo into its fifth grade physical education programs. At the same time, school gymnastics (tasen) were renamed "physical discipline" (tairen). Under this scheme, which was influenced by Nazi Strength through Joy pedagogy, budo was said to include radio transmission, grenade throwing, close-order drill, and races in armor while carrying sandbags.

1946
The Allied occupation government of Japan prohibits the teaching of judo and kendo in Japanese public schools and bans the words (and concepts) budo and bushido. Meanwhile, martial art licensing bodies such as the sumo association and the Dai Nippon Butokukai voluntarily disband. The reason was that before and during "the Emergency," as the Japanese liked to call World War II, budo and bushido had become synonyms for Japanese fascism. And there was reason for the belief: during the war, martial arts patronized by the Butokukai, for example, had included grenade throwing and glider repair, and afterwards, many of its leaders went to jail, some for war crimes and others for racketeering. Still, the Americans had nothing against legitimate sports practiced in a democratic fashion. Therefore sumo tournaments resumed during the winter of 1945-1946, and in November 1946 an All-Japan Judo Yudanshakai ("Grade Holders’ Association") was organized.

1948
Red scares cause the occupation government of Japan to reorganize the Japanese police. Part of the reorganization involved increased training, and on December 31, 1947 keibojutsu ("police stick") was adopted as the official martial art of the Japanese police. Since keibojutsu included elements borrowed from kendo, this is sometimes interpreted as a partial reinstatement of kendo. However, that is not correct, as bamboo stick competitions and training still received no official funds or government support.

1950
The Zen Nihon Shinai Kyogi Renmei ("All Japan Federation for Bamboo Stick Competition") is organized in Japan. Its first president was Sasamori Junzo, an American-educated Christian educator and liberal politician who believed that kendo could be taught in a democratic fashion. Sasamori’s 1964 book, This is Kendo: The Art of Japanese Fencing, was one of the first English-language kendo texts, and many of his Japanese-language texts remain in print.

1952
The Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei (All Japan Kendo Federation) is established. So far as is known, this was the first post-World War II public use of the word "kendo." For it to be taught in the public schools, however, it had to be described as "flexible stick competition" (shinai kyogi), and, in the Ministry of Education’s words, "not taught as budo [martial art] but as a physical education sport [kyoiku supotsu]."

1962
The Ministry of Education authorizes the use of the word "kendo" in Japanese public schools; it had previously been in disfavor due to unpleasant associations with WWII-era militarism.

1986
In Tokyo, the Ministry of Education proposes allowing kendo and judo to be termed budo ("native Japanese techniques that constitute martial ways") rather than kakugi ("combative technique"). Although intellectuals protested, pointing to abuses of the term during World War II, the Japanese public failed to react to the complaints, and in 1989 the Ministry of Education formalized the conversion.

Modern shinai kendo is a relatively recent phenomena. There obviously was a transitory period from koryu kenjutsu training to the development of what shinai kendo was at the beginning of the twentieth century. So I'm not quite sure how much further back one can define/trace the beginning of what we know as kendo today.

This is a topic I'd love to learn more about.

[Ian Russell]

Going back a little further (also from Kronos (http://ejmas.com/kronos/index.html))


About 1755

Japanese school fencers begin using face and body armor. According to the Shigei enkakuo of 1831, masks designed to protect the eyes came first. Next came padded helmets and arm protectors. Finally bamboo breast protectors were developed. These in turn developed into what are now helmets (men), breast protectors (do), and gauntlets (kote). About the same time, bamboo swords (fukuro-shinai) also came into use. The latter development probably came as the result of peasant participation in fairground battles, but could have included merchants’ sons wanting to make their swordplay as visually exciting as the swordplay seen in bunraku, or Japanese puppet theater. (These puppet sword battles used exploding heads and beet juice for special effects, and are an ancestor of the chanbara, or samurai movie.) Either way, pioneers in the popularization of teaching swordsmanship using shinai and armor rather than kata included the Itto-ryu swordsman Nakanishi Chuzo Tsugutake and the Shin-kage-ryu swordsman Naganuma Shirozaemon Kunisato.

About 1780

To reduce injuries, rules are introduced to shinai contests that limit scoring only to points covered by body armor. This in turn led to the development of new techniques meant solely to score points in contest. A well-known nineteenth century teacher of these new methods was Chiba Shusaku Narimasa of the Hokushin Itto-ryu, whose curriculum of 68 techniques was virtually standard until the 1920s.

1890

In Tokyo, the Ministry of Education looks into teaching jujutsu and gekken (bamboo sword fencing) in the Japanese public schools. The conclusion is that both activities are pedagogically and morally inappropriate for children.

[John W]

Hey Gszab and Ian,
Wow! thanks for your answers -very interesting that kendo- even though is Japan's oldest art , is in some terms "young"!!

[Ian Russell]

Although the Kendo that we practice today is a relatively recent construct, its roots do stem from much older traditions of kendo (in the sense of kenjutsu, not shinai kendo) predating the Tokugawa period by many centuries.

I'm looking forward to reading Meik Skoss' article on Itto-ryu in Keiko Shokon...

As John said, Kendo is old and new.