Alex in Wonderland

Examiner’s Report on Alexander C. Bennett’s Ph.D. thesis:

“The Cultural Politics of Proprietorship: The Socio-historical Evolution of Japanese Swordsmanship and its Correlation with Cultural Nationalism”

This is an excellent thesis, well-written, well-argued and well-structured, and it makes an important new contribution to scholarly knowledge about its subject. The author, Alexander Bennett's, mastery of the subject is obvious on every page — clearly he has studied it ...

Blooming heck. Six years it took, but I finally finished my second PhD thesis, and submitted it yesterday to the University of Canterbury. The title: "The Cultural Politics of Proprietorship: The Socio-historical Evolution of Japanese Swordsmanship and its Correlation with Cultural Nationalism". I finished my first one at Kyoto University about "bushido" in 2001 which can be bought here if you can read Japanese. The one I just finished is all in English (much easier to write) ...

The Chuseikan Dojo in Christchurch, New Zealand

See Chuseikan Video Here!!

The earth didn’t rock, it exploded under our feet. That was the February 22 earthquake in Christchurch last year. Not long after that, when I had arrived back in Japan, the March 11 Great Tohoku Earthquake happened, followed by a massive tsunami and the unnerving nuclear disaster. In terms of scale, the Japanese earthquake was far bigger, and the casualties inconceivable. How do you come to terms ...

Assisted by my brother Blake, and supervised by Satō Nariaki-sensei, for the past year I have been working hard on a translation of the Kendō Shidō Yōryō (The Official Guide for Kendo Instruction). This book, as the title suggests, is the official be-all and end-all textbook authorized by the All Japan Kendo Federation. This is the book that outlines the “correct” way of executing all of the kendo techniques, and definitions for terms and concepts. It is ...

I thought it was all just superstition, but yakudoshi really are the “years of calamity”. This is a Japanese belief that people who are at the “age of yakudoshi” are likely to experience some kind of catastrophe or illness. If you believe that new-borns start at one year old (kazoedoshi), yakudoshi for men is generally believed to be the ages 25, 42 and 61, and for women 19, 33 and 37. One’s yakudoshi is measured by adding one to your actual age, and as I was born in 1970, I fall plum into the 42 ...

Tags: クライストチャーチの震災, 液状化, christchurch earthquake, liquefaction

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