Alex in Wonderland

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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When I wrote this, the FIFA World Cup was in full swing. Apart from the early exit of some of the highly regarded teams, and the fantastic showing of the underdogs, perhaps the biggest on-going stories at this competition surrounded the glaring mistakes made by the world’s top football referees. What about that goal scored by a blatantly offside Tevez in the match between Argentina and Mexico? Who can forget the goal scored by Lampard against Germany that bounced over ...

Tags: beijing, combat games, hantei, kendo, shinpan, sportaccord

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KW Team

Recently, a new book regarding the history of kendo was released by the publishers of Kendo Nippon Magazine. The book, A Bilingual Guide to the History of Kendo, is, as its title suggests, a bilingual guide to the history of kendo. The author is Sakai Toshinobu, expert in sword history and professor at the University of Tsukuba. The English translation was done by me.

The book is comprised of a number of essays outlining the earliest sword ideals ...

Tags: alex bennett, bilingual, history, kendo, sakai toshinobu, tsurugi

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