Zarei - hands straight down or sweep out and in?

[The great I AM]

That must be a totally Toko/Kanto thing... If you did that here in Kansai you'd get all kinds of funny looks...


You see, here you have to say 'Hail Me! For I am Skeletor'... Anything other than that... We'll it just ain't considered to be cricket...

Can you imagine doing kendo with a cricket bat? It's be like a north London assassination!

During mokuso tonight, I suddenly found myself thinking about this. (Shows how focused I am during mokuso) I honestly had a hard time not chuckling.

Mission Accomplished.

[R Stroud]

Zen Ken Ren standard is to bow in seiza "zarei" moving both hands simultaneously. This is stated on page 33 of the English version of "The Official Guide for Kendo Instruction". This has been the ZNKR standard for many years...

My understanding is to think of this as a bow to your sensei, one in which you do not need to be ready to attack him or to defend yourself. You are giving yourself to the situation and bowing sincerely to your teacher.

In iaido you do the same bow to the sensei, but in toh rei, the bow to the sword, you use the more practical, "I may have to draw this thing and cut somebody" type of bow.

Your mileage (of course) may very.

[Abramo]

I took to doing hands-together to sensei and I-ain't-no-fool to underlings.

[DCPan]

Are you saying the current proper approach in the kendo kata is not to draw until the very end of the third step as you go into sonkyo?

Out of curiousity, I looked up the old AJKC Kendo Kata video...and it was that way then as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWzdIpayeFk

[jjcruiser]

Out of curiousity, I looked up the old AJKC Kendo Kata video...and it was that way then as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWzdIpayeFk

Hm. Thanks. I'd seen that video before and assumed the drawing like that was different because they were using iaito. Interesting to learn that's not right. Although, here are two hachidan doing it somewhat more the way I am used to seeing it:

Kendo kata demo

[DCPan]

Frankly, I've always though nuke-to was another place where you were previously given some "freedom".

The thing at least with kata though, is that you can't do something before the uchidachi, and that applies to nuke-to as well, so if I had a noticeable motion before the uchidachi, I'm in trouble.

BTW, it is interesting to note that the sensei on the left did what "looked" more like the new one motion draw while the sensei on the right did the older pull out partially then release the hand kind of draw, so there's a change in tempo that catches the eye. It is the "catch" of the eye that the ichi-byoshi folks don't want....

[Lloromannic]

It does bear mentioning that the video is 5 years old too. I am not an expert at Kata but I did take a year of classes doing them with habiki under the Uchidachi in that video; and one thing that was mentioned is that there is, at least unofficially, an "embu" way and a "regular/shinsa" way with minor changes in timing and details. I was taught "pull out some then draw with your hand still being your imaginary saya/holding your saya until you are actually going into sonkyo but without stopping"