kenjutsu vs kendo?

[Paburo]

well kingu. in a way, kesagiri is not completely lost in kendo.
i am told correct dou uchi should come diagonally in a kesagiri style, not horizontally.

thus, doing dou uchi in kendo as in yoko guruma is wrong.

when i do dou, i try to mantain that kesagiri feeling, especially in gyaku dou

[Marine_Boy]

Thanks for that Paburo, I'll try to remember that next time I aim doh! erm i mean do.

Stan

[Kingu]

Originally posted by Paburo
well kingu. in a way, kesagiri is not completely lost in kendo.
i am told correct dou uchi should come diagonally in a kesagiri style, not horizontally.

thus, doing dou uchi in kendo as in yoko guruma is wrong.

when i do dou, i try to mantain that kesagiri feeling, especially in gyaku dou

Thanks for this advice, I shall keep it in mind. It will certainly be useful one day or another.

[lewis]

Kingu, there is an excellent article in one of the last issues of Kendo World that discusses heel injuries. One of the points the author made was that if your feel are not in line, doing repetitive lunges as required throughout a kendo practice will ultimately lead to serious ankle injury. In that sense, it may be thought as a sport adaption in that it allows kendoka to practice longer and harder without injury.

As to the differences between kendo and kenjitsu, one thing I noticed about kendo, after doing it for several years, was that you begin to ignore attacks and feints that have no chance of scoring a point. I learned this when I worked out with a jujitsu sensei. He kept trying to 'kill' me while I was trying to 'score' a point on him. While the times I did score would have been definite kills, if it were a real fight I would have been at disadvantage because of the scoring rules that had been ingrained in me. For example, in kendo tsuba-zerai is something of a safe zone. In a real fight, especially against someone trained aikido/jujistsu/etc. it would probably be a bad idea.

That said, I think kendo is more of a refinement than a degeneration. (Consider modern road cycling where if you break your bike the sag wagon gives you a new one - this is an attempt to specifically focus on the person and limit the effect of luck and technological advantages). The training is geared toward perfecting sword-v-swordsmanship where everything is held as equal as possible to focus on the swordsmanship. Kenjutsu seems to me to be more about ways of fighting (and winning) with a sword than perfecting one's swordsmanship.

As my last words, don't try the headlong leaping men against a jujitsu sensei. Bad form may score points, but the landing is hard.

[canadasword]

But isn't the feet position in a T shape and not in the parralel form used in kendo? In all kenjutsu schools I've heard about, the feet position was the first one

Yes, many kenjutsu styles use flat, natural foot position. Better balance especially on uneven terrain or conditions (ie. mud, swamp, rocky terrain, stairs, etc...)

I guess it would have been impossible to use on a battlefield.

Correct. Also kendo evolved later in 1700-1800 (in peacetime) after large-scale battles were a thing of the past.

Isn't kendo derived from Itto-ryu? All I've heard or read about seemed to agree on that point.

Correct. Techniques such as suriage, kiri-otoshi, kiri-kaeshi, uchi-otoshi, etc.. came from Ono-ha Itto Ryu; same for kamae like chudan, gedan, jodan, hasso, and waki-gamae; Contributions also came from other styles.
Remember nothing is new, just re-hashed and copied from previous stuff. Kendo originally was evolution of kata, in essence free-sparring with equipment to practice kenjutsu techniques in more uncontrolled conditions.

[munenmuso]

I always watch the latest NHK teledrama, Shinzengumi, their replacement for the Musashi series. There are a lot of scenes depicting that kendo is the main art to master sword proficiency probably because it allowed a more realistic point of view of how two swordsmen will collide each other. I thought kenjutsu was more prevalent during that time and was the main course for swordsmanship. But it seems that techniques can be executed well through kendo without fear of injuring your partner. This is not possible with kenjutsu.