PUBLIC MARKS with tags kata & japanese

We are a strange people. Us western iaidoka, that is. We are all part of a rich culture that goes back to Ancient Greece and to the Roman Empire. Were we only interested in the martial arts of the sword, we would still find a number of Western ones teaching European, Italian, and Scottish swordsmanship, and even more. Yet we have instead opted to study arts which come from the far east, from a land and a culture that is foreign to most of us. We try to understand the culture and philosophy of those who came before us through our practice. One way to help this along is through the study of the Japanese language, and I hope here to perhaps enlighten some of our practice through understanding the names of our kata. By 'our', I mean here the kata commonly practiced in Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu and the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei. Let's get to it, shall we?

Kata training in kendo nowadays is had via the well known and respected “nihon kendo no kata,” and it has played an important part in keeping the “sword” element of kendo alive to this day. We also have the newly introduced “bokuto ni yoru kihon keiko-ho” (although they not officially called “kata”) which is a method of teaching shinai-kendo techniques using a bokuto. But before both these sets of kata, there were precursory attempts to create kata for teaching to kendo people. These forms are still practised in the Japanese kendo community today, although rare.

This is the first in a continuing series of articles on the Japanese art of iaido the modern discipline or way of drawing the sword that was popularized in the 1930's. It was derived from iaijutsu, a sub-specialization of kenjutsu (sword arts) that was practiced by professional (samurai) warriors and involved methods of drawing the sword and cutting as a single motion. Future articles will focus on concepts that relate to practice and then on specific analyses of kata and basic techniques.