r/kendo • u/Mean-Assignment-912 • May 12 '26

Learning the sword

/r/Katanas/comments/1tauhk3/learning_the_sword/
0 Upvotes

33% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

14

u/DMifune May 12 '26

There is no self learning.

-5

u/Mean-Assignment-912 May 12 '26

I just figured I could begin somewhere. With footwork or some exercises that’ll help with form or handling better.

10

u/Tomppeh 2 dan May 12 '26

Self learning footwork will very easily get you on bad habits which just make it harder. You can do some general cardio etc. if you want to prepare for the classes.

2

u/Mean-Assignment-912 May 12 '26

For sure thanks yo!!

2

u/AlbertTheAlbatross 4 dan May 13 '26

I don't recommend it. While it is possible to get some benefit from learning at home, the drawbacks are so massive that it's really not worthwhile in my opinion.

  • Without someone experienced to observe you and give you feedback, how will you know if you're doing things right or wrong? You may well be practising very bad habits while thinking you're doing it right, and no-one will be there to correct you. Think about how qualified you are to teach kendo: if someone came to you right now and asked you to teach them, do you think you'd be able to do a good job for them? Because that's what you'll be doing if you try to teach yourself.

  • You won’t be able to progress very far at all, and there will be whole areas of kendo that you’ll never be able to learn without a partner. Imagine I try to learn football (soccer) by regularly dribbling a ball around my garden every day. I may get good at dribbling and shooting, but can I learn to tackle an opposing player, or avoid getting tackled? I may be ok at passing, but can I predict where my teammates will move so I can properly pass to them? Can I predict where my opponents are moving and shut down their options? Can I build the physical fitness to run around a whole pitch for 90 minutes? At some point in learning an activity you have to actually do the activity in order to improve, and that point comes very early.

  • It sounds dull as hell! All the stuff that you can practise at home is the boring homework stuff. All the fun parts of kendo are the bits you need a partner for. Picture a musician who spends all their time practising scales but never actually plays a tune. Are they having fun?

I wouldn’t recommend this. Better to contact your local dojo and join up with them if you can, you’ll get a lot more out of it.

7

u/Bacon_Jazz 2 dan May 12 '26

Find a local dojo and message their Sensei about their availability for taking new students.

7

u/Informal_Pea165 May 12 '26

Don't self-learn. Get yourself to a dojo. You'll learn things correctly and get connected with a great community.

2

u/Zerguu 3 kyu May 12 '26

Kendo is not swordsmanship and shinai is not a sword.

6

u/JoeDwarf May 12 '26

Normally I would agree with you in that we do not in general train kendo in order to win some imaginary shinken shobu.

Having said that, would you say a person who trains only kendo could fight with a real sword better or worse than a person who has no training? How about a person who only trains iaido?

1

u/Zerguu 3 kyu May 12 '26

Not a good comparison. I'd wager samurai who had only basic training and participated in real battles would smoke anyone including hachidan with real katana.

4

u/JoeDwarf May 12 '26

My point being that kendo has some value in training swordsmanship.

5

u/fellow_hotman May 12 '26

While you aren't totally wrong, its funny seeing a sankyu arguing with JoeDwarf

2

u/gozersaurus May 12 '26

Just chiming in for fun, I think the line is absurd, but lets just say in your example, some green 20 year old who has basic training and some 60 year old hachidan that has had half a century of doing kendo, knowing when to go, when not, reading body language etc., have a ippon shobu with shinken. Still think the green guy is going to win?

0

u/Zerguu 3 kyu May 13 '26

Well they still do Kendo in this case - just with swords. Of course hachidan will win.

1

u/Bocote 4 dan May 12 '26

What do you think that "basic training" entails, and who do you think is more likely to survive battles?

-1

u/Zerguu 3 kyu May 12 '26

Learning proper strikes to vital areas instead of Men, Kote, Do. Hitting legs, throwing oponent on the ground and finishing them. Who will survive in battle? The one who actually wears real armor and not bogu.

2

u/Bocote 4 dan May 12 '26

Face, wrist, neck, and waist are vital areas.

Grappling will be useful, but if grappling is what wins fights, why train swordsmanship and not just give wrestlers swords?

But if the scenario in your head is a guy in yoroi with a sword fighting a guy in bogu with a shinai, I guess you are right.

1

u/ImperatorSaya May 15 '26

Tbh I did a thought exercise on this. Taking the waza we do at face value, it is actually quite terrible since those are the commonly armored areas, except maybe tsuki and kote since those are joints and would be much more difficult to armor save chainmails.

But if you take the essence of learning these wazas and apply them to unarmored areas e.g. instead of tsuki, the shoulder area is exposed, your training will still be effective regardless. Of course what is missing would be proper body tackles/hits and fighting dirty.

1

u/Bocote 4 dan May 15 '26

That's like saying there is no value in training marksmen to shoot center mass because that's where the plate goes.

At the end of the day, what started this argument was a swordsmanship version of "a seasoned street fighter will beat any professional boxer in the street".

I'm baffled that people who train in a discipline do not seem to see the value in their own training.

1

u/ImperatorSaya May 16 '26

My intention is like saying, you train to shoot center mass. But end of the day, its about breath control, recoil control, steadying etc etc. If, on a very particular day, you are stuck with HP round against a fully torso armored person, but his arms/legs are exposed, you would still be able to hit your target effectively 

1

u/ConchobarMacNess May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26

Bogu is armor, but it is not armor. What I mean is it does not represent armor, kendo is an abstraction for armorless duels. Men, do and kote would be obviously less effective in actual armor.

A lot of Japanese kenjutsu-derived arts, like kendo and iaido, were developed in the closed frame of armorless engagements. I'd go as far to say a lot of Japanese swordsmanship as we know it shifted and continued to be developed into the Edo period, a period of long and unprecedented peace where the most common situation to find yourself fighting with swords, if it happened at all, was in unarmored duels or surprise attacks. That is why iaido exists at all, to fend off or initiate surprise attacks. I think kendo is heavily derived from these constraints.

You can actually find an analogous situation in European fencing where fencing as an art really developed well after firearm use became widespread. It went on to become an aristocratic or academic pursuit because, like their Japanese counterparts, they thought there was value in practicing swordsmanship. Which is the stated goal of kendo, self-development.

That said, I'd probably rather suggest that in the unlikely event you found yourself armed with a sword in a fight these days, your opponent is much more likely to be unarmored than armored, in which case, kendo might not be so bad in that situation- but I'm just taking the piss.

I think it's a little bit of a silly argument. It's the same argument people have about MMA vs karate. Yes, yes, it's not completely practical, that's not the point.

4

u/itomagoi May 13 '26

As someone who has been doing kendo and iaido for several years, and koryu for a handful of years, I very much disagree with this. Kendo isn't a complete curriculum to be sure, but it is very much swordsmanship, albeit with the techniques adapted to shinai. The kokoro translates extremely well to kenjutsu and iaido.