Through kendo eyes

[Matt Easton]

You may find this thread of interest:
http://www.kendo-world.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9642

It's a shame that they found such a scrappy little knock-around video of ours... I guess that's the price you pay for putting such things online! But the resulting conversation is pretty interesting IMO.

Regards,
Matt

[Mike Cartier]

nicely explained Matt, but i agree with them we need therapy <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[Allen Johnson]

Yeah - I think the other part of the problem is that alot of us are beginers. Thats going to translate to less fluid movements on tape. However, I'd bet the farm that you take a random sampling from any of their schools and you'd find the exact same thing.

[Matt Easton]

Hi guys - this is what I just posted on our forum, if you don't mind me re-posting it here:

What would be most decisive of course is if we could put online video of us bouting against kendoka's.. They seem to confuse a messy appearance with inefficiency, and the two simply don't always equate. The best MMA fighters often look messy from a karate or other martial art viewpoint, but they're certainly not ineffective or inefficient.
I haven't addressed the broken lineage issue because I completely disagree, and it's really a different topic. While it's true that they have a couple of generations of teachers in the modern form of kendo, this as an art itself is very very removed from the old forms of japanese swordsmanship (as you can see from comparing kendo with kenjitsu or bujinkan - it's like chalk and cheese), so their point is really a little moot. They are as unattached from old Japanese swordsmanship as we are from old European. As some argue though, we work direct from period martial sources, whereas they rely on word of mouth, across a period that saw swordsmanship evolve into a sport loosely connected to the original art, and existing under completely different parameters and rules. I can see both sides to the argument though - EMA through lineages certainly have advantages, but I think WMA through period sources do as well.
I must admit I'm somewhat surprised that they've basically agreed with my points about kendoka hitting each other until someone is awarded a point and suchlike. I can see the logic of keeping trying something until you get it perfect - this is surely one way of learning good form. But what should recognise is that we take a different attitude, where we are trying *not to get wounded*. This leads to something which looks very different - more hesitant, therefore more random looking. If I only attack and concentrate on looking good while doing so and covering the line sometimes then sure the result will look more like kendo. Attacking all the time is MUCH easier than trying not to get wounded and fitting an offense into this. Plus we have far more parameters to worry about - more types of sword attack, grapples etc. I would say that in WMA we have much more 'on our plate' to worry about when bouting.
This is not an excuse for bad footwork, of course, but I do think it is part of a vindication. We have to work more on the footwork.
I wonder what kendo would look like if you told them that as soon as they got tagged anywhere on their body they would be out of the bout and the next person would take their place? I'm guessing it would change the nature of the fight rather a bit.

[Randall Pleasant]

A very good and educational reply.

[Lance Chan]

I'm actually surprised and appreciate your seemingly endless effort to reply them in informative and non-confrontational way. Hehhe.

[David_Knight]

Hey Matt,

Very interesting discussion. Mike usually rotates the videos on the ARMA SoFL site, so I'm not sure what is online right now. When I go back down to Florida next month, we will try to get some footage of longsword sparring with grappling. In the meantime, feel free to point to the Ringen am Schwert videos in my other thread if you want to show them examples of grappling techniques with proper footwork.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Matt:

I read three pages of the debate at Kendo-Rama before I grew weary of the whole thing.

I applaude that you chose to spend valuable time trying to impart some logical and historical evidence to the discussion.

There were so many mistaken notions amongst the kendoka forumites that I should not know where to begin a critique. So I shall refrain (since you countered a number thereof anyway).

I thought the video was a reasonable display of WMA practice. The inherent quality of the video-file itself should have tempered what some of the observers said regarding the separate issue of quality of technique (but of course did not). To that matter of quality of technique, well, I would argue that what I saw in the video was closer to reality that the contrived conditions of a sport like kendo.

One last thing: Yes, many of we Fechter are indeed athletic. Perhaps various dismissive kendoka could find this out if they were willing to endure contest beyond the safe observation and smug critique of online videos.

[Byron Doyle]

I read the whole thing. Very good points brought up. Looks like they started as haters, but everything was explained to them. They of course are still taking everything on a Kendo slant, but then again, don't we take everything on a WMA slant? <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Craig Peters]

I'm not about to sign up in the Kendo forums just for the sake of making one or two posts, but on the subject of upper and lower body coordination, why doesn't someone post Silver's remarks?

"The true fights be these. Whatsoever is done with the hand before the foot or feet is true fight. The false fight are these: whatsoever is done with the foot or feet before the hand, is false, because the hand is swifter than the foot, the foot or feet being the slower mover than the hand, the hand in that manner of fight is tied to the time of the foot or feet, and being tied thereto, has lost his freedom, and is made thereby as slow in his motions as the foot or feet, and therefor that fight is false."

"There are eight times, whereof four are true, and four are false. The true times are these:

the time of the hand,

The time of the hand and body,

The time of the hand, body, and foot, (and)

the time of the hand, body, and feet.

The false times are these:

The time of the foot,

the time of the foot and body,

the time of the foot, body, and hand, (and)

the time of the feet, body, and hand.

Thus have I thought (it) good to separate and make known the true times to the false, with the true wards thereto belonging, that thereby the rather in practicing of weapons a true course may be taken for the avoiding of errors and evil customs, and speedy attaining of good habit or perfect being in the true use and knowledge of all manner of weapons."

http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/GSilver.htm

[James Hudec]

Looking over the thread, I noticed that one comment which seemed to come up a few times was that WMA "suffers from a broken link" between the original practitioners and the modern students. How much truth is there in that? Considering the fact that many examples of EMA seem to have become very stylized or ritualized, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing, at least in some ways. <img src="/forum/images/icons/confused.gif" alt="" />

[SzabolcsWaldmann]

'ts completelly true. In a way. For if we look at the medieval warfare as a method of raging war, it simply evolved - we still got armour today, we still got daggers, yet long-range weapons play most role.
As a martial art, it died away. Longsword went out of fashion somewhere at the end of the 17th century, and what remained from swordsmanship, that is, the smallsword and the rapier, changed into a sport with more and more binding rules. Soon there was not much martial artiness left in it. What it became, you can see in any modern fencers salle.
So what we western martial artists ty to do, is resurrect an art that has died away some 3-400 years ago and has probably seen it's zenit 500 years ago.
It is bad, for many things are not clear, a fencing master of the meidveal times colud answer with a few words. Seemingly small and unimportant things, but these are hindering us to become perfect, imho. It has some uses as well, tough. Even more, than faults, if you ask me. Verbal heritage distorts, and it distorts rapidly, within a hundred years. Things get forgotten, or considered unimportant by some poo-bah guru hidden in a forest in the far and unreachable east; other things are changed in favour of one's beliefs, on personal thoughts or worse, becouse of juristical or sportsrules. 'ts not always the case.
And on the top of that, many modern stiles are not more than 50 years old! Thought up by a single individual! Others are derivated from something that derivated from real fighting skills ages ago, or so the latest master said.
I guess nobody needs to tell you that 60 fencing manuals from the medievals have more power and are more proof than anything else.
Or simply think of our earliest SURVIVING manual, the I33, comming from the 13th-14th (!!!) century. One has to dig very deep to find anything like this in any other martial art <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

I just don't understand why we still have to defend ourselves all the time, with all this proof and heritage <img src="/forum/images/icons/frown.gif" alt="" />

Szabolcs

[Stacy Clifford]

Very well said, Szabolcs, all good points.

[Craig Peters]

I noticed that one of the people on the forum said that the demonstration with JC and Gary G at the International Gathering is:

"Very staged I ran a re-enactment group for 10 years and to me they all looked like well rehearsed set pieces looks good until you look at the person who is cutting against the expert her always knows were he is going and what will happen."

Maybe they ought to challenge John to some freeplay and see if the moves still look "staged". <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />

[Nathan Dexter]

Quite frankly, I thought all of those people were jerks! (I would have some other words but that wouldnt be very scholarly <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" /> ) there was one post that was fairly sincere, and one of them said "broadswords and things were big and heavy"!!?
I also really enjoyed the guy who said they were watching too many cartoons (that made me laugh because one of the guys names was Ruroni Kenshin[but wait that isnt a cartoon, Its anime]) <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />